Leveraging USAID partnerships promotes peace and prosperity

Here is a simple truth: The stability of any nation rises or declines in direct relation to its economic well-being.

That’s why the United States — through the U.S. Agency for International Development — has worked for more than half a century to help improve the lives of people around the world as an essential component of U.S. foreign policy.

{mosads}USAID initiatives aimed at improving the economic fortunes of poor populations have been working in parallel with U.S. diplomatic efforts to prevent poverty and social unrest from boiling over into conflict in scores of fragile states around the world.

In effect, USAID’s trajectory has shifted so that it now generates the best outcomes toward accomplishing its mission by serving as a catalyst for collaboration. Over the last two decades, the agency has shifted toward a much more cost-effective and efficient model: private sector and military partnerships.

By deploying an ever-greater share of its financial and technical resources to these partnerships, USAID now effectively leverages larger private sector and military efforts in fragile states to further shared goals for sustainable development to support U.S. national security. Under this approach, rather than serving as the primary actor, USAID functions as a catalyst to address the root causes of conflict and achieve lasting stability.

One example of a USAID private-sector partnership project that is enjoying success is the Farm Service Center model. Funded by USAID grants and in-kind contributions from grantees, FSCs are locally owned retail farm supply and service businesses that equip and provide training to small-scale farmers and rural entrepreneurs.

After an initial four-year pilot in Moldova provided proof of concept, the idea spread quickly. Today, 85 independent, self-funding FSCs together comprise the second-largest private agribusiness in the country and serve 1.3 million Moldovan farmers. The FSC model has been replicated in Afghanistan, Georgia and Ethiopia.

Under a second approach, USAID partners with local communities and organizations to mobilize their resources and expertise to pursue economic development goals. For example, in 1990, USAID partnered with the Alexandria Business Association — which promotes the interests of businesses in Alexandria, Egypt — to jointly fund the ABA/Small and Micro Enterprise Project. The initiative, launched to provide microfinance services to small entrepreneurs, became self-supporting after two years.

Like the FSC pilot, the ABA/SME pilot provided proof of concept and was duplicated many times over. As of March 2017, ABA/SME had dispersed nearly 1.7 million loans to more than 663,000 small businesses. Other organizations in Egypt have designed similar programs, magnifying the impact of the initiative far beyond the scope of the original project.

USAID enters a third kind of partnership — civilian-military cooperation — when its work takes place in fragile states that also are theaters of activity for the U.S. military. In these cases, the agency cooperates with the Department of Defense to coordinate international development with defense efforts. By working together, the two agencies ensure that their policies, planning, programming, and outreach align in a way that best advances U.S. foreign policy.

Through these partnerships, military forces also help to provide USAID with a more secure environment in which to pursue its development efforts. This cooperative arrangement proved to be exceptionally useful in 2003, when USAID awarded its first contract under the Iraq Infrastructure Reconstruction Program.

It was only through close collaboration with DOD that USAID was able to launch and execute the reconstruction program in the country’s dangerous post-conflict environment. Similarly, USAID and DOD have replicated the process in areas of mutual activity, Philippines, Colombia and the Sahel.

These partnerships achieved their objectives more quickly and effectively than if USAID worked independently. I have cited only three of many partnerships. Every day, social and political unrest threatens many of the world’s poorest regions as they struggle with ongoing economic uncertainty.

It is in our interest to use the fastest and most effective means at our disposal — partnerships — to launch efforts that help bring peace and prosperity to regions that pose threats to our national security.

We can do this by empowering the agency to provide the staff and seed money necessary to introduce the social and economic benefits of partnerships with the private sector and the U.S. military in the growing list of fragile states which may otherwise serve as breeding grounds for conflict.

Greg Huger is a senior associate with the Project on U.S. Leadership in Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served in senior USAID leadership positions in Ukraine, Pakistan, Afghanistan Egypt and El Salvador.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.