What does USAID Mali do?

The USAID mission in Mali uses funds from the American people to increase Malians’ incomes and well-being, improve health and education standards, and provide tools to govern effectively and transparently. USAID Mali has four main programs: high impact health services, improved quality of basic education, governance and communications, and accelerated economic growth.

Improving health services

Malaria is the number one killer of children in Mali. USAID promotes use of insecticide treated bednets, the most cost-effective way to reduce malaria, making nearly half a million available since the start of the program. USAID funding also expands access to HIV/AIDS prevention and testing services, further consolidates HIV/AIDS surveillance activities, reduces vitamin A and iron deficiency, increases immunization coverage, prevents and treats diarrheal diseases, and expands access to family planning, and reproductive health services.

Increasing the quality of basic education

Mali’s primary school enrollment rate is among the lowest in the world, particularly for girls. Quality of education is so low that only half of Malian students have learned to read by the end of Grade 6. To address these problems, USAID works to improve the quality of basic education in over 900 public, community-owned, and Islamic (medersa) primary schools. Through President Bush's Africa Education Initiative, USAID provides school-based and distance teacher training to over 5,500 teachers. USAID has developed radio-based teacher training, including Interactive Radio Instruction broadcast directly into primary school classrooms, which benefits over 100,000 students. USAID works to mobilize communities to improve their local schools by providing adult literacy training to over 6,000 adult learners and supporting capacity-development activities for 700 School Management Committees. To date, this has resulted in the implementation of over 11,000 School Improvement Projects. In the northern regions of Mali, USAID uses Africa Education Initiative resources to fund scholarships for approximately 6,000 disadvantaged girl students each year

Governance and communications

The Governance and Communications Strategic Objective (GovCom) consolidates two formerly separate programs: Democratic Governance and Communications for Development. Areas of GovCom supoprt include civil society, national and local elections, decentralization, radio, and peace and stability in the northern regions of Mali. In particular, GovCom works to reinforce a decentralized system of shared democratic governance by strengthening the capacity of civil society actors and local elected authorities so that each can effectively and efficiently undertake their roles and responsibilities. GovCom also supports peace and stability in the northern regions of Mali by helping to increase public access to quality development information, promoting local development, and reinforcing conflict mitigation mechanisms.

Accelerating economic growth

Embracing the Feed the Future initiative principles of selectivity, focus, country-led programming, and coordination with other investors, the AEG team will invest strategically to achieve measurable and sustainable outcomes in three agricultural value chains and in children’s nutrition levels in three regions of Mali. It will strengthen the millet/sorghum, rice and livestock value chains at points where they are most constrained; adapt technologies to local conditions; and enhance the ability of public and private delivery, extension and advisory services to disseminate information to Malian agricultural producers, processors and other players in the value chain.

 

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Last Updated on: February 23, 2012