Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance

Senior fellow Todd Moss considers the future of foreign aid in light of Dambiso Moyo’s book, Dead Aid, which argues that Western aid to Africa has brought more harm than help. The relevant question today, he argues, is not whether aid is good or bad, but rather how aid can be made to work better...

Senior fellow Steve Radelet testifies before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health about the challenges and opportunities to reform U.S. foreign assistance to Africa.

CGD visiting fellow Carol Lancaster testifies in frot of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development on April 1, 2009.

Senior fellow Steve Radelet testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development, Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection.

Senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling calls on the National Security Officer to elevate global development and enhance the impact of U.S. foreign assistance. One step: add the USAID Administrator to the National Security Council

In this paper, part of the Innovations in Aid series, Jean-Michel Severino and Olivier Ray describe shifts in the objectives of overseas development assistance (ODA) over time and conclude that it is time to put the concept itself to bed—in favor of what they propose should be called “Global...

Total U.S. development assistance has fallen 22 percent since 2005 from $27.9 billion to $21.8 billion in 2007. In real terms, this was the smallest amount since 2002, excluding assistance to Iraq, Afghanistan, and HIV/AIDS programs. Senior fellow Steve Radelet and his coauthors examine the...

Meeting today’s foreign policy challenges requires a new vision of American global leadership based on the strength of our core values, ideas, and ingenuity. It calls for an integrated foreign policy that promotes our ideals, enhances our security, helps create economic and political...

New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century calls on the next American president, Congress, policymakers and the American people to overhaul how the U.S. helps poor people in developing countries. Among the recommended steps: a new national foreign assistance strategy and a new...

Testimony for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Testimony for the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Steven Radelet

Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has vowed a major overhaul of U.S. foreign assistance. He joins a growing list of members of Congress and the defense, diplomacy and development community who recognize that U.S. foreign assistance programs are...

With President Bush's trip to Africa making headlines this week, CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet and research assistant Sami Bazzi offer a close look at the latest U.S. foreign assistance numbers. Bottom line: although America's aid has more than doubled since 2000, the new money went mostly to...

The recent creation of AFRICOM, a U.S. military command for Africa, is but one manifestation of the Pentagon's growing role in development. One-in-five dollars that the U.S. spends on development assistance is now handled by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Pentagon share of U.S. development...

The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) provides more than $5 billion per year to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS. Exactly how is that money spent? Donors, recipients, and even PEPFAR staff are often left guessing, because much of the extensive data the U.S. government collects on the...

On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, Steve Radelet testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development, Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection on "Foreign Aid Reform: Successes, Failures, and Next Steps."

President Bush's FY2008 budget request provides a first glimpse into how the administration's new foreign assistance framework and transformational diplomacy agenda translate into who gets how much for what. In this CGD essay, authors Samuel Bazzi, Sheila Herrling and Stewart Patrick, show that the...

In U.S. Foreign Aid Reform: Will It Fix What Is Broken? CGD research fellow Stewart Patrick says the U.S. foreign aid regime is broken, and it is not clear that the Bush administration's reform plan will fix it. Patrick proposes a total overhaul of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act and the creation...

Analysis of the U.S. budget reveals a chasm between Washington rhetoric about the potentially large threats arising from weak and failing states and the paucity of resources devoted to engaging with these troubled countries. The authors argue that the U.S. should think creatively about how and when...

Controversies about aid effectiveness go back decades. This new working paper by CGD senior fellow Steven Radelet provides an introduction and overview of the basic concepts, data and key debates about foreign aid. It explores the range of views on the relationship between foreign aid and economic...

U.S. "development assistance" refers to the transfer of resources from the United States to developing countries and to some strategic allies. It is delivered in the form of money (via loans or grants), contributions of goods (such as food aid), and technical assistance. Learn more about Rich...

Development refers to improvements in the conditions of people’s lives, such as health, education, and income. It occurs at different rates in different countries. The U.S. underwent its own version of development since the time it became an independent nation in 1776. Learn more about Rich...

As the Bush Administration prepares to announce the reorganization of U.S. foreign assistance, Nancy Birdsall, Stewart Patrick and Milan Vaishnav argue in a new essay that making a dent in global poverty will require that the U.S. address four flaws: low volume and poor quality of aid; incoherence...

This note reviews the President’s 2005 international affairs budget request and offers insight into the potential MCA allocations in the context of the broader development assistance budget. The authors note that requested funding for the MCA is lower than promised and may be indirectly coming...

A Report of the Commission for Weak States and US National Security Terrorists training at bases in Afghanistan and Somalia. Transnational crime networks putting down roots in Myanmar/Burma and Central Asia. Poverty, disease, and humanitarian emergencies overwhelming governments in Haiti and...

Conventional wisdom about US foreign policy toward Africa contains two popular assumptions. First, Democrats are widely considered the party most inclined to care about Africa and the most willing to spend resources on assistance to the continent. Second, the end of the Cold War was widely thought...

This book tackles head on the tension between foreign policy and development goals that chronically afflicts U.S. foreign assistance; the danger of being dismissed as one more instance of the United States going it alone instead of buttressing international cooperation; and the risk of exacerbating...

In this study, Steven Radelet examines the MCA's potential promise and possible pitfalls. He offers a rigorous analysis of the MCA’s central challenge: making foreign aid more effective in supporting economic growth and poverty reduction in the poor countries. He systematically explores what...

The launch of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) holds the promise of being a watershed event in the history of U.S. foreign assistance. This paper discusses how should aid be delivered, once eligibility is determined, to ensure it is as effective as possible in supporting growth and...