National Public Radio interviews CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet on modernizing U.S. foreign assistance.
From the article:
"Steve Radelet of the Center for Global Development sees a total change in Washington's attitude about development aid, and he's hoping this will translate into some real reform.
'The way we are organized to deliver foreign assistance and to invest in low-income countries is really quite behind the times,' he said. 'Our apparatus was set up in the early '60s — the legislation is the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, passed in the early days of the Kennedy administration.'
The center put together a video to show how development needs have changed, noting that when Kennedy signed the act, it was meant to provide military assistance to countries on the 'rim of the communist world," and that the act 'just won't do' for the 21st century. There have been many studies on ways to update U.S. foreign-assistance programs and better coordinate them. A study Radelet was a part of shows that there are too many government agencies with a hand in this — the departments of State, Treasury and Agriculture, and a weak U.S. Agency for International Development. He wants to see a much stronger, independent USAID and a Cabinet-level official in charge of development. He's been trying to make the case to both the Obama and McCain campaigns.
'They have both hinted at the need for reorganization, but neither has been particularly explicit as to what that reorganization might look like — appropriately so,' Radelet said. 'It's a little early to be into the specific details of what the reorganization might be, but both have recognized the importance of making investments going forward.'"