Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Blog

MCC CEO Daniel Yohannes and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah are heading back to Capitol Hill Thursday to testify together before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. I expect Yohannes and Shah will sing different parts of the same tune: the United States is prepared to do more with less as it strives to fulfill the administration’s global development vision. But it should also be a remix of their joint hearing two years ago with questions on how Congress should prioritize among US development programs. Shah and Yohannes can hit some new high notes on how their agencies are being selective with aid dollars, sharing more aid data and doing better evaluation. They should also be clear about the differences between USAID and MCC. And let’s hope the committee members can avoid the low notes from two years ago when partisan spats (including some in Latin) marred what could have been an important development policy conversation between the executive branch and Congress.

The development community got an early Valentine from the White House: an executive order establishing the President’s Global Development Council. The council’s mission is to inform the president and other senior government officials on U.S. global development policies. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help the White House generate nominees for the twelve non-government seats at the table.

At the State Department, QDDR changes are about moving boxes in the org chart.  State will put global economy and systems together (under Undersecretary Bob Hormats, apparently) and human security, conflict prevention and other good things together (under Undersecretary Maria Otero).  Both moves seem reasonable – though it is mostly about insider DC top-down process which is hard for voters to wrap their heads around in the way of action or impact.

Regarding USAID, I sense QDDR change is more about reform and rebuilding.

This is a joint post with Molly Kinder.

The United States and the international community have finally begun to open their wallets and provide humanitarian aid to help Pakistan’s flood victims, but that is just the beginning. To help Pakistan rebuild and create jobs for the millions displaced, the United States could do far more by fully opening its market to Pakistani exports.

Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon , Secretary Clinton, and other world leaders beseeched the international community to do more to help Pakistan cope with its catastrophic floods. With donor contributions initially trickling in at anemic levels, newspaper headlines questioned why the world seemed not to care about Pakistan’s humanitarian disaster. Under pressure, donors at last responded and the relief effort seems to have finally found its legs. By early this week, donor commitments had nearly quadrupled to $800 million.