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- 11/17/09: Testimony of Mary C. Ott, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade, before the House Subcommittee on Trade - "Trade Capacity Building and U.S. Trade Preference Programs"
- 11/17/09: Written Testimony by Earl Gast, Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa, before the Senate Subcommittee on African Affairs - "Examining U.S. Counterterrorism Priorities and Strategy across Africa’s Sahel Region"
- 08/09/09: Remarks by Alonzo L. Fulgham, Acting Administrator, USAID, at the Second Annual Haitian Diaspora Unity Congress
- 07/30/09: Testimony by Earl Gast, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Africa, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations - "Responding to Humanitarian Needs, Supporting Peace, and Implementing Development Priorities in Sudan"
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Henrietta Fore
Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and Administrator, USAID
Society for International Development
Chemonics International, Teele Auditorium
Washington, D.C.
December 9, 2008
Thank you, Asif [Shaik]. For introducing me and, more importantly, for your many years of outstanding service to the Society for International Development.
To all of you here: Joining you today really does complete the circle.
Completing the Circle
We last gathered at a time that many of you described as more uncertain. The calls to reform America's approach to assistance were clear. They served as the most compelling motivation I could imagine to return to USAID.
When last we met, I had three key objectives for our time working together:
First: To seek a new consensus in international development - a commitment to collaborate in ways we never have before.
Second: I said we must put the host country - its priorities, capacities, norms, and local design - at the center of our collective thought and action. And,
Third: I promised we would revitalize USAID and the Office of Foreign Assistance - restoring capacity, improving execution, and bringing new coherence to our work.
Together, we have made real progress in the past one and a half years. Only you can decide whether the new momentum we have been sensing lately is real, or will be sustained.
I suspect it is, and will be.
What We've Accomplished
We do such extraordinary things together. In places as diverse as Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iraq, the Sahel, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, NGOs, the private sector, and the United States Government have worked to support self-sustaining enterprise as an alternative to extremism and conflict.
We know what works. We know that when states embrace free markets and free trade, govern justly, and invest in their people, they create an opportunity of their own that supports pluralism and prosperity for all their citizens.
I saw it in Gulu, Uganda, in the work of Muslim leader Sheikh Musa Khalil, Anglican leader Bishop Ochola, the Acholi Paramount Chief's Representative Michael Otim, and their government officials. I saw it in Afghanistan, with girls walking to school and women farmers growing off-season vegetables. I have seen it in many other places around the world.
Revitalization
While many believed the financial crisis would have us backing down, in November the President said the United States would keep its development pledges, and its commitment to the developing world. We were the first country to say that. That says something important about the kind of country we are.
Since 2001, we have doubled our assistance to Latin America. We are on track to quadruple it for Africa. We have nearly tripled it worldwide.
Many of you have heard, and helped inform, my agenda to revitalize foreign assistance. We have shared more information, engaged more regularly, and - together - made real progress.
For FY 2009, we made the largest request in history for an increased operating budget for USAID.
Revitalization relies on talented people. We pushed to hire 300 Foreign Service officers - a 30 percent increase in our overseas workforce. This moved the Agency toward a doubling of deployable staff over the next three years.
With the strong support of Congress, we have already hired more than half of the new first-year officers (161), as part of the Development Leadership Initiative. These new classes bring diversity to USAID, with one third of the officers representing minorities. Nearly 60 percent are women; 92 percent speak more than one language-with a total of 71 foreign languages spoken, and have served in 48 countries.
The new officers have Peace Corps, NGO, private sector, and USAID experience. They are rebuilding our critical technical strengths: from financial controllers and contracting, to health and education, to democracy and governance, to agriculture and economic growth.
To make our people even more effective, I doubled the training budget and, as I committed to do, streamlined many of our foreign assistance processes. We have reduced the time it takes our missions to complete their country operating plans by as much as 80 percent. We have eliminated the need for approvals from Washington for a range of program and financial adjustments, to provide maximum flexibility. Now, we start with the field requests first.
We have gotten better at asking only for essential information, and asking less often. We have made strides in information technology, moving closer toward an "enter once, access everywhere, and anytime capacity."
We are quietly revolutionizing the way we share what we know. At the website "Global Development Commons dot-net," you can now search all USAID-funded project websites and all USG development information. That is over one thousand websites with over one million documents, and growing.
Have Our Institutions Kept Pace?
I have not felt such a sense of excitement and possibility in our profession in decades. But in important ways, this era is different. Have our institutions kept pace? I see no shortage of commitment and compassion in the larger development community. Our real challenges are: communication; collaboration; and coordination. This is what the people in the countries we serve tell us they really need.
So we have tried a new model. With the host country governments, we asked all of the development ministers to join me in a visit to Afghanistan, and later to Liberia, so that we could all hear and see, together, what those countries' development plans were, and to coordinate our efforts.
In Afghanistan, the National Development Strategy had just been finalized, so we were able to prioritize our efforts and support the country's plans. In Liberia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf convened a special meeting of her national development leaders. She told us what she and the people of Liberia need from us. All of us could hear it-multilaterals and bilaterals.
This made us all accountable for joint solutions. Focusing on the most critical issues. Brainstorming on how to collaborate together. It is through that kind of coordination, I believe, that the next administration can build a new American constituency for global development-in our country, and in developing countries.
Our institutions must adapt more rapidly to the dramatic shift in capital flows around the world. Last year, I challenged our Mission Directors to triple the resources leveraged by public-private partnerships by the end of FY 2009. They are well on their way. For FY08, USAID has leveraged $649 million in partner contributions and implemented 225 new public-private partnerships.
I have seen the effect in Brazil, where we are helping protect the Amazon rainforest while supporting economic growth. You can see it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in enterprises run by indigenous people.
In Azerbaijan and Iraq, you can see it in partnerships that combine private investment with public expertise. Real economic growth in two out of five sub-Saharan countries was triple that of the United States economy last year, on a base that rivals that of Southeast Asia in 1980.
But while there has been remarkable growth, many countries remain particularly vulnerable to rising food prices and financial crises.
For food and agriculture assistance, the United States will provide $5.5 billion dollars over this year and the next. We are focused on the agribusiness value chain from the producer to the consumer, and on public-private partnerships. We are investing in agriculture research, new technologies, and improved market systems and developing country farmers. All of which will improve the availability and access to a reliable and high quality food supply throughout the world.
Elevating Development
I do not think any of us would discount the implications of the work we do for national and transnational security. That is why this administration explicitly elevated development, making it integral to U.S. foreign policy alongside defense and diplomacy.
Recognize our wide range of interdependent objectives, from national security, to post conflict reconstruction, to poverty reduction and humanitarian aid. Our challenge is to bring to bear-in a coherent fashion-all of the tools we have within reach.
We have created the Office of Military Affairs; posted Development Officers with every combatant command; and developed new policy on Civilian-Military Cooperation. Why? To let us work in increasingly insecure environments, coordinate with the Department of Defense, and preserve our core development mission and principles. But there is much more to be done.
The Future of Foreign Assistance
In times as turbulent as those we face now, it may seem a difficult challenge to continue to revitalize foreign assistance.
But it has never been more essential; never more clear that this country's well-being relies upon it. It will take a strong commitment, early in the new administration, to consolidate the gains we have made, and to maintain the momentum the world needs.
If I were to predict a future worthy of the people we serve, here is what it would look like:
Across the development landscape, USAID would take a leading role in driving a new consensus on aid effectiveness, and in acting as a convening catalyst between public and private sector resources and programs that support and accelerate human progress in the developing world.
We would continue to embrace the wider development community, devoting more of our management, technical expertise, and financial resources to coordinating and leading international development.
In the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development three decades ago, we used to meet with the Kuwait Fund and the Arab Fund. I would suggest we do so again, collaborating with the sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf and elsewhere. We also should collaborate with China, India, Brazil, Korea and other growing programs.
We would anticipate and avert duplication of effort; break down sector silos through country-based planning and incentives for cross-sector work; and build more partnerships with new technical expertise to make us demonstrably more effective on the ground.
In the years to come, USAID would double its foreign service ranks again-to 4,800 Foreign Service officers-adding more depth and breadth in leadership, and more technical and language skills.
We would focus more on small and medium enterprise in rural areas, preparing youth for jobs, the crucial role of women in civil society, and grassroots business development.
The next Administrator would develop a coherent and collaborative international development strategy. One that directly addresses the interdependence of economic growth, democratic political systems, poverty reduction, water, energy, and environmental impact, and identifies common goals and the means to achieve them, in an integrated way.
Working closely with Congress, we would make strides to clarify American foreign assistance priorities, gather all entities and agencies under civilian leadership to coordinate management, dollars, and implementation with flexible, but accountable, programs, world class talent, information technology. We would have the ability to plan for long-term development in stable states, be responsive to country-owned development strategies, and act in an unrestricted and smart way in crises.
I hope that this is a future many of us would like to see. I know it is one that we can all make happen.
Call to Action
Together, we can be very proud of the progress we have made. While the world has changed dramatically since we last got together, three imperatives remain that I hope you will take to heart:
We must continue to seek a new consensus in international development, through public-private partnerships and multi- and bilateral partnerships.
We must put the host country (and our people in the field) at the center of our collective thought and action. And,
We must continue to revitalize USAID and the Office of Foreign Assistance. I'll close with one very good reason why.
Last week in Doha, at the UN Financing for Development Conference, I ran into a delegate from El Salvador, Ana Vilma Albanez de Escobar, who is that nation's vice president. She asked me, "Do you know what the best training is for being the vice president of a country?"
Then she told me, "It was working for USAID for ten years. That got me ready for everything-democracy, economics, the rule of law, health and education. It was everything a country needs. I learned so much." And she is using it. She is using it all.
I am so proud to have been with you, to help write this most recent chapter in the most important story humanity will ever have to tell.
I cannot wait to see how-and how well-things will unfold from here.
Thank you for being my partners -- all of you. As a team we have made real progress together. We came together as a community, and that has made it a great tenure as your Administrator of USAID.
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