Creating a Powerful Development Model for the

U.S. GovernmentThe German Marshall Fund of the

United States

June 2010

No unified global process exists within USAID for determining:

How priorities should be established for allocating foreign aid among recipient countries (i.e., between Pakistan, Malawi, or Paraguay);

How priorities should be established for allocating foreign aid within a recipient country among categories of aid (health, democracy, education, etc.);

In what sequence foreign aid should be applied in a recipient country (credit availability before basic education, or the other way around), or

What total impact U.S. foreign aid is having on addressing global problems, like illiteracy in the developing world.

Without a unified, explainable global strategy, USAID

• Lacks a coherent vision of development’s role in U.S. foreign policy;

• Lacks a quantitative basis for establishing global program funding requests or staffing requests;

• Lacks a basis for a unified measurement and evaluation system, and

• Lacks a clear, compelling external message for seeking public support for foreign assistance.

Development Strategy: Essential Elements

1. Clarity of Mission

2. Measurable Impact

3. Systematic Focus on Development

4. Flexibility and Partnerships

5. Viable Nation-States and Societies

Rebuilding: Haiti

Developing: Bangladesh

Transforming: El Salvador

Sustaining: Poland

GMF’s Proposed Strategy

“The U.S. development strategy is to ensure that, by 2025, all “rebuilding” and “developing” nations achieve “transforming” status, and that 50% of those nations achieve “sustaining partner” status.

APPENDEX

Approach to demand-driven, systematic, and measurable development progress

Sustaining (Poland)

Transforming (El Salvador)

Developing (Bangladesh)

Rebuilding (Haiti)

Continuous dialogue, monitoring and evaluation that accommodates local priorities under metric framework

Country level Donor level

Building the Budget Administration Budget Request

Progress toward stronger institutions,

capacity, and ownership

Continuous dialogue, monitoring and

evaluation that ensures country-level

investments make progress toward MDGs

The Strategy Process

• Completion of detailed development gap analysis graphs for each country in the developing world.

• The explicit use of the worst scores on each national set of graphs as a basis for developing Country Assistance Strategies.

• Use of the extent and depth of the development gaps at the national level as a basis for recommended country foreign aid allocation levels.

• The determination whether the totality of the programs would make a significant impact on achieving the Millennium Development Goals and U.S. national security objectives.

Local Conditions Drive Development

The precise program emphasis, sequencing, and

proposed program levels are determined at the

country level in the Country Assistance Strategy.

• Host country priorities, other donor funding, and targets of opportunity all shape the Country Assistance Strategy.