INSIDE DEVELOPMENT
In this section:
Development Group Urged to Focus On Causes of
New Virus Threat
First Lady Laura Bush Announces Africa Textbook
Initiative
GDA Report Says Alliances Have Multiplied
Development Effort
Development Group Urged to Focus On Causes of New Virus
Threat
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A vendor sells both live and prepared poultry products
on a crowded street in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Ben Zinner, USAID
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International development organizations should address the
underlying causes that lead to the emergence of new viruses
such as avian, or bird, flu, a senior USAID infectious disease
specialist said in December.
“Age-old traditions of backyard farming, marketplaces
that mix all kinds of animals in a regular Noah’s Ark,
and recent surges in the populations of people and animals,
allow for an explosive mixture of animal viruses and immunologically
naïve people,” Dennis Carroll of the Global Health
bureau said at a George Washington University conference on
avian flu.
“We may dodge the avian flu bullet, but there will
be others coming and we need to prepare now.”
Concern over a potential avian flu pandemic brought more
than 100 senior development professionals and infectious disease
specialists to the conference last month which focused on
socioeconomic, political, and environmental dimensions of
an avian flu pandemic. It also explored the tools and information
needed to effectively deal with massive disease outbreaks.
A worldwide, coordinated response is critical to overcoming
the pandemic threat, said keynote speaker James Adams, vice
president of the World Bank’s Network Operations Policy
and Country Services.
Adams said the Bank is doing assessments, developing programs
for specific countries, and setting up a trust fund along
with the European Commission, the World Health Organization
(WHO), and other donors.
“Financing is only one aspect of the problem,”
said Adams. “Strengthening capacity in animal health
and putting adequate surveillance systems in place will help
advance the ability of developing countries to respond, not
only to the current threat, but to future problems.”
USAID has already committed $15.6 million to support efforts
to contain and prevent avian influenza in affected countries
by strengthening animal and human disease surveillance, improving
national preparedness and planning, training and equipping
first responders, and conducting targeted communications campaigns
to reduce practices that facilitate the spread of disease
between animals and from animals to humans.
The majority of these funds are focused on Southeast Asia
where the risk to humans is now greatest. In response to recent
animal H5N1 outbreaks in Eastern Europe and the increased
risk to Africa from infected migratory birds, USAID missions
in Georgia, Armenia, Tanzania, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and West
Bank-Gaza have acted quickly to reprogram an additional $2.1
million since November 2005.
Milan Brahmbhatt, the World Bank’s lead economist for
East Asia and the Pacific, compared avian flu to the 2003
SARS outbreak, which hurt Asian tourism, mass transport, retail
sales, hotels, and restaurants. Workplace absenteeism disrupted
production.
“If an actual influenza pandemic were to occur,”
said Brahmbhatt, “the most immediate economic impacts
might arise from the uncoordinated efforts of people to avoid
becoming infected.”
USAID missions around the world are already working with
host governments and WHO to develop comprehensive pandemic
plans and raise awareness about the threat of avian and pandemic
influenza. The Agency is also working closely with the Department
of State to increase international political will and cooperation
through the International Partnership for Avian and Pandemic
Influenza.
The State Department on Jan. 12 announced the release of
$91.4 million in additional funds to boost assistance to countries
in preventing the spread of the highly pathogenic avian influenza.
The supplemental fund, part of $3.8 billion set aside for
pandemic flu preparedness, will also be devoted to trade compliance,
research, and development of new vaccines and preparedness
training.
Avian flu has been found in the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand,
Vietnam, China, Croatia, Hong Kong, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea,
Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Romania, Russia, Taipei China, Turkey,
and Ukraine. The disease has killed half of the 139 people
it infected in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, and
China since the disease was discovered in December 2003.
First Lady Laura Bush Announces Africa Textbook Initiative
By Charles W. Corey
Washington File staff writer
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Visitors to the Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital in Kabul
remove their shoes as part of an effort to keep the
refurbished facility clean. Under a U.S.-funded program,
the hospital has upgraded its level of cleanliness,
equipment, and services to raise healthcare standards
in the Afghan capital. See story on pg. 1.
Ben Barber, USAID
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“The people of the United States believe in Africa’s
future” and, like Africans, know that “education
is vital to a better future for all of the world’s children,”
First Lady Laura Bush said Jan.17 as she launched the Africa
Education Initiative textbooks program and announced the donation
of 25,000 new books for schools in Ghana.
In remarks at the Accra Teacher Training College, Bush,
a former teacher and librarian, said the Textbooks and Learning
Materials Program is part of her husband’s effort to
expand access to education in Africa.
That effort, the Africa Education Initiative, is a $600
million commitment to provide books, scholarships, school
uniforms, and teacher training so that more African children
can attend school. The initiative includes funding to train
920,000 teachers in 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. As
of December 2005, more than 300,000 teachers, both new and
experienced, had received training, she said.
Education produces many social benefits, and perhaps none
greater than better health, Bush said, calling education “our
greatest ally in the effort to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
“We know from experience that educated girls and boys
are more likely to know what HIV is, and how to avoid infection.
Girls who are educated have more economic and social resources
to rely on, and, therefore, have more power to negotiate their
own sexual lives. In fact, educated young women have lower
rates of HIV/AIDS, healthier families and higher rates of
education for their own children.
“Sadly,” she said, “too many children around
the world do not have access to education or schooling.”
The problem, she added, is “particularly acute”
in sub-Saharan Africa. “More than one-third of primary-school-age
children are not enrolled in school at all, and of those who
do enter the first grade, fewer than half will complete primary
school.”
In addition to the textbook program she announced, Bush
said the initiative already has facilitated the shipment of
more than 2 million books to African schools and libraries.
“When I visited Tanzania and Rwanda last summer, I
announced the donations of books in those countries. And today,”
she added, “I’m pleased to announce the donation
of 25,000 books for school libraries in Ghana.”
Bush said the donated books are new books that have been
selected carefully to be appropriate for school-age children
in Africa.
She told her audience that a major goal of the initiative
is to enroll more girls in school. “To meet that goal,”
she said, “the United States sponsors the Ambassador’s
Girls’ Scholarship Program, which will provide 550,000
scholarships to girls at the primary and secondary school
level. So far, 120,000 scholarships have been provided in
40 countries. The scholarships pay for tuition, fees, books,
uniforms and other essential supplies.”
GDA Report Says Alliances Have Multiplied Development Effort
For five years, Abedinego Lession and his wife had to tote
buckets of water to their family’s flower business in
rural Tanzania from the only source available—a communal
irrigation stream that supplied each household two hours of
water a week.
To change their lot, the couple saved part of their earnings
for six months and invested $75 in a KickStart Super MoneyMaker
irrigation pump being marketed and distributed through an
alliance with USAID. Created by KickStart, the contraption
resembles a stripped down Stairmaster and can lift water from
the ground more than 20 feet to irrigate up to two acres of
land per day.
Today, the Lessions earn about $130 a month, twice what
they earned before and will never have to tote water again.
The Lession’s nursery is but one of nearly 40,000 businesses
begun or expanded in Tanzania, Kenya, and Mali thanks to technologies
created by KickStart.
This is one of the 22 alliance case studies highlighted
in a new report, The Global Development Alliance: Public-Private
Alliances for Transformational Development, released Jan.
9 by former USAID Administrator Andrew S. Natsios, which shows
the impact a partnership approach to development is having
on U.S. foreign assistance.
The report illustrates the work of USAID’s Office of
Global Development Alliances (GDA), which aims to form partnerships
with companies, foundations, faith-based groups, nonprofit
organizations, and other groups. The idea is to draw on public
and private institutions’ combined strengths to address
challenges in the developing world more effectively than could
happen if the groups worked independently.
One of Natsios’s final commissioned studies, the report
examines changes in foreign assistance funding—from primarily
U.S. governmental resources to private-sector resources—that
have occurred over the last 30 years and how USAID has responded
through GDA.
Dan Runde, GDA’s director said: “The report has
two purposes. The first is to introduce GDA to businesses
and nonprofits interested in improving the lives of people
in the developing world by coordinating their activities with
other actors pursuing complementary goals. The second is to
present some of the bold and innovative public-private alliances
formed under the GDA standard.”
These alliances represent creative ways of harnessing the
fundamental forces now shaping the development landscape,
Runde added.
Under USAID’s alliance with KickStart, for example,
the nearly 3,000 pumps sold have generated $2.4 million in
profits and wages. For each $1 invested by donors in this
alliance, an estimated $20 in new income is generated for
farmers in Africa. The alliance has attracted additional co-investors,
including the Mulago Foundation, SC Johnson Corporation, Case
Foundation, Lemelson Foundation, Nike Foundation, and the
John Deere Foundation.
Since its launch in 2001, GDA has provided more than $1.1
billion for almost 300 public-private alliances and leveraged
over $3.7 billion in total partner contributions.
“The Kennedy School of Government just gave us the
first Lewis and Clark Award for innovations in government
because of the Global Development Alliance,” Natsios
said at an Agency-wide town hall meeting the same day the
report was released. “We are at the cutting edge. We
are the pioneers in this effort on alliance-building with
nontraditional partner organizations.”
To read the report, go to www.usaid.gov/gda.
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