Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Blog

 

Posts Tagged: PEPFAR

 

Is USAID Being Set Up to Fail on the GHI?

October 28, 2011

Posted by in Global Health Initiative Tags: , , ,

Nandini Oomman

This is a joint post with Rachel Silverman.

Since the launch of the Obama administration’s $63 billion Global Health Initiative (GHI) in May 2009, we have followed its ups and downs with great enthusiasm (see for example: here, here, here and here), trying to better understand its structure and role within the U.S. government’s complicated global health architecture. One recurring question we have continually raised has focused on leadership: who, exactly, was to be in charge of this massive undertaking? Who would be accountable for meeting the initiative’s eight high-level targets and adhering to its seven guiding principles?

Last December, the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) appeared to put those questions to rest. According to the 200+ page document, USAID would assume leadership of the GHI by September 2012, contingent upon fulfilling a set of 10 benchmarks to demonstrate its capacity. But upon closer inspection of the GHI over the last year, the QDDR provision only seems to have generated a new set of questions that are more difficult to resolve. While there are no easy answers, the administration should consider these issues as it thinks through the tough decision of pulling the GHI together under one leader and demonstrating success by meeting its targets: Read More…

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A Slouching Report on the Millennium Challenge Account

June 21, 2007

Posted by in Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags:

Usually a big fan of the succint and balanced reporting of Congressional Quarterly, last weeks article by Tom Starks entitled “A Slouching Millennium Challenge.” was a let down. A lost opportunity to provide a balanced view to some of the stale assertions. Readers know that because I care about the success of the MCA as a new foreign aid program for a new era, I am often a constructive critic But this article screams for more food for thought:
Says Starks:

“…the Millennium Challenge has been on a leaner-than-expected financial diet since its creation three years ago. And in some respects, the program’s administrators have only themselves to blame. They have been slow to distribute funding, giving out more than $83 million of the approximately $6 billion appropriated so far. (Though they also say they have $3 billion obligated, pending benchmark-certification in recipient nations.)”

Two things rubbed me the wrong way about this statement. First, that a rather important point — that the MCA has obligated half of its total appropriations — is relegated to a parenthetical. But second, that the rate at which an organization can throw money out the door seems to be the primary success measure. For those interested in reading more of my thoughts on this, click here, but the main points are that the country-driven, public participatory nature of the program was inevitably going to result in slower disbursement rates, greater attention needs to be paid to results on the ground and policy reforms incentivized, and the credibility of the US will be damaged when countries that have taken bold reforms required to meet the standards of te MCA program are met at the finish line without a reward.
The artcile continues:

“Then there are the rival aid agencies. Millennium Challenge was supposed to award aid to countries as a supplement to their grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. But Nita M. Lowey, the New York Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee on foreign aid spending, contends that the opposite has occurred, that countries getting MCC money have seen their USAID grants curtailed. The Congressional Research Service recently reported that that has largely been the case in this fiscal year.”

It’s true, the MCA was supposed to be additional foreign assistance. Unfortunately, a common definition of “additional” is hard to find. On the global level, requests for MCA have been additional. The rubber meets the road at the country level. In my own mind, defining additionality means ensuring that new MCA resources (or the prospect of future MCA resources) does not de facto displace existing US foreign assistance in a country. The problem with contending that MCA money is displacing USAID funding is that numbers in and of themselves do not tell the full story. Sometimes there are good reasons for reductions in USAID funding — the end of long-term Hurricane Mitch rehabilitation funding in Honduras for example. Or the fact that MCA money is strategically scaling up a USAID agricultural pilot project in Ghana. The problem, as we are finding out ourselves in trying to rigorously assess the question of additionality of MCA resources, is a lack of detail in the budget justification documents of both State Department and the MCC. (Although there is considerably more detail in State’s FY08 CBJ, it’s just hard to take it entirely on face value given the centrality of decisionamking in the F-process.) Instead of simply using global numbers to make assertions, Congress should specifically ask the two agencies to defend the complementarity of their budget requests and country programming.
For those looking for clarification in the Congressional Research Service study cited in the article, don’t bother. It essentially says it’s too hard to tell.
Finally, my favorite:

“Some non-governmental organizations and contractors that operate under traditional models of development funding have begun to feel frozen out of the process — because, under the MCC rules, countries are permitted to create their own plans for the aid they get.”

That this is a fact is not the issue. The issue is that the MCA was quite purposefully created as a new institution to rid it of the development and operational success constraints that have plagued USAID programs. The fact that NGOs and US companies can’t operate in a business as usual mode is a good thing. International bidding on MCA-funded contracts will bring efficiencies, the countries writing and managing their own development plans will likely bear greater results. The whole point of the MCA was to be less traditional. Unfortunately, US business, NGOs and Congress are not creating the space for the MCA to experiment in what could be more effective programming of our foreign assistance.
It’s time to seriously undertake a major overhaul of our entire foreign assistance strategy, policy and architecture to leverage real impact on the ground by joining up all the good programs that educate kids and keep people alive through new medicines (Development Assistance and PEPFAR) with the broader programs that build economies with jobs (like the MCA) for those people to have livelihoods. It’s less about additionality than it is about strategy and coherence.

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Bush Requests $3 b. for MCC in ’07 Budget — Reasonable and Ridiculous

February 7, 2006

Posted by in Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags:

Like last year, President Bush requested $3 billion for the Millennium Challenge Account in his FY07 budget request. Many MCC champions will disappointed that the President didn’t ask for the $5 billion he said he would by now when he first launched the MCA. And, like last year, the $3 billion request is very likely to be slashed by Congress.
I think the $3 billion request is both a reasonable and a ridiculous request. It’s certainly reasonable in the fact that it is probably an honest request reflecting the reality of the pace with which the MCC has been able to roll out country-designed programs. As it enters its third year of operations, the MCC has approved 8 compacts totalling $1.6 billion and 3 threshold programs totalling $55 million. Appropriations to the MCC to date total $4.3 billion. Since MCC funding is multi-year funding (appropriations can roll over year to year), the $3 billion request leaves the MCC some $5 billion for future programs. MCC officials are projecting 3-5 more compacts this year and 9-12 in 2007. If compact sizes remain as they have been, it looks like plenty of money. Hence, reasonable.
But here’s why I think it’s ridiculous. The MCC is supposed to be “transformative” — transform the poor but well-governed countries that meet the program’s eligibility criteria with substantive poverty reduction and economic growth. Compacts averaging $200-$300 million aren’t likely to do that in MCA countries with weak institutions and large numbers of poor people. But perhaps the more important reason I think it’s ridiculous is that in the context of the overall foreign aid for development purposes, the MCC along with PEPFAR, both of which receive large increases in this year’s request, stand out more at Presidential pets than as part of a strategic “development in our national interests” agenda. As much I as welcome the MCC request, I regret very much that it appears to come at the expense of reductions in “core” development accounts such as development assistance (15% reduction) and child survival and health (13% reduction). Today’s FT notes that, other than states that qualify for MCA funding, it’s the frontline states in the war on terror – Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq – that stand to gain the most aid in 2007

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MCC, Foreign Aid & Transformational Diplomacy

January 25, 2006

Posted by in Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Tags:

Much of last week’s presentations on the new “transformational diplomacy” agenda by officials such as Secretary Rice and Director for Policy Planning at the State Department Steve Krasner focused on the implications of the move for USAID. But what does “transformational diplomacy” hold in store for the Bush Administration’s other, newer US aid agency, the MCC?

Read More…

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