Blog Contributor:
Sarah Jane Staats
Nov 10th, 2009 6:28 PM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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The Obama administration today nominated Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor and current under secretary for research, education and economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), to become the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The announcement ends months of speculation and frustration about the still-vacant development post and comes on the heels of a Senate resolution introduced by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Ben Cardin (D-MD) to empower and strengthen USAID that passed last night by unanimous consent.
Senator Durbin said of the Increasing America’s Global Development Capacity Act (S.355), “Foreign development assistance is as critical to America’s standing in the world as diplomacy and defense.” He added that “as our development assistance grows, so does the need for an influential and transformative administrator at USAID.” Dr. Shah’s nomination helps answer who may at long last lead USAID. Nearly 300 days into the new administration, members of the development community had grown impatient that the White House had yet to appoint an administrator for USAID despite strong campaign commitments from Obama to “elevate, streamline and empower a 21st century U.S. development agency.”
Senators Kerry (D-MA) and Lugar (R-IN), chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had also sent a letter to President Obama in September underscoring the need to appoint a USAID administrator expeditiously. Representatives Gary Ackerman (D-NY), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) circulated a “Dear Colleague” letter to the entire House of Representatives calling for the naming of an United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator immediately. Members of the development community had even taken to voting on polls see here on who could fill the vacancy. Dr. Shah’s was confirmed by the Senate in May for his current position at USDA, which should help avoid further vetting or other delays on his way to being confirmed as USAID administrator.
Suffice to say, there is much applause for the long-awaited nomination of a USAID administrator. We are now eager to ensure there is a swift confirmation process so that the new administrator is in place as quickly as possible and able to inform and shape the host of global development and foreign aid policy efforts currently underway at the White House, State Department and in Congress. Senator Dodd, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said:
If U.S. development policy and, by extension, U.S. foreign policy is to succeed in the long run, USAID must be an independent body that can advocate for what it knows best—how to effectively deliver and implement U.S. foreign assistance. It must have a meaningful seat at the table…It has long been understood that international development is a critically important aspect of our foreign policy. It was high time we matched this reality with a real and meaningful commitment.
Having a USAID administrator in place is obviously a huge step in the right direction. Making sure that he has the tools, authority, and resources to meaningfully engage in the Presidential Study Directive on U.S. Global Development Policy, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, the bipartisan Senate Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009, and the promised rewrite of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act by House Foreign Affairs Committee becomes the next task at hand.
See ONE’s press release with more reactions to the nomination.
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Nov 10th, 2009 2:36 PM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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Sources are saying that the Obama administration will nominate Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor and current under secretary for research, education and economics at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to become the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The announcement would end months of speculation and frustration about the still-vacant position and comes on the heels of a Senate resolution introduced by Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Ben Cardin (D-MD) to empower and strengthen USAID that passed last night by unanimous consent.
We’re still waiting for the official White House announcement and will have more news then.
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Oct 9th, 2009 11:29 AM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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The annual fall meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Istanbul this week focused on the “road to recovery” from the global economic crisis. While we didn’t see major new initiatives emerge from the meetings, the Bank and the Fund reaffirmed important commitments to help emerging market and developing countries cope with the impacts of the financial crisis. These include commitments to ensure the Bank and the Fund have adequate resources to respond to the crisis and timetables for governance reforms that would give greater voice and representation to emerging market and developing countries.
They echoed calls to: protect core spending on health, education, infrastructure, agriculture and social safety nets; revive global trade and investment; and establish a multilateral trust fund at the World Bank for the food security initiative. The World Bank and African Development Bank also announced this week that they would invest $215 million to bring high-speed, low-cost internet access to central African countries.
While important progress is being made at the institutions, some say it’s not going fast enough or deep enough. Nancy Birdsall, at the Center for Global Development, says the newly inclusive G20 is more progressive than the modest changes in governance being proposed at the World Bank and IMF. Several African finance ministers also issued a statement during the annual World Bank and IMF meetings calling for their countries to have a voice in the G-20, and another self-styled “group of 30” financial figures called for much more dramatic reforms at the IMF including ending the U.S. veto power and cutting the number of European board chairs.
We’ll be watching to see how these financial mechanisms and new governance proposals will benefit sub-Saharan African countries. In the meantime, read more of ONE’s analysis of the meetings here.
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Oct 2nd, 2009 4:26 PM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) fall meetings will take place this weekend and early next week in Istanbul, Turkey. This year’s meetings will focus on the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries and “the road to recovery.”
Among the main points on the agenda are:
- Progress and further solutions needed to help countries hit hard by the financial crisis, particularly related to downturns in capital flows, trade, remittances and tourism.
- Financial capacity of the World Bank and IMF to respond to the needs of developing countries hit hardest by the financial crisis. The World Bank and IMF have both recognized increase demand from developing countries that are trying to cope with the impacts of the financial crisis.
- Climate issues in the run up to the international negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009.
- Review of progress of the current round of funding of the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) – that’s the branch that provides no-interest loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries.
- Changes in governance of the international financial institutions (the IMF, World Bank, etc.) to increase voice and participation of emerging and developing countries.
You can track the events in Istanbul on the World Bank blog and we’ll be posting more of our reactions here in the coming days.
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Sep 21st, 2009 3:42 PM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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Who says bad news comes on Friday afternoons? Late last Friday, after months of speculation over who would take the helm of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), President Obama announced his intent to nominate Daniel W. Yohannes for chief executive officer of the MCC. This counts as good Friday afternoon news for supporters of the MCC and its innovative approach to development.
Yohannes comes to his new post with many of the expected credentials. Private sector experience? Check. Leadership qualities? Check. DC political insider? Hold up. Yohannes, a West Coast entrepreneur, banker and philanthropist emigrated to the U.S. from Ethiopia at the age of seventeen with $150 in his pocket. It’s not exactly the typical background for the head of a U.S. government agency, but I suspect it will go far in symbolizing and strengthening the goals and ideals of the MCC.
The White House released the following description of Yohannes:
Daniel W. Yohannes is President and CEO of M&R Investments, LLC, a privately-held investment firm specializing in real estate, financial institutions and the green energy sector. Previously, he served as Vice Chairman of U.S. Bank for the Commercial Banking Group, Consumer Banking Group and as Head of Integration for Community and Public Affairs. In this role, his responsibilities included leading the integration of U.S. Bank and Firstar, which resulted in the 6th largest bank in the country. From 1992 to 1999, Yohannes was President and CEO of U.S. Bank (formerly Colorado National Bank), where he grew the Colorado franchise from $2 billion to $9 billion in assets. From 1977 to 1992, he worked at Security Pacific Bank (now Bank of America), where he held a number of leadership roles. Yohannes is on the Board of the National Jewish Hospital and Research Center, the Denver Art Museum, the University of Colorado Medical School and Project C.U.R.E., which provides medical supplies to 110 countries. Yohannes holds a B.S. in Economics from Claremont McKenna College and a M.B.A. from Pepperdine University.
In a Denver Post article from 2006, Yohannes was quoted as saying he was at the age “where you want to make a difference”. At the time, he was referring to his role as chairman of New Resource Bank, a San Francisco-based start up designed to work with businesses in clean energy. He said it was “not about a tiny little bank in San Francisco, but about thinking globally.” Well, it seems he’s turned his global sights even further and will soon be leading a U.S. development agency that has its sights on major global changes in poverty and economic opportunity. Readers of our blog will recall that just last week Senegal signed a $540 million five-year compact with the MCC, and is one of eleven sub-Saharan African countries who have compacts with the MCC, all of whom were deemed eligible for assistance because they performed well on rigorous criteria around good governance, economic policies and investments in areas like health and education.
My fingers are crossed that Yohannes’s confirmation process will go quickly so that he can start his new role as spokesman and leader of the MCC soon. And as our friends at the Center for Global Development say, Yohannes’ “private sector background and can-do leadership style should prove useful in…turning the promise of the (MCC) model into results.”
So, three cheers for the long-awaited announcement of an MCC CEO. And here’s hoping that someday soon we have similar good news that there is someone to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Al Kamen, who writes the Washington Post’s In the Loop column, has a few suggestions.
-Sarah Jane Staats
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Sep 4th, 2009 10:55 AM UTC
By Sarah Jane Staats
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President Obama signed a Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on Monday calling for a government-wide review of U.S. global development policy. According to White House staff, the president has asked National Security Adviser Jim Jones and National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers to lead the review. The review will include all U.S. government agencies involved in global development as well as Congress and constituents. Findings and recommendations from the review will be provided to the president in January. All of this is welcome news to many in the development community who have been tracking the growing momentum in Congress and the executive branch to strengthen U.S. global development efforts. And the directive signals that the White House is seriously thinking about how the U.S. engages with poor countries and promotes global development, including but not limited to stronger and smarter foreign aid.
While we wait to read the full details of the latest Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on global development (it’s not yet publicly available), we know that PSDs initiate reviews of policy procedures generally pertaining to national security and President Obama’s first PSD, Organizing for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, might serve as a good guide for what we can hope to see in the global development PSD. I’d like to see the global development PSD keep similar language calling for:
- A full, interagency review of how to reform the White House organization to create an integrated, effective and efficient approach, in this case to strengthen U.S. and global prosperity and security;
- Full participation from all the U.S. government agencies involved in global development (from State, to USAID, MCC, Treasury, Defense, Centers for Disease Control, Department of Agriculture, and many more) and a commitment to consult important stakeholders in Congress and among outside experts during the course of the review; and
- Consideration of the recommendations from numerous bipartisan and expert studies on the issues (from the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network’s New Day New Way; the Center for Global Development’s White House and the World: An Global Development Agenda for the Next President; the Brookings/CSIS’s Security by Other Means report; and many others).
Unlike the first PSD on counterterrorism, I hope that the global development PSD will include the USAID administrator among the addressees (even better if we soon have a new USAID administrator appointee—those growing impatient are casting their votes for the next administrator here!). I also hope to see some language encouraging the review to address the full range of U.S. policies—from foreign aid, to trade, climate change, migration and more—that affect how the U.S. engages the rest of the world, including developing countries. I’m also eager to learn how the White House will engage the multilateral development institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in the review and potentially other development donors from the UK, Germany, France, Japan, and elsewhere.
The White House call for a presidential study directive on global development comes on the heels of announcements from both the executive and legislative branches aimed at strengthening U.S. global development efforts including:
- The Department of State has said it will undertake a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR);
- House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the Initiating Foreign Assistance Reform Act (H.R.2139) that calls on the administration to develop a national strategy for global development and now has 100 Republican and Democratic co-sponsors;
- Senate Relations Committee members Kerry (D-MA), Lugar (R-IN), Menendez (D-NJ), Corker (R-TN), Cardin (D-MD) and Risch (R-ID) introduced the Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 (S.1524) that calls for strengthening the U.S. Agency for International Development and monitoring and evaluation of aid programs; and
- House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Berman and his staff have begun the process of rewriting the outdated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act.
Together, these are welcome signals that the executive branch and Congress are committed to strengthening U.S. global development. The trick, as Sheila Herrling at the Center for Global Development points out, is going to be figuring out how to put them all together so that you end up with a smart, coordinated U.S. strategy for confronting poverty, inequality, conflict and disease that threaten prosperity and security globally and at home.
-Sarah Jane Staats
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