Madeleine Bunting 15 June 2011
Rajiv Shah is one of the most powerful men in development policy – and one of the youngest. He arrived at the helm of the US development agency USAid just short of 37, as the highest ranking Indian-American in any presidential administration. Six days into the job, Haiti's earthquake struck and he was plunged into an intense three months of one of the biggest US aid initiatives in recent decades.
Nor has the pace or intensity of the job eased much since, but in London on Tuesday he was delighted as an audience of academics and activists – not usual enthusiasts for US aid policy – at the London School of Economics congratulated him several times for his commitments on food and health initiatives, in particular the US pledge of $450m to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) on Monday.
The appreciation must make a change from the fierce battle in Washington over USAid's budget, which is the target of a House of Representatives bill for $121m in cuts. At a time of economic hardship in the US, opinion surveys show aid's unprecedented unpopularity. One of Shah's biggest challenges right now, he told the Guardian, is persuading the American people that aid is in their interests.
"On the logo of USAid, it says "from the American people", but our work has to be seen as "for the American people", Shah argues. "Development is a fundamental part of our national security. It is extreme poverty – the realities of access to water and food – which creates the long-term drivers of our insecurity. Most wars are fought over scarce resources, and that is going to accelerate in the future. The food spike of 2008 led to food riots and instability. Bob Gates [the outgoing secretary of state for defence] has said, 'It is cheaper to do development than to send soldiers'. Admiral Mike Mullen [chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] is one of our strongest advocates."
In fact, the Pentagon has been a stalwart defender of USAid's budget in the current battles on Capitol Hill. An interesting contrast to the UK, where the defence establishment has been eyeing the aid budget with envy – and some resentment. Shah's defence of aid in terms of national interest reflects Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's overhaul of US foreign policy, which was spelled out in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review late last year. Shah in part attributes the increased emphasis on aid to the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the military has recognised the crucial role of governance and development to an exit strategy.
On Afghanistan, Shah is defiant of the many critics. Last week a congressional report damned USAid's programme there, and said much of the $18.8bn of funding had been "poorly spent" and was unlikely to prove durable. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the top two recipients of USAid by a large measure.
"It's been costly. We've lost 300 people working for USAid or our partners in eight years and it's cost a lot of money, but we have gone from 900,000 children in school to 7 million. Two and half million of them are girls. Health access has gone from 9% to 64% with huge falls in morbidity. Five million have moved out of poverty, with economic growth rates of 8%-10%. Agricultural productivity is up by 50%-70%. A huge amount has been achieved.
"Now our challenge is how to make that sustained as we embrace the transition. It's been a tough environment, and we have trebled staff in Afghanistan to improve accountability and audit our partners because of concerns about corruption."
But the subject that is probably closest to Shah's personal interests is food security. For seven years, he was director of programmes at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agriculture. And well before that, he remembers as a small boy visiting India for the first time with his parents from his home in suburban Detroit and experiencing with shock the slums of Mumbai and the acute human suffering he saw there. That childhood experience is what has driven his career.
"The 2008-09 food crisis pushed 100 million people back into poverty. We have been here before. In the late 60s, Paul Ehrlich was warning of a population bomb in which millions would starve, but that led to US agronomist, Norman Borlaug and his work on the green revolution – which has saved hundreds of millions of lives. We have learned a lot now about the environmental degradation it caused.
"But Africa was bypassed, and in 2006 the US was spending only $240m of its aid budget on agriculture, less than 3%. We have now increased that to $1.2bn in a programme, Feed the Future, which is working in 20 countries. The aim is to lift more than 18 million out of poverty and ensure that 7.1 million children are no longer malnourished."
Shah sees a big role for the private sector in this programme but also emphasises that the biggest impact on poverty will come from reaching small-scale women producers. USAid is working with co-operatives in countries such as Uganda.
"This is a structural challenge in global development: there are agrarian economies where large numbers of families devote 70% of their income to food, and that makes them highly susceptible to price shocks. A huge risk."
He believes that the right combination of technology and political will can have a huge impact in tackling this challenge, and points to the past as a reminder of what aid can achieve. "The Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, the green revolution and oral rehydration are three examples of initiatives which have saved millions of lives. The last was the invention of USAid when diarrhoea was ravaging families in many developing countries and much of the effort was focused on extending healthcare services. But a simple rehydration solution given to mothers has empowered them to save their children's lives. It's one of the greatest success stories of aid. Not only does it save lives, it reduces the disease burden of stunted development."
On such subjects, Shah is a powerful advocate for aid, but question him on controversial aspects of US development policy, such as subsidies to US cotton farmers that hit west Africa so badly, and he becomes vague – an indication of how USAid can find its work undermined by other government department policies such as on trade or agriculture.
He was also evasive about the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which the US has not signed up to. Instead, he points to a new website he has set up to track all USAid spending, but he acknowledges it doesn't track other US government departments' aid spend.
He has instituted a big reform of USAid, but perhaps even more influential on policy has been the Arab spring. He admits that it has shaken up how the agency works and who it works with. There needs to be a greater focus on smaller, grassroots organisations instead of larger, well-established institutions; less bureaucracy and fewer rules; more flexibility and risk-taking to back innovation. At the same time, Shah repeats frequently that he wants to show results for every taxpayer dollar spent. It all adds up to a demanding agenda.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/15/rajiv-shah-america-aid
Rajiv Shah is one of the most powerful men in development policy – and one of the youngest. He arrived at the helm of the US development agency USAid just short of 37, as the highest ranking Indian-American in any presidential administration. Six days into the job, Haiti's earthquake struck and he was plunged into an intense three months of one of the biggest US aid initiatives in recent decades.
Nor has the pace or intensity of the job eased much since, but in London on Tuesday he was delighted as an audience of academics and activists – not usual enthusiasts for US aid policy – at the London School of Economics congratulated him several times for his commitments on food and health initiatives, in particular the US pledge of $450m to the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) on Monday.
The appreciation must make a change from the fierce battle in Washington over USAid's budget, which is the target of a House of Representatives bill for $121m in cuts. At a time of economic hardship in the US, opinion surveys show aid's unprecedented unpopularity. One of Shah's biggest challenges right now, he told the Guardian, is persuading the American people that aid is in their interests.
"On the logo of USAid, it says "from the American people", but our work has to be seen as "for the American people", Shah argues. "Development is a fundamental part of our national security. It is extreme poverty – the realities of access to water and food – which creates the long-term drivers of our insecurity. Most wars are fought over scarce resources, and that is going to accelerate in the future. The food spike of 2008 led to food riots and instability. Bob Gates [the outgoing secretary of state for defence] has said, 'It is cheaper to do development than to send soldiers'. Admiral Mike Mullen [chairman of the joint chiefs of staff] is one of our strongest advocates."
In fact, the Pentagon has been a stalwart defender of USAid's budget in the current battles on Capitol Hill. An interesting contrast to the UK, where the defence establishment has been eyeing the aid budget with envy – and some resentment. Shah's defence of aid in terms of national interest reflects Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's overhaul of US foreign policy, which was spelled out in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review late last year. Shah in part attributes the increased emphasis on aid to the experience of Afghanistan and Iraq, where the military has recognised the crucial role of governance and development to an exit strategy.
On Afghanistan, Shah is defiant of the many critics. Last week a congressional report damned USAid's programme there, and said much of the $18.8bn of funding had been "poorly spent" and was unlikely to prove durable. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the top two recipients of USAid by a large measure.
"It's been costly. We've lost 300 people working for USAid or our partners in eight years and it's cost a lot of money, but we have gone from 900,000 children in school to 7 million. Two and half million of them are girls. Health access has gone from 9% to 64% with huge falls in morbidity. Five million have moved out of poverty, with economic growth rates of 8%-10%. Agricultural productivity is up by 50%-70%. A huge amount has been achieved.
"Now our challenge is how to make that sustained as we embrace the transition. It's been a tough environment, and we have trebled staff in Afghanistan to improve accountability and audit our partners because of concerns about corruption."
But the subject that is probably closest to Shah's personal interests is food security. For seven years, he was director of programmes at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on agriculture. And well before that, he remembers as a small boy visiting India for the first time with his parents from his home in suburban Detroit and experiencing with shock the slums of Mumbai and the acute human suffering he saw there. That childhood experience is what has driven his career.
"The 2008-09 food crisis pushed 100 million people back into poverty. We have been here before. In the late 60s, Paul Ehrlich was warning of a population bomb in which millions would starve, but that led to US agronomist, Norman Borlaug and his work on the green revolution – which has saved hundreds of millions of lives. We have learned a lot now about the environmental degradation it caused.
"But Africa was bypassed, and in 2006 the US was spending only $240m of its aid budget on agriculture, less than 3%. We have now increased that to $1.2bn in a programme, Feed the Future, which is working in 20 countries. The aim is to lift more than 18 million out of poverty and ensure that 7.1 million children are no longer malnourished."
Shah sees a big role for the private sector in this programme but also emphasises that the biggest impact on poverty will come from reaching small-scale women producers. USAid is working with co-operatives in countries such as Uganda.
"This is a structural challenge in global development: there are agrarian economies where large numbers of families devote 70% of their income to food, and that makes them highly susceptible to price shocks. A huge risk."
He believes that the right combination of technology and political will can have a huge impact in tackling this challenge, and points to the past as a reminder of what aid can achieve. "The Marshall plan for Europe after the second world war, the green revolution and oral rehydration are three examples of initiatives which have saved millions of lives. The last was the invention of USAid when diarrhoea was ravaging families in many developing countries and much of the effort was focused on extending healthcare services. But a simple rehydration solution given to mothers has empowered them to save their children's lives. It's one of the greatest success stories of aid. Not only does it save lives, it reduces the disease burden of stunted development."
On such subjects, Shah is a powerful advocate for aid, but question him on controversial aspects of US development policy, such as subsidies to US cotton farmers that hit west Africa so badly, and he becomes vague – an indication of how USAid can find its work undermined by other government department policies such as on trade or agriculture.
He was also evasive about the International Aid Transparency Initiative, which the US has not signed up to. Instead, he points to a new website he has set up to track all USAid spending, but he acknowledges it doesn't track other US government departments' aid spend.
He has instituted a big reform of USAid, but perhaps even more influential on policy has been the Arab spring. He admits that it has shaken up how the agency works and who it works with. There needs to be a greater focus on smaller, grassroots organisations instead of larger, well-established institutions; less bureaucracy and fewer rules; more flexibility and risk-taking to back innovation. At the same time, Shah repeats frequently that he wants to show results for every taxpayer dollar spent. It all adds up to a demanding agenda.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/jun/15/rajiv-shah-america-aid
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