Note: This document may not always reflect the actual appropriations determined by Congress. Final budget allocations for USAID's programs are not determined until after passage of an appropriations bill and preparation of the Operating Year Budget (OYB).
AFRICA
FY 1997 FY 1998 FY 1999 Actuals Estimate Request Child Survival and Disease$416,993,700 $255,042,000 $230,336,000 Development Assistance$243,825,000 $444,958,000 $499,664,000 Economic Support Funds$10,000,000 $25,000,000 $67,000,000 P.L. 480 Title II$327,403,000 $262,288,000 $107,942,000 P.L. 480 Title III$29,000,000 $19,900,000 $19,900,000
Introduction.
Africa, once portrayed as a region of famine and despair, is now becoming a region of growth and genuine opportunity: economic growth has outpaced population growth in most countries for several years; political participation and civic pluralism are expanding more rapidly in Africa than anywhere else on earth; commercial links to the United States, Europe, and Asia continue to expand, with U.S. investments in and trade with Africa continuing to exceed commercial ties to the states of the former Soviet Union; and African nations are leading the global community in their commitment to finding regional solutions to regional problems. But risk and vulnerability remain elements of the changed Africa. Only development, international cooperation, and national commitment can overcome these risks and improve life for the average African. However, poverty limits families and nations from ensuring that children are well-fed, healthy, and educated; illiteracy reduces the success and durability of democratic and economic gains; low human and institutional capacities challenge nations as they try to anticipate and prevent crises; and AIDS remains ever-present, further reducing national capacities. Heightened U.S. interest in Africa is reflected in the recent trips by the First Lady and the Secretary of State, and the announced Presidential trip.
U.S. National Interests.
U.S. national interest in Africa is two-fold: defending the United States against threats to our national security and integrating Africa into the global economy. State-sponsored terrorism, international crime, instability resulting from food insecurity and low levels of development, environmental degradation, and disease all threaten U.S. national security. Long-term development is critical to redressing the causes of instability and crisis: reducing poverty, enhancing food security, increasing literacy, supporting civil society, enhancing transparency and accountability, and strengthening commercial links. Thus, development assistance significantly enhances the foremost foreign policy objective in Africa -- U.S. national security.
The United States also has interests in seeing Africa better integrated into the global economy. Growth in U.S. exports to Africa outpaced exports to industrialized nations by a factor of four in 1996, and grew twice as fast as exports to other developing nations. Rates of returns on investments in Africa were over twice as high as those in pre-crisis Asia, and four to six times greater than in Europe. U.S. direct investment in Africa continues to expand. The recent financial and economic crises in Asia underscore the importance of diversified investments and markets to U.S. national economic health. In various ways the United States and African nations are increasingly linked commercially, as business and investment opportunities in Africa grow. Finally, trade and investment also help create economic growth and opportunity. Strong, prosperous, democratic trading partners with transparent systems of government will be better partners for the United States as we seek economic and national security threats. Therefore, the United States seeks a stable, economically dynamic Africa with which to trade and invest to further mutual prosperity. Investments in development -- producing literate and healthy citizens, transparent and accountable governments, and financial and regulatory environments which support commercial and trade relationships -- are critical to creating the right environment for investment, trade, and growth to flourish.
Finally, Americans are a caring and generous people. While the scale of poverty in Africa is greater than in the United States, the average family in both places share common goals -- rewarding employment, financial security, good education, affordable housing, sufficient food, and adequate health care. Americans understand these issues. The case is clear and compelling for continuing close ties with the continent.
Development Challenges and Program Management.
Broad discussions over the last 12 months within USAID and among Africans, leading U.S. Africanists, the State Department, and private and public development partners, have identified a series of challenges confronting Africa over the next decade:
. enhancing African capacity to lead and manage African development.
. creating a stronger base for private sector led growth, including links to the global economy.
. supporting Africa's increasing commitment to democratic process and civil society.
. enhancing coordination with other donors, U.S. government entities, and host countries in identifying development needs and undertaking activities.
. bolstering Africa's capability to prevent or diminish crisis.
USAID is committed to helping Africans meet these challenges by stressing the primary importance of its role as a sustainable development agency and emphasizing the significance that human capacity development, economic growth, civil society, and a safe, healthy environment have for sustained development. Beyond that, USAID remains committed to managing humanitarian assistance for the alleviation of human suffering during crises. Finally, USAID recognizes the fundamental importance of trade and investment activities to sustaining development efforts and impact beyond graduation from development assistance status; USAID will help support the development of strong human and policy bases for such private sector-led growth.
In addition, USAID is responding with new initiatives to address two specific aspects of the above challenges -- the Africa Food Security Initiative (AFSI) and the Trade and Investment Initiative. AFSI, beginning in FY 1998, is a pilot program to increase rural incomes and reduce malnutrition by increasing agricultural production, improving market efficiency and access, and expanding agricultural trade and investment. The Trade and Investment Initiative, also beginning modestly in FY 1998, will help improve the enabling environment for increased commercial trade over the long run and remove the regulatory and legal impediments to increased trade and investment in the short run.
Challenges with regional characteristics continue against the backdrop of continent-wide trends.
East and Central Africa: A region of intermittent prosperity and crisis, East and Central Africa ranges from the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes countries to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, and Tanzania. Sustained repression, continuing over generations, requires a rebuilding of trust across communities that has some, but few, parallels in today's world. Thus, sustaining and expanding economic growth, which remains vulnerable to crisis, is a special challenge for of this sub-region.
Responding to this uncertainty and fragility requires a degree and level of flexibility in programming resources which is often difficult for USAID to achieve, due to factors internal and external to USAID. Nonetheless, the need for increased flexibility is clear, and USAID is working hard within bilateral programs in Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Eritrea and Rwanda to establish new and participatory partnerships. At the same time, USAID is using the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative to enhance regional capacities to resolve conflict, build peace, and improve food security. USAID is working with civil society groups in Kenya and supporting efforts to rebuild community-wide trust in Rwanda to enhance civic participation and increase governmental accountability. And USAID is expanding African successes in the region, from Uganda's successes in microenterprise development, non-traditional
exports, and controlling the spread of HIV to Tanzania's successes in maintaining rural roads and beginning the demographic transition to slower population growth.
West Africa: Composed of distinct francophone, anglophone, and lusophone countries, West Africa comprises a sub-region larger and more sparsely populated than the U.S. historical links between the United States and Africa are strongest in West Africa, yet USAID's presence weakest. Moreover, this is a sub-region with perhaps the most mobile populations in the world. Both people and problems cross borders with ease -- including diseases such as AIDS, polio, and tuberculosis. This is also one of the world's most desperately poor regions with drought vulnerability exacerbating poverty. Thus, mobility, poverty, and vulnerability pose specific challenges for development in this sub-region.
USAID's segmented presence in West Africa poses a significant sub-regional programming challenge. Fragmentation becomes especially serious given the mobility of West African society. However, USAID is deliberately programing resources to address regional challenges, for example through sub-region-wide support to provide health services and to build on indigenous successes to promote and enhance sub-regional trade. These issues have been identified by dynamic regional associations and concentrate attention on region-wide concerns. FY 1999 programming also builds on national-level successes -- Benin's and Guinea's in expanding basic education, Mali's in strengthening nascent democracy, and Ghana's non-traditional agricultural exports.
Southern Africa: With greater regional identity than other parts of Africa, forged of the long struggles for majority rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa, this sub-region is also marked by the diversity that arises from the physical juxtaposition of some of Africa's poorest and wealthiest nations and divergent colonial legacies. Prolonged civil strife and instability in Angola stand beside long, successful struggles for peace and freedom in Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe; Exploited mineral wealth coexists with unexploited agricultural potential. Thus, wealth and poverty are the simultaneous characteristics, and challenges, of this sub-region.
One of the principle challenges facing USAID operations in southern Africa is developing mechanisms and approaches which support African efforts to increase development standards rapidly in those pockets of absolute poverty that persist, to enhance regional economic cooperation, and to support efforts to reduce civil strife and conflict across the region -- in Angola and elsewhere. This requires working at bilateral and regional levels. Bilateral programs in South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, and Zambia invest in African efforts to enhance economic growth, improve educational systems, and increase nutrition and health status. Programs in Namibia and Zimbabwe build on past successes and move these countries toward assistance graduation on a timely basis. USAID's Initiative for Southern Africa allows the flexibility to respond to the different sub-regional concerns -- supporting enhanced regional commercial integration, promoting increased investment and business activity, supporting nascent democratic consciousness, and enhancing natural resource management and the environment. FY 1999 programming will build on African-led successes in expanding girls' education in Malawi, agricultural production and marketing gains in Mozambique, health sector improvements in Zambia, and increasing regional economic cooperation through trade and transport protocols in the Southern Africa Development Community.
Other Donors.
USAID does not exist in isolation and cannot achieve development results alone. The primary partners in the advancing development in Africa are Africans. The major multilateral donors in Africa include the World Bank Group, lending almost exclusively through its concessionary International Development Association window, the European Union, the United Nations, and the African Development Bank. Major bilateral donors include the United Kingdom, France, Japan, the Nordic countries, and the United States. Significant among donors is the high level of cooperation and coordination of program resources, as well as the high level of consultation and coordination with host country counterparts. Thus, important fora for the debate on effective development assistance in Africa, and for African
influence over continent-wide trends in donor investments, include the World Bank managed Special Program of Assistance for Africa and Sector Investment Program, the Global Coalition for Africa, and other Africa-wide sectoral fora. In all places, African and donors meet as equal partners to discuss and debate critical issues for development in Africa, including investment priorities, successful approaches, and critical limitations. Programs such as the Sector Investment Program help donors and host countries plan orderly, timely, and host country-led efforts in priority sectors, such as the health sector in Mozambique. The Global Coalition for Africa hosts Africa-wide debate on such sensitive issues as corruption.
Successes accruing to enhanced coordination among donors and with Africans are focused attempts to set priorities and address critical problems, such as capacity building in all sectors, basic education and health facilities, infrastructure investments, and supporting democratic trends. Most significant, however, has been the increasing level of African leadership and ownership of the development process seen through these fora.
FY 1999 Program
To combat the problems and meet the challenges outlined above, USAID is supporting African development efforts in two critical areas, Food Security and Trade and Investment, with two new Initiatives beginning in FY 1998. These initiatives, described below, will continue into FY 1999 and help define USAID's new partnership with Africa -- where Africans take the lead in defining development goals and interventions.
Africa Food Security Initiative (AFSI): AFSI supports a broad African and renewed donor commitment to agriculture to improve childhood nutritional status and increase rural incomes. Current trends for Africa indicate an emerging food and nutrition crisis of major proportions for the continent. With concerted efforts to increase agricultural production, improve food market access and efficiency, and enhance agricultural trade and investment, current trends can be reversed. This Initiative supports those African countries pursuing new paths to food security through changes in the production and marketing of foodstuffs, while building on past USAID successes in agriculture. AFSI represents a ten-year commitment to the agriculture sector as a critical component for increasing economic growth, reducing poverty, and improving nutrition in Africa. In the first, pilot years of the AFSI, efforts will be focused on Uganda, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, and Ethiopia, together with U.S. universities, local NGOs, and regional and global institutions to increase African food security. For FY 1999, $28.5 million in DA and $2.5 million in Child Survival and Disease funds are requested for this initiative.
Africa Trade and Investment Policy (ATRIP) : As part of the President's Partnership for Economic Growth and Opportunity in Africa, announced in June 1997, USAID's Africa Trade and Investment Policy (ATRIP) program supports African-led efforts to pursue those policy reforms necessary to make a country attractive to international trade and investment. To do this, ATRIP will, among other activities, improve the legal and regulatory framework for trade and investment activities, including contract law, trade regulations, and taxation. Private and public sector partners will work with USAID to design and implement the exact reforms to increase economic openness and integration into the global economy -- a major ingredient in the recipe for economic progress and growth. For FY 1999, $30 million in Development Assistance funds are requested for this initiative.
African commitment to reform is essential. ATRIP will assist those countries pursuing positive and necessary reforms to increase trade and investment. In one place, governments committed to increased trade may lack the technical skills required to identify and remove transportation regulations impeding trade; in another, regional commitment to establish a customs union may be undermined by the detailed effort required to establish complementary customs procedures and tariff regimes; in a third, the short-term revenue lost by reducing tariff rates may prevent a country from undertaking the tariff reforms it knows are essential to long term growth in trade. In all cases, African commitment to reform is essential. Across a continent as large and diverse as Africa, required reforms may be many and the
precise form in any one country will depend on the specific needs of that country. Specific support may include:
[] technical assistance to help reform-oriented African countries to liberalize trade and improve the investment environment for the private sector;
[] assistance to promote partnerships between U.S. and African firms through business linkages and business associations or networks;
[] enhanced coordination among donors to help identify and remedy specific impediments to increased trade, more efficient financial systems, and enhanced investment; and
[] nonproject assistance, as part of a multi-donor commitment, to help implement, and reduce risks associated with, aggressive, market-friendly reforms.
While the details of USAID's proposed program beyond the Food Security and Trade and Investment initiatives are contained in the country narratives that follow, examples of the results which USAID programming in Africa will achieve in FY 1999 include:
[] Economic Growth. Across Africa, jobs and income growth are the top priority for Africans. Thus, USAID will continue to invest in African-led efforts to increase jobs and rural wages through activities in microenterprise development as in Uganda, expanding producer business associations as in West and Southern Africa, rehabilitating rural roads as in Mozambique, and supporting expansion of non-traditional exports as in Ghana.
[] Education. African commitment to education is high and growing. In one example, President Konare of Mali recently questioned whether political democracies and low rates of literacy can coexist and stressed Mali's firm commitment to expanding its strong support to education to enhance development and democracy. Less eloquent but equally commitment governments exist across Africa. Therefore, USAID is will continue to expand investments in education, including enhancing the quality and accessibility of basic education, particularly among girls, in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, and Uganda.
[] Child Survival and Health. Increasingly, African governments are demanding that their health service delivery systems improve child survival and reduce infectious diseases, stabilize population growth, improve maternal and reproductive health services, and reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS across the continent. In Eritrea, for example, the government is committed to decentralizing its health care systems to make them more responsive to the needs, diseases, and conditions faced by local communities and to improve how well and quickly community needs are met. In another example, President Mandela of South Africa is head of a continent-wide effort to eradicate polio from Africa. Following these leads, USAID will continue to invest in -- vaccinations, polio control, diarrheal disease and acute respiratory infections control, and malaria treatment and prevention; maternal and reproductive health services; and sexually transmitted disease (STD) control, epidemiological surveillance of HIV and STDs, and continued public awareness campaigns.
[] Environment. Africans have long recognized the importance of a healthy natural environment to their economic and physical well-being. Increasingly, African governments and civil associations recognize the connections and identified ways in which the environment can be protected in ways which recognize the rights and responsibilities of nearby communities. USAID will continue to invest in community-based natural resource activities in countries such as Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Zambia, the Congo River basin, and other areas where national commitment and risk of environmental risk is high.
[] Good Governance. As noted, Africans are engaged in a dramatic transition to democracy across the continent. To assist this transition, USAID will continue assisting elections,
strengthening civil society organizations and political participation, promoting free press and free speech, and increasing educational investments to support active democracies.
[] continuing the close integration of P.L. 480 Title III and development activities in Mozambique, Eritrea and Ethiopia, and the close association of P.L. 480 Title II activities and food security objectives across the continent.
To achieve these results, USAID requests $730 million in development assistance funding for FY 1999 programming in Africa: $230.3 million is requested from the Child Survival and Diseases Fund, to support activities in child survival, polio, HIV/AIDS, infectious diseases, basic education, and other health expenditures and $499.6 million is requested from the Development Assistance Account, to support activities in economic growth, agriculture, environment, democracy and governance, and population. In addition, USAID is requesting $67 million in Economic Support Funds and $128 million in P.L. 480 resources.
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