Interview with Nancy Birdsall
FrontLines - February 2010
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered a major speech on U.S. foreign aid
and international development policies Jan. 6 (see article, this page). She was introduced
by Nancy Birdsall, a founder and president at the Center for Global Development, a think
tank focused on improving the economic development of poor countries. On Jan. 12,
Birdsall sat down with FrontLines Editorial Director Ben Barber for an interview.
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Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development
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Q: What does the speech
Hillary Clinton gave last
week mean for USAID and
for its role in the U.S.
government?
BIRDSALL: The speech she
gave is probably the most
ambitious and strategically
focused speech from a secretary
of state on development
that I can remember.
She waited to give the
speech until there was a
USAID administrator, Dr.
Rajiv Shah. That signaled her
view that USAID is the centerpiece
within the State
Department for development
and that her own ambition is
that USAID return to being
the world’s premiere development
agency.
It’s an elevation admittedly
from really a kind of nadir in
terms of reputation and I
would say even effectiveness.
Q: What are the areas of
USAID that have deteriorated
over the years with budget
and staff cuts?
BIRDSALL: In the 1960s,
USAID produced some of the
best and most strategic thinking
on development. That’s
where the thought leadership
was in the field.
So where has weakness
come? Everywhere—policy,
strategy, effectiveness in the
field, flexibility, the loss of
whatever animal spirits or
incentives inside the bureaucracy
led to innovation.
The problems come from
outside, from congressional
mandates and earmarks.
USAID is focused on compliance,
on fears of waste and
corruption, and thus on monitoring
of all the inputs that
make up a foreign assistance
program, instead of working
with the partner countries on
the outcomes.
Q: So how are Hillary Clinton
and Rajiv Shah going to
change it?
BIRDSALL: Leadership is
needed from the administration in
working with the Congress on
new legislation. The legislation
that created USAID goes back to
the 1960s. There’s a lot of eagerness
on the congressional side—
from [Sen.] John Kerry [D-Mass.]
from [Rep.] Howard Berman
[D-Calif.] from [Sen.] Richard
Lugar [R-Ind.]—to make progress.
Secretary of State Clinton
also spoke of the need to rethink
the role of development in foreign
policy beyond foreign assistance
to trade policy, migration policy,
climate strategy, and investment
programs and policies.
Q: What are the areas in which
USAID has unique value that
can be rebuilt?
BIRDSALL: The staff of USAID
have years of experience in the
field. They have not had channels
to feed their strategic vision and
use their ground-truthing. They
lack effective channels of communication
between those who
have experience on the ground
and those who are doing the big
thinking in Washington, in USAID
itself, in the State Department, and
in all the other agencies in federal
government involved in
development.
Also, USAID within the State
Department is the agency that
stands for what Secretary Clinton
emphasized is the long haul, the
lasting changes that take longer,
the sustainability part. So the
challenge inside the State Department
is to preserve somehow, to
ring-fence the budget and policy
and provide enough autonomy to
USAID as an agency, even inside
the State Department, that it has a
strong voice relative to diplomacy
as well as to defense.
Human nature is that the
short-term imperative of diplomacy
will crowd out the longerterm
imperative of development.
We need an agency that stands
for the long haul.
Q: What is the impact of having
many different government agencies
involved in development?
BIRDSALL: We have to have
many different government
agencies involved with development—
we live in a complicated
world. So it’s not a bad thing,
per se, to have what people call
fragmentation.
What’s important, however, is
to have one strategic view. And
that’s why this presidential study
directive that’s been led in the
White House is so important,
because hopefully it is bringing
together all of the agencies inside
the federal government as well as
outside government: the foundations,
the private sector. The idea
is to develop a strategic focus and
direction that guides implementation
of trade policy, of foreign
assistance programs, of our
approach to climate change as it
affects people in developing
countries, of our approach to
security issues in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, and so on.
Leadership should come from
a development agency. It doesn’t
mean that the development agency
or its leadership gets to tell everybody
else what to do in other people’s
domains, but just as we have
the U.S. trade representative present
in discussions about security
or the head of the Department of
Commerce present, we need the
development perspective in those
larger discussions.
Q: How much of the policy
speech is new and how much is
a continuation of long-standing
practices?
BIRDSALL: It must be frustrating
for people in USAID to hear
things and have the world think
it’s new when they’ve been living
with these messages and
these ideals and this mission for
a long time.
I think what’s important about
the speech, frankly, is that it came
from the secretary of state, who is
clearly tremendously knowledgeable
and tremendously passionate.
She reflected in the speech and
brought together ideas that may
seem not entirely new, but it’s still
new for an official at the highest
level in the U.S. to be repeating
them in a very careful, intelligent,
passionate way.
One thing that was also
new in the speech was the references
to innovation and to
some programs at the global
level like the advanced market
commitment. For example, the
United States with others
might buy at a certain price
vaccines which otherwise
wouldn’t get either researched
and developed or produced in
sufficient quantities. So it’s to
create an incentive to the private
sector to put in the
resources to develop or produce
a certain product.
Q: Clinton says contractors
have taken over too large a
role in USAID; how can this
be changed?
BIRDSALL: Contractors are
not all bad. A lot of very good
people work for the contractors.
But it’s very low value
for money, for the American
people, because the costs for
the outcomes, and even for
the inputs, say in Afghanistan
or in Malawi or in Papua New
Guinea, are just too high. But
more important is inflexibility—
that because of pre-existing
contracts, it’s very difficult
for a USAID mission
director to have resources to
do something that needs to be
done and makes sense to do
now. The money is locked up
in specific sectors. And there’s
been a reduction in the number
of technically competent
staff in USAID to interact
with contractors. Some of
that expertise needs to be
internalized in the government
itself, not contracted out.
★
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