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Archive for the ‘USAID’ Category

Shah Visits Floods in Pakistan

Friday, August 27th, 2010
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Shah in Pakistan-Farooq Naeem_AFPOn Wednesday, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah visited Pakistan to witness the damage caused by severe flooding.  On USAID’s Impact Blog, Shah described his view from the helicopter: “As far as the eye could see, foundations and buttresses supported nonexistent houses and bridges, power lines lay hopelessly tangled on the ground, and roads destroyed and washed away… As I look around me, it is obvious that Pakistan faces the biggest challenge in its 64-year history.”

Shah used the visit as an opportunity to rethink U.S. aid to Pakistan, announcing that some of the funds from the five-year, $7.5 billion aid package will be redirected to assist in flood-related relief and recovery.  Shah showed great flexibility, saying “I fully envision some of the priorities will have to shift, and shift so that there’s more of a recovery and reconstruction focus.”

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USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah Speaks at a Global Washington Event

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
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On August 13th, nearly 500 people gathered at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, WA to hear USAID Administrator Shah discuss the role of technology and innovation in development with a panel of leaders from the local development community.   In Administrator Shah’s opening remarks he emphasized USAID’s commitment to evidence-based development strategies and the need for scalable and sustainable solutions.  He was joined on the panel by Congressman Jim McDermott, Congressman Adam Smith, Dr. Akhtar Badshah of Microsoft, Dr. Christopher Elias of PATH, and Dr. Prema Arasu of Washington State University.  Sylvia Mathews Burwell, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, moderated the discussion, which included questions submitted by audience members.  Read more of Global Washington’s recap of the event here and see photos or watch the full event below.

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PSD to be Released Next Month?

Monday, August 16th, 2010
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Rajiv ShahOn Friday, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah joined Rep. Adam Smith and Rep. Jim McDermott for a discussion on U.S. foreign aid hosted by Global Washington in Seattle.  Shah recognized the need to do more with the limited resources available for foreign aid dollars, making the case for development with an increased focus on transparency and innovation.  Shah said, “If we can continue to show things are really effective, generate results with the dollars and take efficiency very, very seriously, I believe Americans want to do more.”  Shah also spoke of the evidence-based approach the Agency has adopted, which has already yielded incredible success in Haiti.

Coverage of Shah’s visit by the Associated Press cites Shah alluding to a report on foreign assistance programs — presumably the Presidential Study Directive or PSD-7 — coming out next month.  Referencing the aid programs spread across the U.S. government, AP reporter Donna Gordon Blankinship writes, “There are no plans to consolidate that work, Shah said, but the administration is concerned about efficiency and transparency and growing the reach and effectiveness of foreign aid. A report on these efforts is due out within the next month.”

Other speakers at the Global Washington event included Prema Arasu, associate vice president for international programs at Washington State University; Akhtar Badshah, senior director of global community affairs at Microsoft; Sylvia Mathews Burwell, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s global development program; and PATH CEO and President Christopher Elias.

Read more on the event here.

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MFAN Member Staats on Vacancies at USAID

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
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Last week, MFAN Member Sarah Jane Staats, director of policy outreach at the Center for Global Development, published an op-ed  in the Global Post lamenting on the vacant leadership positions at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  Staats argued that these top positions need to be filled in order for the agency to successfully implement internal reforms and move the overall foreign assistance reform agenda forward.  Staats wrote:

“To date, only one official — USAID Administrator Raj Shah — has been confirmed. While Shah has skilled and capable leaders in his front office and throughout the agency, several of whom have been doing yeoman’s work in acting positions, it is unconscionable that all remaining management seats remain unfilled 18 months into this administration. Shah cannot captain the USAID ship without a crew.”

“USAID cannot be the premier development agency everyone envisions without appointed and confirmed leaders at the helm of its regional and functional bureaus. Nor can it elevate development across the U.S. government — as Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have called for — without a full cadre of assistant administrators to inform major development policy reviews taking place right now and congressional efforts to rewrite foreign assistance legislation.”

Josh Rogin later reported on The Cable that President Obama intends to nominate Nancy Lindborg — current President of Mercy Corps and MFAN Principal — to be Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Affairs Bureau, as well as nominate Donald K. Steinberg to be Deputy Administrator of USAID.  The other names working their way through the nomination process are: Mark Feierstein to be Assistant Administrator of Latin America and Nisha Desai Biswal to be Assistant Administrator of Asia; both were approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week.  The Obama Administration is now batting 5 out of 12 for Senate-confirmed leadership positions at USAID.

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MFAN Partner Analyzes MDG Strategy from Aid Transparency Angle

Friday, August 6th, 2010
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See the guest blog post below from MFAN Partner Publish What You Fund, one of the 200 signatories to the Open Letter.

Obama Administration Starts Delivering on Aid Transparency

Karin Chirstiansen 218 months in, the Obama administration is starting to deliver on its commitment to transparency within U.S. foreign assistance programs and policy.  On July 30, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah unveiled the new U.S. strategy for meeting the Millennium Development Goals “Celebrate, Innovate, and Sustain: Toward 2015 and Beyond”.  We applaud the announcement, which includes launching an ‘aid transparency initiative,’  and look forward to seeing concrete timelines, detailed plans and robust policy that will ensure the potential of this initiative is brought to life.

The Strategy commits to “improving the transparency of aid flows”[i] to address “data shortages, comparability problems [as] large lag times weaken [U.S.] ability to measure progress toward the Goals”[ii]:

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