The United States is the biggest donor country to Africa, and if you read this blog often, you know that U.S. financing has prevented millions of needless deaths, and helped build roads, schools and clinics that form the backbone of growing economies and healthy societies. During this tight budget environment, development advocates need to advocate early and aggressively for programs we know are successful. And though the fiscal year 2010 (FY10) budget is not yet complete, the Obama Administration is already deep into crafting the budget for FY11.

ONE submitted our budget request to the Administration a few weeks ago, and we’ve already started our lobbying. I wanted to share that budget request with you today, and over the next few months, we’ll provide further details.

Broadly, ONE’s goals in this year’s budget request are to:

• Continue the scale-up of prevention, treatment and care for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in line with the Lantos-Hyde funding requests. This includes integrating those programs with broader health care support.
• Scale-up funding for maternal and child health programs, including vaccine delivery and broader primary health care services.
• Scale-up support for some of President Obama’s commitment to increase food security in the developing world
• Begin to increase funding for other priority development areas including education and access to clean water
• Provide support for the multilateral banks, including the African Development Bank, which have played a crucial role in dampening the impacts of the financial crisis in developing countries and play a significant role in improving agricultural productivity across Africa

These are just a few of the many priorities highlighted in this budget document. We look forward to working with you—our members and supporters—over the next year to secure the funding levels described in this budget.