Did State just eat USAID?

President Obama has named Rajiv Shah, an Undersecretary at the Department of Agriculture, to head the US Agency for International Development (USAID).  Although there has not been a lot of news about the appointment, articles in Politico and the Washington Examiner suggest that Shah does not have an independent power base, but rather owes the appointment to heavy lobbying from the State Department.  In addition, the State Department lists the USAID Administrator as a senior State Department official.  While the administration has not said anything public, I think it is clear that State just ate USAID.  One upside is that since the State Department has always been far more powerful than USAID, foreign aid budgets are likely to rise.

Contracting foreign aid

Tom Friedman has a great column in today’s New York Times on the dysfunctional contracting processes in the US Government.  Although he talks about this mainly from the military side, it resonates strongly with my experiences in foreign aid.  I quit the US Agency for International Development (USAID) because I could see that my job was basically a contract manager.  I was an economist for the USAID mission in Tanzania and was not implementing any projects.  Rather, my job was to solicit proposals and monitor contractors’ progress on implementation.  Now I am on the other side as a contractor.  The amount of wasteful paperwork and confusing regulations the contracting process has created is simply unfathomable.  I feel for the poor people at Georgetown who have to negotiate these issues and I thank them dearly for keeping me out of these eye-crossingly complex processes.  It would be much easier – not to mention more effective – if USAID went back to implementing.  The contracting process is broken.  It’s time to get rid of it, but that is wishful thinking.

Sesame Street

Samantha Shapiro has a very good article in today’s New York Times magazine about Sesame Street in Palestine.  While the article focuses a lot of attention on the sort of insane details that makes resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so maddening (such as a fight between Israeli and Palestinian writers over whether hummus was an Israeli or a Palestinian food), the article talked briefly about the show’s efforts to help children cope with difficult social problems in many troubled parts of the world.  Intrigued, I decided to look into their work in more detail.  It blew me away.  Truly, literally, I kid you not, it blew me away.  I am a cynical about most international development projects (derived from personal experience), and thus don’t expect much from these types of programs.  Not in this case.  The folks at Sesame Street are doing some amazing work.

Sesame Workshop (SW), the policy and program development arm of the Sesame Street shows, develops television shows in a number of very difficult environments around the world to help children cope with deep social and political problems.  The work is truly impressive.  First, SW develops programs in a number of harsh conflict and post-conflict countries, such as Kosovo, Northern Ireland, and Palestine.  Not only do their programs teach values such as cooperation, tolerance, and solving problems non-violently, but they also address the anxieties and fears children who live in these countries tend to feel.  Second, SW tailors their shows to the situations relevant in each country.  In Egypt, Alam Simsim stresses the importance of educating girls, an important government priority.  In Palestine, Shara’a Simsim teaches boys to solve problems non-violently.  In South Africa, Takalani Sesame focuses on removing the stigma of having HIV/AIDS.  I watched one of the video clips dealing with this issue and was extremely impressed.  Third, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funds a lot of this work.  I used to work at USAID and still cooperate closely with them.  I never knew they supported Sesame Street programs in other countries.  The work is phenomenal, yet USAID does not go out of its way to publicize their support for it.  This is amazing considering how much abuse USAID takes for being ineffective.  If I ran USAID, I would put Elmo on USAID’s homepage, hire Big Bird as a receptionist, and hang a giant banner of Bert and Ernie outside USAID headquarters.  This is great work.  Promote it shamelessly.

The New G8?

By the way, if you need your daily dose of cynicism, here it is.

Ditherer in Chief?

As a strong Democrat and Obama supporter, it hurts me to write this post.  However, sometimes it’s better to hear the painful truth than pretend it’s not so.  Thomas Ricks’s recent post at Foreign Policy on Obama’s indecisiveness articulates a lot of how I feel about the president’s performance on a range of issues.

This is not a blog about US politics, so I tend to stay away from the subject.  However, since Obama’s indecisiveness directly affects US foreign policy on democracy and governance, I think it is a reasonable topic for the blog.  On foreign policy, the big dither is Afghanistan.  I have nothing to add to this debate, except that I agree with Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s observation that while “the middle ground is often safe political terrain, it can be the riskiest spot on the battlefield.” Some unsolicited advice: it’s time to be the Gambler (e.g., fold or go all in) not the Coward of the County (e.g., commission  another study).

Obligatory picture of Kenny Rogers

Afghanistan is not the only foreign policy dither. 10 months into the Obama Administration, the President still has not appointed an Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  While I have a lot of friends in the Obama Administration, I keep my relationships on a professional level and therefore do not pump them for insider gossip.  From what I do understand the problem is that some in the administration want USAID to be an independent agency, possibly with cabinet-level status, while others want to place USAID under the State Department.  Fights like this are commonplace in the Federal Government (or any bureaucracy for that matter) and it’s up to the president to make the final call.  The same debate existed when I was at the Treasury Department under President Clinton and USAID under President Bush.  You don’t need 10 months to make the choice.  Be the decider, not the ditherer.

Deciding is hard