The Foreign Service Journal, December 2016

18 DECEMBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT Why USAID’s New Approach to Development Assistance Is Stalled BY THOMAS D I CHTER D uring the course of an indepen- dent study financed indirectly by the U.S. Agency for Inter- national Development that took me and my colleagues to 14 USAID offices on three continents—with all but three offices now located inside the U.S. embassy grounds—it became clear how insulated agency staff have become from the countries in which they work. And this is the case at a time when USAID is osten- sibly committed to working more directly with local organizations (and so begin- ning the long-delayed process of “working ourselves out of a job”). TomDichter’s career in international development spans 50 years of life and work in more than 60 developing countries. A Peace Corps Volunteer in Morocco in the early 1960s and, much later, a Peace Corps country director in Yemen, he was vice president of TechnoServe, a program officer at the Aga Khan Foundation in Geneva, a researcher on development issues for the Hudson Institute and a consultant for many interna- tional agencies, including the United Nations Development Program, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, USAID, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, as well as for the Austrian and Philippine governments. He is the author of Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to theThird World Has Failed (University of Massachusetts Press, 2003) and co-editor of What’s Wrong with Microfinance? (Practical Action Press, 2007). Under former Administrator Rajiv Shah’s USAID “Forward” reform program, the agency set a goal of 30 percent of its resources going to local organizations by 2015, including local governments, civil society and firms in the private sector. That goal was not met, and USAID now refers to it as merely “aspirational.” Besides the intention to redirect the flow of money, the core of the Forward agenda was a commitment to what was called “local solutions” (now called localworks) aimed at the establishment of “close, personal working relationships” with local governments, civil society and the private sector. That commitment has gained very little traction, despite the good intentions. USAID’s growing isolation from the countries it seeks to help leads to frustra- tion on the part of many of its best people, as well as engendering some disdain for the “locals” who are less and less under- stood. USAID needs to examine in depth the various causes of this counterproduc- tive trend. In the following discussion of highlights from our findings, I outline the problems and present some possible solutions. Isolation and Frustration In the overseas missions we visited, with rare exception, USAID’s American personnel formed very fewmeaning- ful local relationships and tended to be uninformed or misinformed about local organizations and trends. Outside key government ministries and well known capital city–based organizations, they had limited knowledge of who was who, or what was going on in the rural areas— not to mention an understanding of the nuances of culture and social structure, and the ways in which these affect the country’s political economy. Moving from post to post every three or four years, USAID’s American person- nel tend to make assumptions based on past reports, talking with colleagues in other aid agencies or interacting with a few “usual suspects” in the capital cities. Enthusiastic and bright new staff often talked to us about their frustration. Typical was this lament from a young A black Chrysler pulls out of the gate of the U.S. embassy compound in Rabat followed by a security detail in an SUV. My Moroccan colleague and I are walking down a public sidewalk when a city policeman holds up his hand and signals us to stop while the two cars pass. After they do, we start walking again, but the policeman waves us away. “I’m sorry, but you cannot go this way,” he says. “Why not?” we ask. He replies that the U.S. embassy does not allow walking on the part of the street that faces the embassy gate. “Bledna! (This is our country!),” my Moroccan colleague shouts. But the policeman has his orders. He smiles apologetically and waves us to another street. a