This week the United Kingdom Secretary of State for International Development released new studies on how the UK plans to “change lives, deliver results.” The key messages – going forward, the Department for International Development (DFID) will be more focused and more selective, with more attention paid to evidence-based planning. If that has a familiar ring, you may recall hearing that U.S. programs needed to be more focused, selective, and evidence-based in a couple of recent U.S. reviews.Earlier this year, aid advocates hailed the UK for not cutting their international development spending even while other areas of the budget were trimmed. Even with an increasing budget, DFID still proposes to eliminate aid to 16 countries by 2016 -- Angola; Bosnia; Burundi; Cameroon; Cambodia; China; Gambia; Indonesia; Iraq; Kosovo; Lesotho; Moldova; Niger; Russia; Serbia; and Vietnam. Some are on the list because they are considered to have graduated from aid (Vietnam, Russia), and others because the UK has decided that they do not have a comparative advantage there that would produce good results. Some countries will see their aid levels frozen, such as India. This is significant since India is one of the largest recipients of UK assistance. So what will DFID do? It will focus on 27 countries, either poor or unstable.The DFID proposal is striking in its clear articulation of the top priorities in each of its partner countries and then in outlining how those goals would be achieved. Yes, we could quibble that many of the goals are being driven by the need to show success, so goals chosen are those that are easily measured or perhaps are low hanging fruit. But, let’s give them credit for actually backing up rhetoric with what seems like a workable plan.Would such a plan work for the United States? Certainly, scaling back from 146 countries to a couple dozen is not possible. This is especially the case if the rumors we hear are true about the State Department wanting to maintain programs in the existing list of countries for diplomatic reasons.The U.S. budget released last month was supposed to have been “informed” by the QDDR and PPD, yet it is hard to find much focus or selectivity. The United States will be providing assistance to 146 countries, only about six less than was proposed in last year’s budget. Other countries will see their aid nicked, but seemingly not part of a coherent plan to decide what countries should be receiving aid and why.The U.S. could learn a lot from a similar exercise that asks the fundamental questions of why are we in this country and what do we seek to achieve. That may lead to decisions that we no longer need to have assistance programs in some countries, and that the main U.S. presence should instead be a diplomatic one. This would go a long way to building public and congressional support for foreign aid in general. The only evidence I can find that some scrubbing was done is in the DA account where a number of countries are significantly reduced, while others – largely Feed the Future and Global Health Initiative countries – are increased. That type of reprioritizing aid around objectives is needed throughout the rest of U.S. foreign assistance accounts.
