The only areas increased above the president’s FY2011 request levels are: HIV/AIDS, refugees, education (including basic education and cultural exchanges) and water. There is no change in funding for Israel, Egypt, Jordan or the Peace Corps. All other programs are cut below the president’s request. On the flip side, the bill contains modest increases above last year’s enacted levels for everything except: Afghanistan, Iraq, counter narcotics, refugees, and voluntary peacekeeping operations.

Some line items of note:

Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC): $1.105 billion; $174 million below the president’s request and the same as FY2010 enacted.

Agriculture and food security: $1 billion; $353 million below the president’s request and $112 million above FY2010 levels. Of the $408 million in multilateral funding requested for global food security, the subcommittee provided only $150 million.

Global health and child survival: $2.725 billion; $288 million below the president’s request and $305 above FY2010 enacted.

HIV/AIDS: $5.875 billion; $25 million above the president’s request and $166 million above FY2010 enacted.

Afghanistan: $0; $3.9 billion below the president’s request. (Read more about the Afghanistan cut from Congresswoman Lowey and CGD colleagues Todd Moss and Casey Dunning.)

Pakistan: $2.514 billion; $540 million below the president’s request and $1.056 above FY2010 enacted.

Clean Tech Fund: $300 million; $100 million below the request and equal to FY2010 enacted.

International Development Association (IDA): $1.235 billion; $50 million below the president’s request and $27.5 million below FY2010 enacted.

Most remarkable is that the president’s requests for his new signature development initiatives on global health and food security are not fully funded. And the MCC, despite sounding a lot like the new approach for U.S. development, also gets cut below the request level. Similarly, administration efforts to channel more funding multilaterally are restrained. Again, I don’t envy the appropriators in this tough budget environment, but it’s hard to see signs of a new approach to U.S. global development here. All the more reason any effort from the administration to reform U.S. global development policy must work with Congress.

There is a lot to like about Feed the Future (my colleague Steven Rosenzweig says more about this). The initiative recognizes global food security as a moral, economic and security issue that is intimately linked to the success of other investments in health, education and economic growth. The program injects substantial new resources, both money and expertise, to help developing countries improve agricultural productivity and increase incomes. It aims to leverage expertise from across U.S. government and multilateral agencies. It is working in partnership with congressional partners including Senators Lugar and Casey. And features of the initiative–country ownership, a focus on women and girls, measuring impact and smart communications—are widely regarded as ingredients of development success.

The problem is that this new way for development looks an awful like the old way:

1. Who’s in charge? There is no one person in charge of the Feed the Future initiative. USAID Administrator Raj Shaj gave opening remarks at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ event last week, but is not necessarily the point person. Feed the Future is housed at the State Department and as far as I can tell the otherwise impressive Feed the Future website lacks staff or leadership information. Buried in the press releases you’ll find an explanation that Feed the Future will have two deputy coordinators: Ambassador Patricia Haslach will be the deputy coordinator for diplomacy and Ambassador William Garvelink will be the deputy coordinator for development. State Department’s Cheryl Mills said Secretary Clinton is ultimately accountable in partnership with Raj Shah and others, but that global food security coordinator has yet to be named.Having one point of contact matters not only for accountability to American taxpayers and Congress, but also for our partners in developing countries. If they don’t know who is in charge, whom do they call? It seems unlikely they call Hillary Clinton, and unmanageable to call Cheryl Mills, Raj Shah, Patricia Haslach, William Garvelink and the yet to be named coordinator. The bigger issue is how difficult it must be for our partners to keep track of all their development contacts: food security, global health, Millennium Challenge Corporation, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, investments in women and girls, climate programming, and so on.
2. New administration priority and program; separate structure and funding. It is not unreasonable for each administration to distinguish their efforts, development or otherwise, with flagship initiatives. But the number of new initiatives—PEPFAR, MCC, President’s Malaria Initiative, the Global Health Initiative, Feed the Future, and so on—adds up, creating a patchwork of highly fragmented programs in different government agencies that can work at cross-purposes or duplicate efforts. The creation of initiatives like PEPFAR and MCC outside of USAID was seen as an effort to work around the dysfunction of USAID, instead of rebuilding its capacity. The Obama administration has vowed to make USAID the “premiere development agency in the world” but Feed the Future fits the old pattern.
3. No clear coordination with other U.S. development policy tools. Increasing agricultural productivity and access to markets to improve incomes has clear connections with local, regional and international trade. I heard little about U.S. trade policies at the Feed the Future event last week, but clearly coordinated trade and food security policies matters for the success of the program. In contrast, investments in increasing the production of a certain crop or product through Feed the Future and then limiting the export of the same product with U.S. trade policies would be counterproductive. This of course requires broader coordination at the U.S. executive branch level—ideally through a U.S. global development strategy—and in Congress. Rep. McGovern acknowledged the challenges in Congress of multiple committees of jurisdiction over aid, trade, and related portfolios and wisely suggested congressional leadership pull together bipartisan meetings with all the committee chairs.

Again, these gaps don’t diminish the importance of global food security as part of our development objectives and our own moral, economic and national security interests. But they do signal that despite a growing consensus and unique window of opportunity to modernize U.S. foreign assistance, we’re still waiting. And while we wait, even the big, bold initiatives that have important objectives and intelligent approaches, end up looking a lot like business as usual. At a minimum, putting Raj Shah in charge of Feed the Future would be one way to have a clear point of contact, minimize new fragmentation, and signal that the administration is serious about building USAID’s capacity by letting it lead on a major new initiative (and one which Administrator Shah has specific experience and credibility). And we’ll keep hoping that the distinguishing feature of this administration’s development is still to come in the form of a U.S. global development strategy, a grand bargain with Congress on a new foreign assistance act, a streamlined and capable 21^st century development agency, and increased funding and accountability for our development dollars.

That’s why the new guide to the U.S. “Feed the Future” global food security initiative is such a breath of fresh air.  The document, released last Thursday and previewed in a speech by USAID Administrator Raj Shah at a symposium on global agriculture and food security hosted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, offers a coherent, thoughtful, detailed strategy for the new three-year, $3.5 billion program.  It remains unclear exactly how this program will fit into the current U.S. aid architecture and the long-delayed reform effort (see my colleague Sarah Jane Staats’ post that raises questions about who’s in charge, the initiative’s architecture and funding stream, and coordination with other development tools at the USG’s disposal).  But the new strategy document has a lot to like, including:

1)      Focused yet flexible priority-setting based on country needs and U.S. comparative advantages;

2)      A well thought-out plan for building local capacities and policy environments necessary for scaling-up country-led programs;

3)      And a clear commitment to learning through monitoring and evaluation.

An important question remains: will Congress give the new initiative the patient support it needs to succeed in its implementation?

Focused yet flexible priority-setting based on country needs and U.S. comparative advantages

The new strategy lays out a number of specific interventions that the initiative could support, yet it emphasizes that “investments will vary by country and will depend on the country’s highest priorities and the investments of the country itself, as well as the investments of other donor and key actors.”  Also important is the fact that, instead of trying to do some of everything, investments will “build on existing successes, our expertise and strengths, and be concentrated in strategic areas based on our comparative advantages” such as research and innovation and private sector-led growth.  This will ensure that U.S. support is targeted to those areas where its unique strengths give it the potential to have the greatest impact and will ensure that efforts are not spread too thin.

Also good to see is that the document describes relatively well-defined criteria for how the 20 focus countries have been chosen.  While the chosen criteria are somewhat subjective and open to interpretation, the fact that specified criteria even exist is an improvement over initiatives like PEPFAR, where the rationale that guided the choice of its original 15 focus countries has never been clear.

Well thought-out plan for building local capacities and policy environments necessary for scaling-up country-led programs

The new strategy outlines a clear, two-phased approach to supporting food security in its focus countries.  In Phase I, efforts will be largely devoted to “foundational” investments – technical, political, and financial support to help countries develop their national food security strategies, conduct policy reform, and their implementation capacity.  Countries that transition to Phase II will see increased funding of “core” investments aimed at inclusive agricultural sector growth and improved nutritional status.  In order to transition from Phase I to Phase II, countries will have to produce a technically sound national food security strategy; demonstrate evidence of coordination and consultation with key stakeholders; and demonstrate commitment and capacity as indicated by financial commitment and progress in policy reform.  Those countries that already meet these criteria can skip Phase I altogether.

This approach has a number of strengths, including the recognition that country contexts (including different levels of capacity, varied political commitment, and diverse policy environments) highly influence programs’ ability to succeed.  Addressing capacity, policy, and political constraints before throwing large amounts of money at a problem rather than as an afterthought is farsighted and could avoid some of the pitfalls of a PEPFAR-like “emergency” program.  At the same time, laying out a clear process for transitioning from initial “foundational” investments to “core” investments in Phase II is important for ensuring that programming is responsive to changing conditions in host countries.  More detail is needed, however, as to exactly what criteria and indicators the U.S. government will use to determine which countries qualify for Phase II is needed.

Clear commitment to learning through monitoring and evaluation

Last but not least, there is a clear commitment in the strategy to meaningful monitoring and evaluation of the new initiative.  The strategy commits to systematic qualitative and quantitative assessments of the U.S. contribution to broader changes and trends and to rigorous impact evaluation for a subset of innovative programming.  It also recognizes that objectives and corresponding indicators “will vary in importance, applicability, and feasibility” depending on the country context and that the main goal of data collection should be to inform future program design.

In his speech at the Chicago Council’s symposium, Administrator Shah said that the new initiative would be collecting baseline data from the start, a crucially important piece of any serious effort to evaluate impact.  He also noted that many programs supported by the new initiative were bound to fail, and that the main goal of the proposed evaluation would be to learn from these efforts to improve programming for the future.  He wisely urged Congress to show some patience with the new initiative and give it room to meet its goals in the long term.

Will Congress step back to allow the program to succeed (and fail!)?

A key question remains: will Congress give the initiative the time, leeway, and patient oversight it needs to alter the way in which the U.S. government does development?  Given near universal Congressional praise for PEPFAR and initial criticism of the slow pace of the MCC, it’s clear that programs that produce rapid results as measured by outputs rather than those that contribute to longer term development impacts generally have an easier time gaining widespread support among members of Congress.  Building capacity and improving policy environments is hard but essential, and showing results for long term endeavors takes time.  Many interventions worth trying are also bound to fail, but with good evaluation, we can learn from these failures to implement more successful programs in the future.

If the promising Feed the Future strategy is to be successful, Congress will have to give the new initiative some leeway to set its own priorities globally and at the country level; to pursue longer term development objectives; and to take risks while using meaningful evaluation to learn from both successes and failures.  Fortunately, there are several leaders in Congress who have been working closely with the administration to ensure a successful food security initiative, including Senators Lugar and Casey, who have introduced the Lugar-Casey Food Security bill.  At the same time, those implementing the program within the administration must regularly consult with their congressional counterparts on substantive issues to ensure productive collaboration in the future.