In remarks delivered on Capitol Hill on June 4, 2026, Amb. Mark A. Green, President and CEO of The ONE Campaign, urged policymakers to expand support for domestic resource mobilization, innovative financing, and country-led development strategies that help nations become more self-reliant while strengthening global health system.
Key Takeaways
- Global development efforts must increasingly focus on helping countries finance their own priorities through domestic resource mobilization (DRM) and stronger public financial management.
- Innovative financing can help attract private capital and reward measurable outcomes.
- Gavi’s co-financing model demonstrates how development assistance can support long-term sustainability and country ownership.
- Recent partnerships involving the U.S. government, the Global Fund, Gilead Sciences, and SC Johnson are as examples of how public-private collaboration can accelerate access to HIV and malaria innovations while supporting more sustainable health systems.
- Congress should continue supporting programs that promote self-reliance, sustainability, and measurable results.
Remarks delivered by Amb. Mark A. Green, President of the ONE Campaign
June 4, 2026
Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today.
At ONE, we know we don’t have to agree on everything to make progress—just one thing, if that thing is important enough. Today’s discussion is especially important and timely because, in many ways, we’re facing a crossroads moment in global health and international development. The policies and funding choices made here on Capitol Hill will have a profound impact on how America engages with the world’s developing countries. And as you face those choices, one reality is increasingly clear: traditional foreign assistance alone will not be sufficient to meet the scale of the challenges before us.
The global development landscape is changing fast. As the IMF’s Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva puts it, we are living in an “increasingly shock prone world.” Humanitarian crises are growing more frequent and more complex. Changing demographics in the developing world (the median age of a Tanzanian is now 16) are increasing demands on health systems, education, and infrastructure. At the same time, many donor governments are facing significant fiscal pressures at home, leading in some places to steep reductions in official development assistance.
Given all this, we need to ask ourselves questions beyond “how much foreign assistance can we provide.” We also need to ask how we can help countries mobilize and deploy far greater resources on their own, and how can we leverage private capital to advance shared development objectives.
The long-term goal of development should never be creating dependence on foreign assistance; it must be helping countries achieve self-reliance.
That is where Domestic Resource Mobilization—or DRM—and innovative financing becomes critically important. At its core, DRM is about helping countries strengthen their own ability to generate, manage, and invest their own resources. It means improving tax administration, strengthening public financial management, combating illicit financial flows, broadening the tax base, and ensuring that governments can finance essential services in a sustainable way. The long-term goal of development should never be creating dependence on foreign assistance; it must be helping countries achieve self-reliance.
During my time as USAID Administrator, we emphasized the Journey to Self-Reliance because we understood that countries want to solve their own challenges and chart their own future.
As friends and allies, we can help them strengthen the capacity and commitment to do just that. DRM was a cornerstone of our approach.
We saw firsthand how relatively modest investments in domestic resource mobilization could generate substantial returns. In countries such as the Philippines, USAID support for tax administration and public financial management reforms helped increase government revenues available for priority investments, including health and social services. In Rwanda, we partnered with gov’t institutions to strengthen revenue collection and budgeting systems, helping the country finance a growing share of its own health expenditures. Across sub-Saharan Africa, our programs supported governments in improving revenue administration, budget transparency, and expenditure management—unlocking billions of dollars in additional domestic resources that can be directed toward development priorities.
These kinds of initiatives can be transformative. Every additional dollar mobilized domestically can help countries finance vaccines, strengthen healthcare systems, hire healthcare workers, and improve preparedness for disease outbreaks. Most importantly, stronger domestic financing accelerates the pathway away from aid dependency. When countries are able to collect and effectively manage their own revenues, they are better positioned to sustain progress long after donor assistance has declined.
Innovative finance is not a full replacement for traditional development assistance, but it is a force multiplier.
But domestic resources alone are not enough. We must also mobilize private capital. That is where innovative financing mechanisms have demonstrated tremendous promise. To be clear, innovative finance is not a full replacement for traditional development assistance, but it is a force multiplier. It uses limited public resources to attract larger pools of private investment, create market incentives, and reward measurable outcomes.
Over the past two decades, USAID helped pioneer and support a variety of innovative financing approaches. One example is the use of Development Impact Bonds and other results-based financing mechanisms. These models allow private investors to provide upfront capital for development programs, while donors or governments repay investors only if agreed-upon outcomes are achieved. The approach shifts risk away from taxpayers and focuses attention on measurable results.
One USAID example of this approach was the Utkrisht Impact Bond, the world’s first maternal and newborn health impact bond. I helped to launch the Impact Bond during my first official event as USAID Administrator. It helped- 600,000 pregnant women and newborns in Rajasthan, India, with improved care during delivery.
Another powerful example is the Advanced Market Commitment model pioneered through Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The pneumococcal vaccine AMC demonstrated how donor commitments can create a guaranteed future market for manufacturers, encouraging them to invest in production capacity and accelerate the availability of life-saving vaccines for lower-income countries. Through this mechanism, Gavi helped make pneumococcal vaccines available to millions of children years faster than would otherwise have been possible.
Gavi also offers an important lesson in DRM. Through its co-financing model, countries gradually assume a larger share of vaccine procurement costs as their economies grow. This approach encourages governments to plan for long-term sustainability while preserving access to essential immunization programs. Today, dozens of countries have transitioned—or are transitioning—from Gavi support while maintaining strong immunization programs through increased domestic financing. It is one of the clearest examples of how development assistance can be used to catalyze country ownership rather than create long-term dependency.
This focus on domestic resource mobilization and innovative financing is also consistent with the Trump Administration’s America First approach to foreign assistance. At its core, America First is about ensuring that U.S. investments deliver measurable results, strengthen American interests, and help countries move toward greater self-reliance rather than perpetual dependence. The America First Global Health Strategy reflects these principles by emphasizing country ownership, sustainability, burden-sharing, and partnerships that leverage private-sector innovation and market-based solutions. Importantly, it recognizes that some of the most effective and scalable solutions to global health challenges can come from partnerships between governments, multilateral institutions, and American companies that bring world-class technologies and manufacturing capabilities to the table.
We are already seeing promising examples of this. This year, the State Department and the Global Fund expanded their partnership with Gilead Sciences to accelerate access to lenacapavir, a groundbreaking long-acting HIV prevention medicine developed in the United States. At the same time, the State Department, the Global Fund, and SC Johnson launched a partnership to deploy an innovative American-developed spatial repellent technology to help protect tens of millions of people from malaria in some of the world’s highest-burden countries.
Rather than relying exclusively on traditional grant assistance, efforts like these bring together U.S. government leadership, private-sector innovation, multilateral implementation capacity, and country ownership to deliver measurable results. They also advance multiple American interests simultaneously—saving lives, strengthening global health security, supporting U.S. scientific leadership, creating demand for American-developed technologies, and helping partner countries build more sustainable and self-reliant health systems.
The challenge before policymakers is not whether these tools work. The challenge is how we scale them.
These approaches recognize a simple reality: the private sector is not just a source of funding. It is a source of innovation, efficiency, technology, and long-term economic growth. The challenge before policymakers is not whether these tools work. The challenge is how we scale them.
What can Congress do? First, continue supporting technical assistance programs that strengthen domestic resource mobilization and public financial management. Second, encourage U.S. development agencies and international financial institutions to expand the use of innovative financing mechanisms that leverage private-sector resources and reward measurable outcomes. Third, support efforts to ensure that development programs are designed with sustainability from the outset. Every major health investment should include a pathway toward greater domestic financing and country ownership.
As Congress evaluates the future of U.S. global health and development programs, it is worth recognizing that some of the most successful initiatives combine American leadership with mechanisms that mobilize additional resources from partner governments and the private sector.
Whether it is Gavi’s vaccine co-financing model, Advanced Market Commitments that accelerate access to new technologies, or domestic resource mobilization programs that strengthen tax systems and public financial management, these approaches extend the impact of every taxpayer dollar while helping countries achieve full self-reliance. Ultimately, success should not be measured by how long countries depend on external assistance. Success should be measured by how quickly they become capable of financing and managing their own development priorities.
Success should be measured by how quickly they become capable of financing and managing their own development priorities.
That has always been the promise of development at its best.
America remains the world’s leading development partner, but our greatest achievement is not the amount of aid we provide. Our greatest achievement is helping countries build the capacity, institutions, and financial systems that allow them to thrive long after our assistance has ended.
Domestic resource mobilization and innovative financing are essential tools for achieving that vision. They help stretch scarce public resources, attract private capital, strengthen local ownership, and create a more sustainable foundation for global health and development. At a time of constrained budgets and growing global challenges, these approaches are not simply desirable—they are indispensable.
Thank you, and I look forward to the discussion.
