In an event hosted by the Center for Global Development, the Secretary addressed a packed room filled with people from the development community, media, and top government officials who included Dr. Raj Shah, the new USAID administrator, and Daniel Yohannes, the CEO of MCC.

She started her speech with remarks about her personal interest towards development and why it is important even when there are people struggling domestically. She has seen the transformative effects of U.S. development assistance at work in Indonesia, Nicaragua, South Africa and in the West Bank, to name a few.

Development is vital for the security, stability, rights and prosperity of our world. It is a strategic importance as well as a moral imperative of the U.S. Therefore, it is time to “elevate development as central to diplomacy” and “make the USAID the world’s premier development agency.” She recognized the problems of the U.S. aid practices in the past and emphasized the Administration’s new approach driven by clear reasoning and common sense. She outlined the new direction and focus of the U.S. development strategy as follows:

1. To adopt a model of partnership with developing countries based on shared responsibility.
2. To elevate development alongside defense and diplomacy, and to integrate the 3Ds so that they are mutually reinforcing.
3. To coordinate across the different U.S. agencies that conduct development work to create a “whole of government” approach to development, and to restore capacity to USAID by bringing experts in-house, rather than as contractors.
4. To target key sectors such as health, agriculture, education, energy and local governance issues rather than spreading limited resources too thinly across sectors.
5. To strengthen investments in innovation, technology, and drivers of change, such as mobile banking in poor countries and innovations in agricultural crops.
6. To focus on women and girls, proven to yield one of the best returns on investment – “giving a man a fish feeds the man for a day, teaching a man how to fish will feed the man for the rest of his life, but teaching a woman how to fish will feed the whole village.”

She concluded her remarks by her determination to make development “better than ever before.” During the questions and answers, she acknowledged that there are many obstacles in adopting this new approach, and asked for the community’s support to urge Congress and the public to understand and support a more robust, effective and efficient development assistance program.

Lawmakers have said they want to undertake major reform of all U.S. preferences programs next year, which is why they opted for a single-year extension. ONE will continue to engage in the reform discussions next year, and explore how the current Generalized System of Preferences could be reformed so that the program can be strengthened to increase the opportunity for the poorest countries while ensuring the gains that African countries have made under African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) are not undermined.

But there were a few small signs of hope. There was wide recognition that to increase trade in developing countries, the focus should be on more than just increased market access. Delegates also stressed the importance of increased aid for trade, capacity-building, and the need for continued monitoring of these commitments to help generate real, sustainable results.

In related news, a group of 20 developing countries ranging from Nigeria, Zimbabwe to South Korea concluded an unprecedented market access agreement that would make over 70 percent of their tariff lines duty-free. Some have called this agreement a “watershed” moment for South-South trade.

The legislation also creates a presidential-level mechanism that would be responsible for planning, developing and coordinating trade capacity building for developing countries to help them better take advantage of trade preferences.

Congress McDermott’s attempt to link market access issues with US government wide trade-related capacity building efforts is a welcome step forward. But there will still be concerns that the LDC-wide trade preferences will undo important successes achieved through AGOA. On top of this, under this legislation, non-LDC African countries like Kenya will be separated out of the preference programme from 2019, and undermine Africa’s efforts of regional integration. ONE will be keeping an eye on the development on the Capitol Hill, so that any slippage of the U.S. preferences to Africa will be mitigated by robust investments toward building a stronger trade-related capacity to allow sub-Saharan African countries to effectively compete with other more competitive developing countries.

What can we do about this? The WTO’s chief Pascal Lamy encourages putting in place proper domestic policies to create good jobs in developing countries. The report recommends a number of ways to make trade policies more closely aligned with job issues in developing countries, including better coordination between trade and labour policies, and implementing policies to encourage formalisation of employment. Rich country governments also need to support poorer country governments in doing so, and enhanced trade capacity building assistance is one way to do this.

You can read the report here.

William Easterly, Professor of Economics at New York University, introduces a fascinating collection of graphics which illustrates just how scarce the trade links between Africa and the rest of the world is. You can read his blog here.

Yesterday, U.S. Secretary Hillary Clinton gave her remarks on how the Obama Administration sees Africa. She said that she “remains convinced that no place holds the opportunities of the future like Africa does. But that doesn’t mean that we can just expect it to happen. We have to work together.” So how does the Administration plan to work with African countries so that they can create the right conditions to spur economic development and improve the lives of African people? She said that the Administration is focussing on five key areas: trade, development, energy security, public-private partnerships, and good governance. She also emphasised the importance of food security in the continent, and the Administration’s high level commitment towards this agenda. It was a powerful speech, with the underlying message that Africa is important to the U.S. because the future of Africa matters to the U.S.’ own progress and prosperity.

Here’s the speech:

But, there were some clear omissions too. On climate change, even though some G20 leaders committed to scaling up its assistance at the UN High Level Summit on Climate Change just a few days ago, the G20 as a group failed to call for resources to help the poorest countries adapt to the harmful impacts of climate change, and tackle its causes.

This Summit was another opportunity to recognise Africa as part of the solution to the global economic recovery. We thought that the best way to underscore the important role that the continent plays in today’s world is for the G20 to agree to hold an upcoming G20 Summit in Africa. With the G20 becoming the new G8 and the next several hosts already queued up (Canada in June 2010, South Korea in November 2010, and France in 2011), unfortunately, there will be no “G20 Africa Summit” any time soon. One thing is sure though – regardless, ONE will urge these leaders to keep the challenges of Africa and the world’s poor as an important issue on their table.

Read ONE’s analysis of the G20 here.

-Mikiko Imai

In Rwanda, it now takes an entrepreneur just two procedures and three days to start a business. Imports and exports are more efficient, and transferring property takes less time thanks to a reorganized registry and time limits. Investors have more protection, insolvency reorganization has been streamlined, and a wider range of assets can be used as collateral to access credit.

Mauritius, ranked 17 globally, is the top sub-Saharan economy for the second year in a row in terms of the overall regulatory ease of doing business.

However, despite these advances, more reforms are needed in Africa. The average rank for sub-Saharan African countries remain the lowest of any region.

Globally, the report shows that despite the financial and economic crisis, a record 131 economies reformed business regulations between June 2008 and April 2009. Singapore is the top-ranked economy on the ease of doing business for the fourth year in a row, but most of the action occurred in developing economies. Two-thirds of the reforms recorded in the report were in low- and lower-middle-income economies.

-Mikiko Imai

So are we finally close to a trade deal that would allow all countries, especially poor African countries, reap the benefits of trade, where they can work their way out of poverty as a result of new opportunities presented by the expansion of global trade? On the one hand, the economic crisis has renewed the political will for an early conclusion of the long-stalled Doha round and thus there is more scope today to achieve the “ambitious and balanced” WTO deal pledged in L’Aquila in July. On the other hand, we have heard these high-level Doha promises before-without any results.

If the Doha Development Round is to be completed by 2010, participants must ensure that the talks produce a deal that integrates poor African countries into the global trading system. Keeping Africa’s needs in the picture is the only way to achieve a truly global recovery — ONE recovery ONE world.

African countries continue to face multiple constraints to expanding trade. A Doha trade deal must effectively help African countries trade more among themselves and with the rest of the world. For a Doha deal to benefit Africa, it must include real reductions in agricultural subsidies in developed countries, improved market access for goods from African countries, a new financial commitment to aid-for-trade and allow countries to pursue trade policies that support development.

If this progress is not forthcoming through Doha, WTO members should develop a separate trade initiative for sub-Saharan Africa. This could be built on existing preference programmes such as the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and the European Union’s Everything But Arms (EBA) programme. The package needs to be comprehensive, combining market access and effective trade capacity building. A sub-Saharan Africa wide programme would help prevent trade distortions between neighbouring African countries, and could promote regional trade.

The G-20leaders meeting in Pittsburgh later this month should consider how they could achieve harmonised and coordinated trade measures for Africa – this would go a long way towards achieving a Doha deal that really delivers for development.

-Mikiko Imai