Africa Up Close

In April 2014, the New York Times published an online article on the merits and demerits of USAID’s new development strategy, especially as it pertains to the direct engagement of local actors in delivering development projects in recipient countries. From a technical point of view, the arguments on both sides of the debate are compelling. However, facts must be separated from myths, and the politicking and lobbying on Capitol Hill must reach equilibrium so the outcome of the debate can be a more refined, cost-effective, accountable, and transparent development aid regime that can better serve the objectives and vision of USAID and the American people.  For observers in other parts of the world, particularly in African and other developing countries that constitute the target of USAID’s efforts, the tussle in Washington does more than highlight issues of capacity, efficiency and accountability associated with the agency’s operations. It exposes the unreformed mindset that continues to lurk in some quarters of the development assistance machinery of the US, and raises fundamental questions about the ultimate goal of this enterprise, as conceived by the actors that have for the past decades steered its course.

USAID Forward

The subject of the debate has to do with new institutional reforms put in place under the rubric of USAID Forward, and championed by USAID’s administrator, Rajiv Shah. The key components of this reform agenda, according to USAID, include prioritizing and investing in innovation and entrepreneurship; leveraging partnerships with universities, research institutes and the private sector; and strengthening the policy and management capacity of the agency, while also focusing its interventions on priority areas and countries. More importantly, the new strategy comes with a strong appetite for making available direct funding to local governments and organizations in support of their development initiatives. It is this latter component that has been the subject of much controversy in Washington, as it challenges the profitability of the decades-old American aid industry that accompanied the establishment of USAID.

Over the past decades, most of the funding from the agency has been channeled through US-based, non-governmental and profit-seeking companies, which have assumed the role of ‘development agents’ in African and other developing countries. This approach is believed to have encouraged the decimation of the operational capacity of USAID itself, reducing it to a contracting agency. Worse still, reports suggest that without the necessary capacity on the part of USAID to provide adequate oversight on the activities of its so-called implementing partners, the latter have been able to conduct their business with little accountability to either their funders or the supposed beneficiaries of development projects. Proponents of the new local procurement policy therefore see the initiative as a worthwhile intervention to curb the excesses of particularly big, US-based, for-profit organizations in order to maximize the impact of USAID funding. But more importantly, by partnering with and channeling its resources directly to local actors, USAID hopes “to create conditions where aid is no longer needed in the countries where the agency works.”

Skepticism over USAID’s local procurement policy is by no means unfounded, especially when this is informed by the agency’s questionable track record of not being able to sufficiently extract accountability, transparency and development results from its partners. However, while these concerns may be warranted at the initial stages of this plan, one would expect that because the local procurement initiative is part of a wider reform agenda that also seeks to restore the strategic and operational capacity of USAID, some of these challenges will be dealt with in due course. What will definitely continue to call for concern, and does not seem to have been given precedence in this whole debate, is the developmental value of USAID’s assistance going forward. It is worth noting that although USAID Forward appears to subscribe to a progressive philosophy that sees development first and foremost as an endogenous process and embraces development assistance as a temporary catalyst of this process, the local procurement policy that embodies this thinking – and which is at the center of the current tussle – constitutes just 30% of the agency’s funding. In other words, 70% of US development funding will, at least in the interim, continue to be channeled through US-based organizations.

Misplaced Priorities

If the current debate is anything to go by, it is not far-fetched to suggest that most of these organizations continue to subscribe to the discredited model of development that is built on a supposed superiority of western knowledge and experiences, while perpetuating dependence and global inequality. There is no better explanation for the strong resistance to and lobbying against USAID’s local procurement policy, especially from US-based for-profit organizations. By anchoring opposition to the initiative in arguments that juxtapose deficiencies in local institutions with their own experience and expertise, these organizations make it clear that what is at stake is not the extent to which American aid can best be deployed to contribute to the liberation of the agency of local communities in developing countries, but rather the sustainability of an industry that has for decades fed off a development discourse that is today struggling to remain relevant.

This misplaced priority brings to mind Claude Ake’s famous line that, “The problem is not so much that development has failed as that it was never really on the agenda in the first place.” Although these words were directed primarily at the pseudo-development policies of post-independence African leaders, they may very well have been intended to describe the intent and pretense of the US development aid industry. In this context, it is not difficult to discern that the major threat to the success of future US development assistance is not necessarily the unreliability of USAID’s local partners or even the agency’s dwindled technical and managerial capacity, but the unreformed mindset and vested interests of self-proclaimed custodians of development in Washington, who appear to be struggling to move along with the changing times.

Fritz Nganje is a researcher at the Institute for Global Dialogue and a former Southern Voices Scholar with the Wilson Center.

Photo Credit: USAID via Flickr