Since 1995, 17 African countries have defied expectations and have launched a remarkable, if little-noticed, turnaround. Emerging Africa describes this revitalization and why it is likely to continue.
In this essay Steven Radelet explains how since the mid 1990s seventeen Sub-Saharan African states have transcended the conflict and dictatorships of decades past to establish themselves as burgeoning world states. Approaching the discussion by delineating between cultural differences across the region, Radelet offers a dynamic analysis of the new and encouraging growth observed in several African countries.
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.
Senior fellow Steve Radelet testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Development, Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs, and International Environmental Protection.
The Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) has received wide praise for its innovative approaches to aid allocation and delivery but has not yet reached its full potential. Now, with the transition to a new administration, the MCC must take bold steps to achieve greater effectiveness, clarity of purpose, and integration with the broader U.S. foreign assistance framework. CGD analysts Sheila Herrling, Steve Radelet, and Molly Kinder offer timely suggestions, including introducing smaller, multiple compacts, reorienting the Threshold Program, and focusing exclusively on low-income countries.
We will examine trends in economic growth and other development indicators around the world since 1965, with some reference to broad patterns since 1820.
We will briefly review the concepts underlying the standard Solow model of economic growth and other measures of development.
We will explore the relationship between growth, poverty, and equity.
We will examine the evolution of the developing-country debt crisis.
We will look at current controversies and debates about foreign Assistance.
We will examine the financial crises that affected several emerging markets in the late 1990s.
We will examine the relationships between trade, trade policy, and development.
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 decline, and ask whether President Bush's pledge to double assistance to Africa is likely to be realized or not.
The MCA Monitor team presents its predictions for the MCC's selection of countries eligible to apply for funding in 2009. Steve Radelet and Amy Crone take a hard look at the tough choice the MCC has to make, and they offer suggestions to help the MCC to weather a tight budget and political transition, to increase transparency, and clarify criteria for Threshold Program elegibility.
This ninth MCA Monitor Report from the Field is a snapshot-in-time of El Salvador’s program in the early phases of its implementation, during a year in which the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is under pressure to increase and accelerate disbursements, demonstrate tangible impacts, and substantiate the country-driven model as a viable alternative to traditional U.S. government foreign assistance. El Salvador’s experience highlights the challenges of balancing country ownership and oversight as well as managing procurement and expectations. The report suggests solutions to pressing questions related to country ownership, the consultative process, donor coordination, aid effectiveness, and transparency.
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 opportunities for people around the world, and restores America’s image abroad. We cannot rely exclusively or even primarily on defense and security to meet these goals. CGD senior policy analyst Sheila Herrling and senior fellow Steve Radelet argue instead that we must make greater use of all the tools of statecraft, including diplomacy, trade, investment, intelligence, and a strong and effective foreign assistance strategy.
The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global Development experts offer fresh perspectives and practical advice on trade policy, migration, foreign aid, climate change and more. In an introductory essay, CGD President Nancy Birdsall explains why and how the next U.S. president must lead in the creation of a better, safer world.
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 Foreign Assistance Act to replace the outdated framework that President Kennedy signed nearly 50 years ago. CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet is a co-chair of the authoring group, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network.
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 badly in need of modernization to meet the challenges of the 21st century. In this new essay, adapted from a forthcoming CGD book The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet offers a blueprint to align U.S. foreign assistance with American values and foreign policy goals: develop a National Foreign Assistance Strategy; create a new cabinet-level department for development policy; rewrite the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act; place a higher priority on multilateral assistance channels; and increase the quantity and improve the allocation of funding.
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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 Iraq, Afghanistan and a small number of debt relief operations; and almost all was allocated through bilateral rather than multilateral channels. Assistance to Africa more than quadrupled from $1.5 billion in 1996 to $6.6 billion in 2006 and has been enormously important in funding humanitarian relief and HIV/AIDS programs. But even with the increases, U.S. assistance to Africa still averages less than $9 per African per year. And U.S. assistance for Africa has become less selective: since 2000 the shares going to the poorest countries and to the best-governed countries have fallen.
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Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will host President Bush on Thursday in the final stop of his five-country Africa tour, has news that may surprise some people: despite the problems in some African countries, things are clearly improving in much of the continent. In a new CGD essay co-authored with senior fellow Steve Radelet, Sirleaf describes how a growing number of African countries are embracing democracy and good governance, strengthening macroeconomic policies, and benefiting from debt relief. These countries are in the midst of an economic and development rebound, with economic growth averaging 5 percent for a decade, poverty rates beginning to fall, and social indicators beginning to improve. The essay concludes with recommendations on how this progress can be sustained and consolidated.
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On December 12, the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) Board will choose which countries are eligible for FY2008 funding in what may be the toughest selection round to date. With funding tight, new countries passing the performance test, half of the countries with signed compacts failing, and an MCC decision to shift its focus to implementation, this round should test the MCC's adherence to its principles and perhaps set new standards. As it does each year, the MCA Monitor team takes a hard look at tough choices and predicts which countries the MCC Board is likely to choose.
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In this new CGD working paper, CGD senior fellow Steve Radelet explores the challenges Liberia faces in revitalizing economic growth after 25 years of gross economic mismanagement and 14 years of brutal civil war. He examines the new government's progress, including the major steps it has taken in its first 18 months and the unique way that it has organized government-donor relations. Based upon patterns of post-conflict recovery in several other African countries, he suggests that Liberia's recovery is likely to proceed in three phases: an immediate phase driven by aid and rebounding urban services; renewal of traditional natural resource-based activities; and, finally, processed products and other goods and services that can compete on global markets. Radelet writes from a unique perspective: he is serving as an advisor to Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
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