CGD's weekly Global Prosperity Wonkcast, event videos, whiteboard talks, slides, and more.
President Barack Obama's re-election gives him four more years to carry out his US global development vision. Rethink director Sarah Jane Staats shares a few ideas that could help the administration get a running start on their second term.
The U.S. political environment has changed significantly since 2007 when President Obama promised to double U.S. foreign assistance. As the 2012 election cycle presses on, cutting the budget and reducing the deficit are on the minds of many. What does this mean for U.S. foreign assistance?
My guests on this week’s Wonkcast, Connie Veillette, CGD’s director of the Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, and John Norris, executive director of the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), have a blueprint for making U.S. foreign assistance more focused and effective amid budget austerity.
On December 15th the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an innovative U.S. aid agency, is set to announce which countries will receive its unique development assistance. Casey Dunning, policy analyst at CGD and my guest on this week’s Wonkcast, provides insight and recommendations on how these countries will (and should) be selected. I catch Casey shortly after her return from Honduras, where she saw firsthand the positive impacts of an MCC compact on rural development and highway construction.
It’s been a busy time for Connie Veillette, director of the Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Initiative here at the Center for Global Development. Last week we hosted a major address by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah describing the achievements of his first year in office and his ambitious plans for modernizing the agency. No sooner had Shah finished speaking than a group of Republican legislators proposed a budget cutting plan that would zero out USAID’s operating budget. I was eager to learn how Connie—an advocate for effective aid who spent much of her career working for Republicans on Capitol Hill—would assess these developments.
Since being sworn in as the 16th administrator of USAID on January 7th, Dr. Rajiv Shah has taken a number of steps to position U.S. development efforts as a critical and dynamic component of U.S. foreign policy. From taking the lead on the Feed the Future initiative to internal reforms within USAID, Dr. Shah has demonstrated his leadership in making the agency a cutting edge actor in development, one that puts renewed emphasis on partnerships, innovation and learning, and evidenced-based results. Over the last 12 months, Shah also co-chaired the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and played an active role in the formulation of President Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy.
What does the new makeup of Congress mean for global development looking forward? My guest this week is Sarah Jane Staats, director of policy outreach here at the Center for Global Development. Sarah Jane is responsible for engaging the development policy community—especially senior staff in the U.S. Congress, the administration and policy experts in leading development advocacy NGOs—in the Center’s research and other programs.
In this Wonkcast, Sarah Jane starts by explaining that, “the first big takeaway with the elections is that they were really not about foreign policy.” Because domestic issues drove the rhetoric of the candidates this election cycle, even the foreign policy positions of some freshman Congressmen are still unknown. Thirty nine of the sixty new House Republicans align themselves with the Tea Party, a group with no clear foreign policy agenda, much less a unified view about whether and how to engage developing countries.
After months of study, work, negotiation and anticipation, the Obama administration has announced its development policy. What’s new here and what are the chances of implementation? To find out, I chatted with Connie Veillette, who has recently joined the Center for Global Development as director of our Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance program. Connie comes to us from Capitol Hill, where she spent many years with the Congressional Research Service and worked most recently as a senior professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority staff, specializing in U.S. foreign assistance and USAID.
In a major policy speech hosted by CGD, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared international development a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy, together with diplomacy and defense. She hailed Raj Shah, recently confirmed as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and said she intends to rebuild USAID into, “the premier development agency in the world.”
In her speech, Clinton said that, especially in tough economic times, the American people have the right to ask why the United States spends tax dollars to help developing countries. Development overseas is critical to U.S. security and prosperity, she said, and development professionals must do a better job of measuring and communicating the impacts of their work.
In a presentation delivered at NYU's Aid Watch Conference, CGD president Nancy Birdsall, in a session on accountabilty, spoke about Cash on Delivery Aid, a way for donors to transfer money that could make aid-dependent governments accountable for outcomes to their citizens -- instead of for inputs to their donors.
Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
In this video from the December 9, 2008, event with USAID administrator Henrietta Fore, CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet talks with her about the past year she spent in office and her recommendations for the next administrator of USAID.
USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance Henrietta Holsman Fore deliveres a speech on the importance of elevating global development and reforming U.S. foreign assistance.
In this video, the the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network presents their “New Day, New Way: U.S. Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century” report to a standing-room-only audience of policy makers, NGOs and nonprofits.
The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act -- a cornerstone of America’s support for global development -- is so badly out of date that it would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic, writes Lawrence MacDonald, CGD director of communications and policy. Although the mainstream media has shown little interest in the issue, the candidates themselves and a growing number of Americans recognize the urgency of modernizing the FAA. A new YouTube video from CGD’s Global Development Matters initiative helps make the case.