Investing in Our Shared Future

Cabinet Exit Memo | 2017

Investing in Our Shared Future

Cabinet Exit Memo | 2017

USAID’s Role and Impact

Previous: The Global Development Challenge | Next: Strengthening USAID's Capabilities

USAID has been successful in delivering sustained and inclusive economic growth and promoting self-sufficiency over the long run, including by focusing on transforming sectors that have broad impact on a country’s economy and citizens. 

Food Security: Built on a commitment by President Obama in 2009 to work alongside the people of poor nations to reduce hunger, Feed the Future and other U.S. Government contributions have mobilized billions of dollars in direct assistance and private resources to unlock the potential in agriculture to transform lives as a means to reduce poverty, hunger, and undernutrition. Led by USAID in response to food price volatility and a decades-long global decline in agricultural investment, Feed the Future now supports comprehensive food security and nutrition strategies and transformative agricultural development in 19 countries. Extreme poverty has dropped between 7 and 36 percent in many of the areas where Feed the Future works, child stunting has dropped between 6 and 40 percent, and more than 10 million smallholder farmers are now able to apply new technologies and management practices. Feed the Future has advanced women’s leadership in agriculture, fostered policy change to increase women’s land ownership, and strengthened their access to financial services, better enabling women agricultural producers to reach their full economic potential — gains that are reinvested back into their families and communities. Importantly, Feed the Future is built on the premise that governments must make their own investments, through policy reforms and national budgets. In sub-Saharan Africa, Feed the Future countries dramatically increased their own domestic expenditures on agriculture by 85 percent on average from 2009 to 2014.

U.S. Government efforts to advance global food security, driven by Feed the Future, have leveraged those investments, using dedicated financing from the United States to mobilize over $20 billion from other donors and over $10 billion in investment commitments from the private sector. U.S. leadership on food security has also placed agriculture – the main source of income and employment for the 70 percent of the world’s poor living in rural areas – back on the global agenda, including in the G20 and G7, at the UN, and through the World Bank and regional development banks. In 2016 and with strong bipartisan support, Congress passed and the President signed the Global Food Security Act (GFSA), solidifying the U.S. commitment to ending hunger and putting Feed the Future into law.

Resilience. Global trend lines and projections show continued growth in humanitarian need in certain regions, with the frequency and severity of extreme weather events threatening to undercut important development gains.  To counter these trends, USAID is helping strengthen the ability of vulnerable communities to manage through and mitigate risks, and recover quickly from shocks. We do this by integrating humanitarian and development projects and supporting country-led efforts that reduce chronic vulnerability and promote more inclusive growth in crisis-prone areas. The Global Food Security Act and corresponding U.S. Government strategy will help to further promote resilience through U.S. food security programs.

This approach is paying off.  In Ethiopia, for example, investments in community resilience and early response during the 2015-2016 El Niño drought helped ensure that millions of people who otherwise would have needed life-saving assistance were able to cope. And in Kenya, USAID’s efforts to build resilience in recent years have helped reduce the depth of poverty; increased women’s dietary diversity; and supported positive trends in household hunger, access to water, and local perceptions of drought management capacity.

Access to Electricity. Launched by the President in 2013, Power Africa’s goal is to add 30,000 megawatts (MW) and 60 million connections in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Two out of three people in that region lack access to the power that can turn the lights on at home, keep schools and clinics running, and provide the infrastructural support needed by entrepreneurs and businesses. Drawing on the expertise of 12 federal agencies, Power Africa is steadily breaking the continent’s energy infrastructure logjam and opening the door to electricity for millions of homes and businesses for the first time by employing a transaction-based model that focuses on attracting private sector capital. This work is removing barriers and building an investment-friendly environment. 

To date, Power Africa and its partners have helped facilitate the financial close of power sector transactions that will generate over 5,000 MW of electricity. Power Africa has also supported projects with the potential to add 2.8 million new connections, providing electricity access to about 14 million people. The U.S. Government’s leadership has blazed a path forward that has resulted in a groundswell of new international momentum to support Africa’s energy sector development, resulting in billions of dollars in additional support and investment. The United States’ initial $7 billion commitment has mobilized more than $54 billion in commitments from the public and private sectors, including more than $40 billion in commitments from private sector partners. In 2016, thanks to longstanding support from the U.S. Congress, the Electrify Africa Act passed unanimously in both the House and Senate. On Feb. 8, 2016, President Obama signed the bill into law, institutionalizing Power Africa and signaling to the global community that expanding electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa is a long-term priority of the U.S. Government. 

Global Health. USAID has also led major gains in global health. Picking up where President Bush’s Administration left off, USAID has worked closely with the State Department’s Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and many other agency partners to achieve an AIDS-free generation by 2030, expanding prevention programs and increasing the number of people receiving life-saving treatment worldwide from 2.1 million to 9.5 million. And, 10 years into USAID’s leadership of the President’s Malaria Initiative, 6 million lives have been saved and the elimination of malaria is now a realistic goal. Also in the last decade, USAID supported the delivery of more than 1.6 billion treatments to prevent and treat neglected infections plaguing more than 743 million people.

As a key player in the U.S. response to threats from Ebola and Zika, USAID was instrumental in containing and preventing further spread of these diseases. The Ebola outbreak is a case study in why the Global Health Security Agenda is so important. We must be ready to rapidly detect and contain new spillover events. And it is critical that we continue developing country health systems and capabilities, which are vital to sustaining development gains and managing threats to global health.

In addition, by investing resources in proven interventions and country-led plans, our work to end preventable child and maternal deaths has saved the lives of 4.6 million children and 200,000 women in the last eight years. Our efforts have greatly increased domestic resources for health, strengthened medical supply chains, and spearheaded a global program to rebuild countries’ health workforces. Our ongoing work to expand access to water and sanitation is absolutely vital. Women and girls without adequate sanitation services are liable to miss school or work during menstruation, and may face an increased risk of sexual assault.

Education. In the wake of a wave of assessments that showed strikingly low global learning outcomes – even when kids were in school – USAID launched its education strategy in 2011. Since then, the strategy has benefited almost 52 million children and youth in 45 countries over five years. We have helped train almost half a million teachers and educators annually. We have provided nearly 150 million textbooks or other learning materials, and we have helped build or repair 11,000 classrooms. That’s real impact. With our support, millions more children are able to read, millions more children affected by conflict and crisis can go to school, and hundreds of thousands more youth have the skills they need to build a prosperous future for themselves and their countries. And USAID’s 2016 evaluation of the education strategy will guide our efforts going forward.

Ensuring that all children have access to education unlocks human potential on a transformational scale, advancing progress in every area. The President and First Lady launched Let Girls Learn in March 2015 to place more emphasis on ensuring that adolescent girls, who often have fewer opportunities to get an education, are able to go to school. Let Girls Learn brings together the expertise of USAID, the Department of State, the Peace Corps, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture to address the range of challenges preventing adolescent girls from attaining a quality education. This holistic, whole-of-government approach builds on decades of USAID efforts to empower girls through education, global health and economic growth programs. Since its launch, through both new and attributed funds, USAID has invested over $600 million on Let Girls Learn programs in 13 countries across Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America.

Governance. An essential player in the U.S. Government’s work to promote open and effective governance around the world, USAID has maintained its critical role supporting peaceful and credible elections and democratic transitions. USAID was the lead donor in support to Burma’s November 2015 national elections, which resulted in the first civilian-led government since 1962. We have also led efforts to promote a human rights agenda for vulnerable populations and to protect and promote universally recognized human rights, ensuring that all people have equal opportunities to participate in the civic and political life of their countries. Although the impact of our work in democracy, human rights, and governance is considerably more difficult to measure than in other sectors, such as health, we have begun building a more robust evidence base for this work.

USAID has long worked to foster greater transparency and accountability in governing institutions and leaders. On his first day in office, President Obama signed a memorandum describing what good governance is, both in the United States and abroad. A government should be transparent and accountable, participatory and accessible to its citizens, and collaborative with all sectors to create real progress and tangible outcomes. Since then, we have supported efforts including the Information and Safety Capacity Project, which works directly with civil society, media, and democracy and human rights activists vulnerable to online attacks, data seizures, and monitoring. Launched in 2011, this five-year initiative has mentored and provided technical assistance to 239 organizations in 10 countries. Partnering with other U.S. Government agencies, we also contribute to the anti-corruption agenda by helping country partners meet high standards for transparency and accountability through the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Launched by President Obama and seven other leaders in 2011, OGP has grown to include 70 member countries that have collectively made nearly 3,000 commitments through National Action Plans designed to promote transparency, efficient and effective governance, and collaboration with civil society. USAID directly supports a number of these countries in achieving their commitments.

Stabilization and Fragile States:  Over the past 15 years, USAID has often been called upon to lead U.S. efforts in stabilizing countries in or emerging from conflict, and is now engaged in the design and implementation of stabilization programs in seven countries. USAID has made considerable strides in analyzing the conditions of fragile states and developing tools that better enable the U.S. Government to address the underlying drivers and consequences of conflict and instability, move countries out of fragility, and – where possible – prevent conflict. Another important resource in USAID’s stabilization work is our Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), which is working in countries like Colombia, Burma, Syria, and Nigeria to both help these countries transition and avert potential crises that threaten internal, regional, or international peace and stability. Among the lessons we have learned is that stabilization is a long-term proposition that takes a decade or more to gain traction and demands a range of professional disciplines across the Agency, from conflict management and mitigation to democracy and governance to small business development, education, and service delivery.  

As one example, although challenges remain, development is finally taking root in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s electrical utility, established just six years ago with support from USAID, no longer receives a subsidy from the Afghan Government and has posted a profit each year since 2011. Progress has been accelerated in part by USAID’s management of the 2015 New Development Partnership for Afghanistan, which links the release of U.S. assistance to the completion of policy reforms needed to spur and sustain development. Another example is in Mali, where USAID supported a volunteer youth group, SOS Démocratie, to create an elections-related hotline and mapping platform, allowing Malians to obtain information about the electoral process and report incidents of fraud, violence, or intimidation during the presidential campaign and on Election Day in 2014. The hotline received over 8,000 calls from citizens reporting incidents that were then documented and plotted on an open-source map for real-time elections monitoring.

Emergency Response: In the face of multiple chronic and severe crises, USAID has continued to respond to an average of 60 humanitarian crises each year with urgency, creativity, and professionalism. Over the last eight years, USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) has deployed 24 Disaster Assistance Response Teams (DARTs) – widely considered the best in the world – to coordinate and manage the U.S. Government’s humanitarian response in coordination with local officials, the international community, and NGO partners. This includes large-scale conflicts in Syria, South Sudan, and Iraq; the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal and other natural disasters; and severe food shortages in Ethiopia and Nigeria. In the last two years, we have often had to operate as many as five DARTs simultaneously – with a record of six deployed during a brief portion of 2016. In addition to saving lives and meeting urgent needs, the Agency has built new capabilities in each of these responses, ranging from the use of new technologies to the adoption of the technical skills needed to manage lethal epidemics.

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