Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
The BBC reports that European donors have unveiled a US$6 billion aid package for West Africa to "help halt the emigration of young people from the region," by creating "a Francophone West African bloc so prosperous no one will want to leave."
At the first joint public appearance of the U.S. foreign assistance triumvirate this week, Henrietta Fore, acting director of foreign assistance and acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, John Danilovich, CEO of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and Mark Dybul, U.S. global AIDS coordinator, argued U.S.
Yesterday the New York Times profiled Lant Pritchett and sketched his proposal to create 16 million guest-worker jobs in rich countries for people from poor countries. His goal is to help people from very poor places make their lives better.
The G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, this week will focus global attention on African development and broader foreign assistance issues.
President Bush's nomination of Robert Zoellick to be the next president of the World Bank has been mostly well-received in U.S. policy circles and by some leading rich and developing countries.
The sudden resignation on Friday of Ambassador Randall Tobias, the first U.S. director of foreign assistance, stunned staff at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department and left the administration’s beleaguered aid reform effort without a leader.
John Edwards released the first global poverty proposal of the '08 presidential campaigns yesterday. In "Restoring America's Moral Leadership by Fighting Worldwide Poverty", Edwards' campaign says:
Randall Tobias, the first U.S. director of foreign assistance, had back-to-back hearings last week with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.
President Bush is going to Latin America, and that has inspired a round of commentary in the mainstream press. A New York Times editorial urges the President to focus on democracy, human rights and social justice, and applauds the recent doubling of U.S. aid to the region. Democracy and social justice and a dollop of aid (the current budget of $1.6 billion is barely 1 percent of spending by Latin governments on health and education) are good things.
President Bush's FY 2008 budget request offers the first glimpse of whether and how the rhetoric about transforming U.S. foreign assistance is being translated into reality.
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