USAID

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October 26, 2011 | 10:28 AM | By

Does chasing down terrorists in Somalia help or hurt famine relief effort?

DFID

Refugees in East Africa

The deadly famine in East Africa continues and now conflict involving the Islamist extremists known as al-Shabab could make a terrible situation much worse.

Aid workers are getting kidnapped, the Kenyan military invaded Somalia to search for the extremists (who deny the kidnappings), which then prompted a claimed member of al-Shabab to explode grenades in Nairobi – prompting Somalia’s president to ask Kenya to back off.

This, in turn, caused officials in the U.S. and Europe to urge Somalia to allow Kenya in to pursue al-Shabab.

Meanwhile, as Voice of America reports, those most in need are figuratively caught in the crossfire as the military campaign undermines the relief efforts.

The United Nations says recent military activity along the Kenya-Somalia border is restricting famine relief efforts and preventing Somalis from fleeing to refugee camps in Kenya. The U.N. Refugee Agency said Wednesday that only 100 Somali refugees entered Kenya last week, down from 3,400 in the previous week.

To combat the tendency for the American public, and the media, to forget about this ongoing catastrophe, USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) has launched a PR campaign together with the Ad Council called “We are the relief.” I think they could have come up with a better theme, but at least they’re trying. Here’s some of what USAID is putting out:

USAID

Comparative catastrophes

FILED UNDER: Basics, al-Shabab, famine, Kenya, Somalia, USAID
September 23, 2011 | 7:27 AM | By

Progress against poverty: A video celebration of the evidence

The U.S. Agency for International Development, once one of the most bureaucratic and boring agencies in the federal government, is doing a pretty lively, entertaining job of educating us about our work in the world.

Credit Raj Shah, the former Gates Foundation wunderkind who CNN recently profiled as the Young Gun Fixing USAID. Whether he can actually “fix” the agency remains to be seen. But they are doing a pretty good job on getting the word out about our nation’s efforts in aid and development.

Below is a compelling video USAID released during UN Week to celebrate the progress being made in the fight against global poverty, disease and inequity.

Created in partnership with Britain’s aid agency, DFID, the video is part of a campaign called the MDG Countdown. The idea is to draw attention to the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (the international community’s eight poverty reduction targets set for 2015):

FILED UNDER: Basics, DFID, millennium development goals, United Nations, USAID
July 27, 2011 | 8:00 AM | By

USAID infographic on using “household items” to fight global poverty

The U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, run by former Gates Foundation program manager Rajiv Shah, is trying to upgrade its approach to fighting global poverty by encouraging innovation.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now in the Geek phase of global health and development.

In a new infographic, USAID attempts to provide more specific examples to illustrate some good examples of what it means by celebrating innovation as a means to improving people’s lives in poor countries. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Alanna Shaikh, innovation, Rajiv Shah, USAID
June 7, 2011 | 11:32 AM | By

USAID’s Raj Shah’s five favorite books on development

by Tom Paulson

Rajiv Shah, director USAID, speaking in Seattle

Here, from The Browser, are USAID director Rajiv Shah’s top five books on development:

1. A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark. Shah says he likes it because of “its focus on core economic growth as the driver of divergence.” Not sure what that means. Guess I need to read it.

2. Millions Saved by Ruth Levine. Shah likes this book because it’s about “success stories in global health.”

3. The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager. This description of the discovery of nitrogen fertilizer, the USAID director says, “reminds us of the serendipity of scientific inquiry.”

4. The Doubly Green Revolution by Gordon Conway. “A dense read,” says Shah, by the former president of the Rockefeller Foundation about the so-called Green Revolution in agriculture and how to update it for today.

5. Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by CK Prahalad. This book, notes Shah, “argues that the billions (of people) at the bottom of the socio-economic pyramid can be helped profitably.”

So there you have it. Feel free to suggest any books Raj should read since the former Gates Foundation program manager is now running perhaps the world’s leading foreign aid agency — and trying to improve its effectiveness.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Rajiv Shah, USAID
March 9, 2011 | 12:16 PM | By

Melinda Gates urges Congress not to cut foreign aid, to save lives

Chris Kleponis, AFP/Getty Images

Melinda Gates

Melinda Gates, in Washington, D.C. today for the CARE Women’s Conference, called Congress not to cut foreign aid and also announced a new project, the Grand Challenge for Development: Saving Lives at Birth.

The Gates Foundation is among those asking Congress not to cut foreign aid.

The new initiative is aimed at supporting efforts, many of them paid for by U.S. taxpayers, aimed at saving mothers and babies’ lives in poor countries.

The Gates Foundation new, $50-million “grand challenge” announced by Melinda is focused on preventing maternal deaths and improving child survival. It is a collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the governments of Norway and Canada, the World Bank and others.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and USAID administrator Rajiv Shah (a former Gates Foundation program manager) also spoke. You can watch the press conference here.

And for more info re the gist of Melinda’s speech at the CARE conference, you can read her philanthropy blog post here.

FILED UNDER: Politics, childbirth, foreign aid, maternal health, Melinda Gates, Rajiv Shah, USAID
February 9, 2011 | 11:47 AM | By

Where, and to what, does foreign aid money go?

USAID

Chances are, most Americans were surprised to learn that Egypt has been the second or third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid over the years — and, perhaps, that most of that foreign aid was for military spending.

Nobody was hiding this from us, but I suspect few of us ever pay much attention to where our foreign aid money goes and what it goes for (as well as how little we actually do give).

Members of Congress are now paying more attention, specifically at all that foreign aid we’ve given to Egypt while neglecting to appreciate what was actually going on there. But the problem of tracking where foreign aid goes — and defining it, I would argue — is not unique to us, or to the crisis in Egypt.

Surprisingly, given all the attention and rhetoric around foreign aid, it’s been a relatively opaque activity. This article written last fall by The Guardian’s Jonathan Glennie provides a good explanation of why “we need greater transparency” in foreign aid. Says Glennie:

There are two groups of people who tend to be against this sort of transparency: bureaucrats and politicians.

But a new international agreement is being celebrated as a major step forward aimed at making foreign aid more open and accountable to the public. The agreement, called the International Aid Transparency Initiative, is being widely hailed as “revolutionary” in development circles.

We’ll see. But I do give credit to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for moving in this direction on its own with the very informative and user-friendly website Foreign Assistance Dashboard.

Here’s a Dutch perspective on this new agreement. Note that the Dutch people protested planned cuts in foreign aid. Can you imagine Americans protesting cuts in foreign aid?

FILED UNDER: Basics, foreign aid, transparency, USAID
February 3, 2011 | 11:43 AM | By

Feds deny funding to UW health project in Mozambique

The Obama Administration says it wants to re-invent foreign aid and one of its mantras is to increase “country ownership” of the programs it funds for improving health and welfare in poor countries.

Given this, it came as a shock to Dr. Stephen Gloyd and others at the UW’s Health Alliance International (HAI) when the government basically pulled the plug on a long-running AIDS health care project in Mozambique that is, or was anyway, widely regarded as a model of doing just that.

“It’s ironic given their goal of wanting to strengthen local governance,” said Gloyd, director at HAI.

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) recently denied HAI its request for continued funding of the project — a $100 million, 5-year grant. As a result of losing its bid for the grant, the non-profit organization affiliated with the UW Global Health Department had to lay-off nearly 900 health workers in Mozambique and cut its Seattle staffing by half, from more than 40 down to 22 people.

“It’s been wrenching,” said Gloyd, who is also associate chairman of the UW Global Health Department.

As the Seattle Times reported this week, the non-profit health services organization had expanded greatly over the past five years to assist with the global efforts aimed at improving access to HIV treatment in Africa. Gloyd said they fully expected to continue doing this work. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Gates Foundation, Health Alliance International, HIV-AIDS, Rajiv Shah, Stephen Gloyd, USAID
February 1, 2011 | 9:54 AM | By

Is foreign aid about helping poor people, or propping up dictators?

Egypt, now in political revolution, is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid, getting more than a billion dollars annually.

USAID

U.S. foreign assistance map

As this data from USAID’s excellent new Foreign Assistance Dashboard shows, nearly all of it has gone for “peace and security” — which is, of course, a euphemism for military spending.

Supporting Egypt’s outgoing (soon, yes) dictatorial president Hosni Mubarak has been the primary motive for that aid, partly because of Egypt’s relatively friendly stance as an Arab nation toward us and toward Israel. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Arab revolt, Egypt, foreign aid, Hillary Clinton, revolution, USAID