Ideas to Action:

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Bio

Sarah Rose is a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development. Her work, as part of the Center’s US Development Policy Initiative, focuses on US government aid effectiveness. Areas of research and analysis include the policies and operation of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the use of evaluation and evidence to inform programming and policy, the implementation of country ownership principles, and the process of transitioning middle income countries from grant assistance to other development instruments.

Previously, Rose worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Mozambique as a specialist in strategic information and monitoring and evaluation. She also worked at MCC, focusing on the agency’s evidence-based country selection process. She holds a Masters degree in public policy and a BS in foreign service, both from Georgetown University.

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Media Contact

Holly Shulman
hshulman@cgdev.org

In the News

February 4, 2019
Before Trump’s State of the Union, a Look at How Last Year’s Promises Fared (The New York Times)
September 17, 2018
A Lesson from Rwanda: Don't Confuse Scale with Impact (Nonprofit Chronicles)
September 11, 2018
Is Cash Better for Poor People Than Conventional Foreign Aid? (The New York Times)

Working Groups

The Future of US Government Development Assistance to Fragile States

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More From Sarah Rose

December 6, 2016
Publication
MCC Country Eligibility Predictions for FY2017
Sarah Rose

The last board meeting of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) under the Obama administration will take place on December 13, 2016. On the docket? Selecting which countries will be eligible for MCC assistance for fiscal year (FY) 2017. For the fourteenth year running, CGD’s Rethinking US Development Policy Initiative discusses the overarching issues that will impact the decisions and offers its predictions of which countries will be selected.

October 19, 2016
Publication
Three Big Ideas + Three Smart Reforms for US Development...
US Development Policy Team

Attention presidential transition teams: the Rethinking US Development Policy team at the Center for Global Development strongly urges you to include these three big ideas in your first year budget submission to Congress and pursue these three smart reforms during your first year.

October 7, 2016
Blog Post
MCC Says Data Is in Its DNA—Show Us You Mean It by Using...
Sarah Rose

The country scorecards that serve as the basis for MCC country eligibility decisions aren’t complete, but the data for the particularly weighty indicators—including the must-pass Control of Corruption hurdle—is now available. I ran the numbers to get a sneak peek at some of the issues the agency and its board will grapple with over the next few months. Some of what emerged from this number crunching is encouraging—most current partner countries surpass MCC’s standards and some interesting new prospects for partnership emerge. More troubling is that two of the countries currently developing compacts—Kosovo and Mongolia—don’t pass the corruption hurdle.

September 22, 2016
Blog Post
Transparency Is an Agency-Level Game and DOD Is Coming Up...
Sarah Rose

ForeignAssistance.gov is a great idea in theory—a one-stop shop for information about all US foreign assistance spending. In practice, the site has struggled to become a useful and reliable tool due to missing data and poor quality information. But if you look closely, the Department of Defense (DOD), which by some measures is one of the biggest players in US foreign assistance, truly stands out for its reporting gap. 

September 20, 2016
Publication
Maximizing USAID's Impact under the Next Administration
Casey Dunning and Scott Morris

Since its establishment more than 54 years ago, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has expanded into an $18-billion-a-year agency, operating in over 145 countries and in nearly every development sector. But USAID is often constrained in its ability to adapt to emerging development challenges due to differing political priorities among key stakeholders and resource constraints. This memo is the result of a roundtable discussion in July 2016 on how the next US administration, in close concert with Congress, can build upon and maximize the development impact of USAID.

August 29, 2016
Blog Post
When Rules Are Wrong: Time to Rethink How MCC Identifies...
Sarah Rose

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has officially kicked off its FY2017 “selection cycle” with last week’s release of the “Candidate Country Report.” Normally this is a pretty pro forma step that’s hardly blogworthy, but this year’s report showcases the inadequacy of the current rules that determine MCC’s candidate pool and the unnecessary instability they create—this year three countries that formerly “graduated” are suddenly back in the pool. 

July 15, 2016
Blog Post
Building on the Momentum: Focusing on Adolescent Girls...
Megan O'Donnell and Sarah Rose

In CGD’s last blog post on the new strategy, we commended the US government for leading the charge for adolescent girls—by issuing the first-ever country strategy specifically focused on the demographic. But how do we make sure that this articulated commitment continues to get translated into concrete action? What can MCC specifically contribute? One opportunity may lie in MCC’s country scorecards.

July 5, 2016
Blog Post
The Senate’s Ideas for MCC: All Good in Theory, One...
Sarah Rose

The FY17 State and Foreign Operations spending bill brought good news for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) with big implications for its operations. New authority to engage in concurrent compacts in a single country would enable MCC to operate on a regional level, and provisions adjusting the criteria MCC uses to select partner countries could influence where MCC works. These are reasonable (even good!) ideas in theory, but the proposed eligibility requirement gives me some pause and could be challenging to apply in practice.

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December 3, 2013
Publication
Which Countries Will Be Selected for MCC Eligibility for...
Sarah Rose

On December 10, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) board of directors will select countries as eligible for compact and threshold program assistance for FY2014. 

January 27, 2015
Blog Post
CGD’s New MCC at 10 Series: How the First Decade Stacked...
Sarah Rose

A year ago this month, the Millennium Challenge Corporation turned 10 years old.  To commemorate this noteworthy event, CGD visiting fellow Franck Wiebe and I spent most of last year taking a deep dive into MCC’s first decade of operations.  The result is a new MCC at 10 series of papers. 

 

January 16, 2018
Blog Post
How Can USAID Work Itself Out of a Job? Ideas for Smart...
Sarah Rose and Erin Collinson

In recent months, USAID has been working diligently to craft its approach to “strategic transitions,” framing the principles it will follow, the benchmarks that will help inform transition decisions, and the programs and tools it can bring to bear. This Thursday, in a public discussion with the agency’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA), USAID will outline its initial thinking about strategic transitions. Our recent paper, Working Itself Out of a Job: USAID and Smart Strategic Transitions, offers some advice to the agency as it charts the course ahead. Here are the main takeaways.

June 14, 2017
Blog Post
Five Questions (and Answers) for USAID Administrator...
Erin Collinson and Sarah Rose

Ambassador Mark Green—President Trump’s pick to lead the US Agency for International Development (USAID)—is slated to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his nomination hearing on Thursday morning. Drawing on themes of efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and results, here are a few questions we’d pose to Ambassador Green (and a few of the things we’d love to hear in response).

August 6, 2014
Blog Post
Power Africa Gets a Boost with MCC’s Ghana Compact
Sarah Rose

Yesterday, the Government of Ghana signed its second compact with the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). 

November 17, 2017
Blog Post
US Aid for Domestic Revenue Mobilization: What, Where,...
Jared Kalow and Sarah Rose

Domestic revenue mobilization (DRM) seems set to be a priority area for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) under Administrator Mark Green. The challenge has been in tracking US (and other donors’) support for DRM activities. While the data only covers projects in 2015 so far, it contributes to a better understanding of what US aid agencies are doing in the DRM space and where they are working. If the United States is looking to step up assistance in this area, it will be instructive to understand the landscape of current efforts.

April 3, 2013
Blog Post
A New Era for MCC Threshold Programs
Sarah Rose

MCC has entered a new era for its threshold program.  Honduras is set to become the first country to implement a new model of the program which is expected to help a country become compact eligible by allowing it to demonstrate its willingness to tackle tough reforms addressing policy constraints to growth in partnership with MCC.  There is potential for valuable insight from this approach, but it has some limitations: the threshold program experience may not translate directly to a future compact experience, and any insight gained will only be relevant for countries that have a shot at compact eligibility based on other criteria.

January 22, 2014
Blog Post
Congress Is Right about Honduras and Tunisia, But Wrong...
Sarah Rose

Congress recently passed an omnibus appropriations bill providing funding for the remainder of Fiscal Year (FY) 2014.

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