CGD hosted a major speech by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. A media summary of the event and media coverage is included.
Event Summary:
The CGD/USAID Raj Shah Speaking event on January 19th, 2011 drew over 200 distinguished guests and a number of news outlets including Voice of America, National Journal, CQ, the Lancet, One Campaign, and Climatewire/E&E Daily. Following the speech Administrator Shah held several interviews and participated in a high level roundtable discussion. The event webcast was available on the CGD and USAID websites and was viewed by over 3,000 people. News coverage of the event appeared in publications including the Washington Post and CQ.
Event Coverage:
CQ/Roll Call
Text Available Below.
The Guardian
The Hagstrom Report
Text Available Below.
Inter Press Service
MFAN
Kaiser Family Foundation
One Campaign
Washington Post
Article Text:
Shah promises evaluation of ‘Feed the Future’
By JERRY HAGSTROM
Is President Obama’s “Feed the Future” program to encourage agricultural development in poor countries working?
Lawmakers and taxpayers should be able to get answers within a month, according to a scenario laid out last week by Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
After a speech to the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, last Thursday, Shah told The Hagstrom Report that “very shortly within a month we will issue comprehensive results” of monitoring Feed the Future activities in the 20 countries in which projects have been started.
“We owe that data to the public and Congress,” Shah said.
Noting that USAID intends to learn what to do and not to do from its evaluations, Shah said that in some countries the agency has already shifted from agricultural projects that are successful to new projects that are larger in scope. As an example, he noted that USAID is no longer going to support women making honey and jam in Senegal co-ops, even though it has raised their standard of living, because the agency has other, larger projects to support.
Officials must ask the “unit cost of impact,” Shah said, adding that he had signed an order establishing a policy of compensating USAID local contractors “based on performance — the number of health workers trained, the volume of crops produced —rather than on how many people employed or trucks purchased.”
Ruth Levine, a USAID official in charge of monitoring and evaluations, said that food production levels and reduction in levels of poverty are being watched in all 20 Feed the Future countries, with more intensive evaluations going on in five countries. Most of the 20 countries are in Africa, but there are also projects in Asia and Latin America.
The Obama administration launched Feed the Future, overseen by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in reaction to high commodity prices in 2008.
In the late 1960s, buying fertilizer for India was the single biggest budget line item at the agency, Shah noted in his speech, but in recent years agricultural development has declined. When Shah, who headed the agriculture division at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, was named Agriculture undersecretary for research and economics in the early months of the administration, he took over USAID and made agriculture an even bigger priority.
Critics, including some advocates for U.S. food aid, have noted that agricultural development in Third World countries is often difficult to achieve, especially if the governments in those countries have their priorities elsewhere.
Shah made his comments after a speech that emphasized USAID’s determination to properly evaluate its projects. For decades the agency has been accused of wasting money, but Clinton pledged to make development on a par with defense and diplomacy as the pillars of American foreign policy. Shah said he is determined to live up to that pledge, agreeing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates who recently observed “development is a lot cheaper than sending soldiers.”
Shah hinted that the administration believes it already can prove the success of some Feed the Future projects.
“In just five of our 20 focus countries, we believe we can help nearly 6.5 million poor farmers — most of them women — grow enough food to feed their families and break the grips of hunger and poverty for tens of millions of people. This is smarter and [less] costly than dealing with the food riots and famine that are caused when people do not have access to food themselves.”
Costly senior USAID positions in Paris, Geneva, Rome and Toyko are being eliminated or restructured, he said, while jobs in sub-Saharan Africa are being filled.
“Any effort that is serious about ending hunger or preventing the spread of disease or preventing the emergence of safe havens for terrorism or creating the markets of tomorrow, must tackle the development challenges of sub-Saharan Africa,” he said. “It is the epicenter of our work.”
Development assistance also helps Americans, Shah said, pointing out that on that on a trip to India with President Obama last year, he saw a solar-powered micro-irrigation pump in use whose solar cells were manufactured by a small Georgia company called Suniva. The company, Shah said, is now opening a plant in his home state of Michigan.
Shah also pledged to improve oversight of the contractors that oversee so much of USAID’s activity.
“Every enterprise relies on contractors and depends on them to succeed. USAID is no different. But I want to make it clear; we do not work for our contract partners, our contract partners work for us,” Shah said. He noted that too often, “handoffs rarely happen; projects are extended in perpetuity while goals remain just out of reach.”
“There is always another high-priced consultant that must take another flight to another conference or lead another training. This agency is no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development.”
Asked by Nancy Birdsall, the former Inter-American Development Bank official who heads the Center for Global Development, whether he needs additional legislative authority or money to achieve his goals, Shah said the agency does need more staff because the spending authority has quadrupled while the operating expenses budget has stayed flat or declined.
On whether Congress should provide more money for USAID to help other countries directly develop their agriculture or provide more money for a trust fund for agricultural development administered by the World Bank, Shah said, “I am an agnostic. We are looking for ways to get leverage and impact.”
USAID is expected to face intense budget pressures as Congress and the White House try to deal with the deficit.
More information can be obtained at www.feedthefuture.gov.
Proposed Cuts Thrust Foreign Aid Agency Into Center of Spending Debate
The new Republican majority in the House is already taking aim at foreign aid spending levels and is turning Capitol Hill into hostile territory for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah» used a speech last week that marked the first year of his tenure to deliver a strong pitch for why foreign aid — and particularly his agency — merits robust funding. But lawmakers across the political spectrum, while applauding «Shah»’s efforts to revitalize USAID, say the grim fiscal situation means that the agency is still likely to face significant cuts.
In a sign of just how tough the climate is, a group of House conservatives unveiled a spending proposal on Jan. 20 that would essentially eliminate the agency’s operating budget.
The Republican appropriators responsible for allocating funding for the State Department and foreign operations — all veteran lawmakers — are not prepared to take such radical steps, according to aides. This sets up an intraparty tussle in the House over foreign aid even before the budget debate with the Democratic Senate gets going.
The changes he outlined — a new evaluation policy to measure the impact of aid programs, tougher oversight of contractors, the elimination of unnecessary positions and programs — speak to many of the traditional objections to foreign aid funding on Capitol Hill. «Shah» sought to knock them down one by one in his speech, repeatedly emphasizing opportunities for cost savings and promising a renewed focus on the “need to be selective and targeted with our work,” “delivering the highest possible value” and “stretching our dollars and leveraging the private sector,” among other things.
Former Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., who served in Congress between 1985 and 2007 and is now a principal at the development coalition Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, said «Shah»’s remarks constituted something of “a pre-emptive speech.” He was, Kolbe added, “acknowledging that Congress is going to be looking very closely at these dollars and how they’re spent.”
Some members, however, are less interested in parsing than wholesale cutting.
The conservative Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Spending Reduction Act, introduced with much fanfare Jan. 20, promised $2.5 trillion in savings from discretionary, non-defense government spending over 10 years, including $1.39 billion in “annual savings” from USAID. According to the agency, USAID’s operating accounts in fiscal year 2010 amounted to $1.6 billion.
RSC Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said in a news conference that the proposed cuts “were derived by talking to members of the RSC, asking them: Where do you think government has been wasteful, redundant?” But according to one aide to an RSC member, not all of the rank and file was consulted.
“Now, is there going to be debate and discussion as we move forward? Certainly,” Jordan said. “But we think, as we said at the start, [this is] a good first step.”
Jordan denied that the effort to eliminate USAID’s budget was a repudiation of the argument that development is a necessary element for promoting national security, and he said the committee would also be scrutinizing the defense budget separately.
Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, chairwoman of the State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee and herself an RSC member, was noncommittal about the RSC proposal. Granger said only that House Republicans were very serious about cutting back the budget to 2008 funding levels, which would mean cuts to the proposed USAID budget, among other things. That, she said, was not due to a lack of confidence in «Shah» or the changes USAID is making — “he’s wonderful” she said — but rather is just a reflection of “the reality” of the fiscal situation.
Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., another member of the State-Foreign Operations Subcommittee, also struck a different tone from the RSC proposal, saying that he is prepared to argue that funding foreign aid programs “is in the U.S. national security interest.”
Diaz-Balart did warn, however, that appropriators will be forced to “make some tough choices” about specific programs, but he predicted that it will be on a case-by-case basis rather than mass cuts to one budget.
That message does not seem to be getting through to much of the House Republican caucus, conceded Kolbe, who supports strong foreign aid funding. He said it will take more outreach, particularly to new members, over the long term. “We just have to make the case over and over again,” he said.
«Shah» has certainly been making Hill outreach a priority. “I believe in personally talking to members of Congress, talking to senators, learning their perspective and taking that time as we make decisions because I just think we will get better outcomes and better results by that kind of serious consultation,” he said.