AAM DISPATCH

“The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief – the food, water and medicine  – that Haitians will need in the coming days.” – President Obama on Haiti relief

President Obama has put the U.S. Agency for International Development in charge of America’s earthquake response in Haiti. USAID is no stranger to the island nation where it has spent decades struggling with political and natural disasters. The agency once had tens of thousands of experts doing development work across the globe, but today, it has a tenth of the staff it once did. And, it’s stretched thin in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to meet the soaring demand for aid in failed states and conflict zones.

National security, economic growth and humanitarian relief are at the heart of U.S. assistance abroad. As USAID takes the lead in U.S. humanitarian assistance in Haiti, what are the challenges the agency faces to deploy resources around the world?

Listen to Arrested Development: Shortchanging Foreign Aid on America Abroad.

Javier Barrera Haiti, USAID

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has headed U.S. foreign assistance efforts since its creation nearly half a century ago. It once employed thousands of civilians with expertise in farming, engineering and governance who worked to reduce poverty, build infrastructure and promote public health around the globe. But years of budget cuts and bureaucratic sclerosis has eroded the agency’s personnel, capacity and morale. Today there are just 6 engineers and 16 agricultural specialists at USAID.

AAM’s Research Director, Christopher Williams, spoke with Sheila Herrling, Senior Policy Associate and Director of the Center for Global Development’s Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, about the challenges of modernizing and rebuilding U.S. foreign assistance.

CW: First, there is the looming question of who will be next Administrator of USAID. Why has the post been vacant for so long? And, what has the lack of leadership done to the Agency?

SH: Between the time you asked me this question and I answered, we now have a USAID Administrator nominee, Dr. Raj Shah. I don’t think anyone expected it to take the 10 months it did but rather thought the administration would prioritize filling the position with a high-profile individual capable of leading the development agenda into the 21st century and up to the ranks of diplomacy and defense. My sense is that there were two reasons it took so long: first, the vetting process which for serious development practitioners would be a nightmare of listing every foreigner you came in contact with and making sure your taxes while abroad were done correctly. But second, and I think the bigger factor, was finding someone willing to lead an organization that has no policy or budget authority and whose reporting line to the Secretary is unclear. There is now a lot of chatter on the blogs and in the news on Dr. Shah’s qualifications to the job. The points that are less covered, and need to be, are what authorities is the president and the secretary of state going to give him to bolster his ability to succeed?

Read more…

Javier Barrera USAID

A few fast, fun facts about Ethiopia: it’s home to the second largest population in Africa, with 83 million people. The majority either farm or raise livestock. But only 12% of the land is suitable for agriculture, and of that, only 1% is irrigated. So you’ve got millions of people watching the heavens, relying on the rain to grow the crops that would feed this nation. Add to that the fact that historically there have been droughts every three years – with major droughts happening every decade or so. It all makes for some serious topsoil erosion. The dry and dusty topsoil eventually ends up as river silt that flows toward the Nile delta. As one development worker put it to me, Egyptian farmers have been reaping great harvests for three thousand years courtesy of Ethiopian silt.

That’s just the agricultural side. Add it all up and you get some major challenges for development. It’s no wonder that the Ethiopian mission is USAID’s (United States Agency for International Development) largest in sub-Saharan Africa. Addis Ababa is teeming with development workers. Conservatively there are easily 400 foreign nationals in that line of work here. And every NGO and foreign mission employs many more local staff. At USAID there are 7 local staff for each American. That’s not including the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), the US State Department, DOD (Department of Defense) and other US agencies who’ve all taken a slice of the development pie in recent years. Over the coming month, America Abroad will be exploring how the bureaucratic jungle of agencies try to work together to make life for Ethiopians more secure, healthy, and economically well off. It’s a tall order given some of the natural demographics working against them.

What everyone here will tell you is that it’s all about food, food, and more food (though that may not be reflected in the way Congress allocates USAID’s budget here). The challenge is getting Ethiopia off of it’s reliance on imported subsidies/relief and begin to develop the natural capacity of this country to feed itself – in spite of environmental challenges and a population that’s doubling every generation. What’s encouraging is that most aid workers say that things are in fact trending up, and the situation has significantly improved in 25 years. In 1984, Bob Geldoff and the BBC trained the world’s lens on the famine (don’t say the F word here today) that killed a million Ethiopians. Despite a doubling of the population since then, this country has not seen loss of life on that scale since. Still, nobody will tell you Ethiopia is out of the woods. This year the government announced that 6.3 million of its people are at risk of starvation. A number that’s considered low if anything. Add to that the more than 7 million who are permanently “food insecure” and you start to see the scale of the problem.

In my short time here, I’ve met some amazingly committed, hard working, and innovative aid professionals. Some come from abroad, but many are Ethiopian, who are rolling this boulder uphill. While it seems a long, long way from the political wranglings happening on Capitol Hill about the future of USAID, most folks here are keenly watching who will finally be appointed to head the United States Agency for International Development; and nervously waiting to see if, alongside Diplomacy and Defense, Development will really be Obama’s third – and equal – “D.”

Arrested Development: Shortchanging Foreign Aid on next month’s America Abroad.

Matt Ozug Africa, USAID