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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
INSIDE DEVELOPMENT
In this section:
Schieck’s 40-Year Road from Quito to Acting
Administrator
U.S. to Double Aid to $2.7 Billion to Help Developing
Countries Boost Their Trade
Schieck’s 40-Year Road from Quito to Acting Administrator
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USAID Acting Administrator Frederick W. Schieck
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Forty years after Frederick W. Schieck joined USAID as an
intern in 1965, he takes over Jan. 12 as interim administrator
of the Agency, replacing Andrew S. Natsios who leaves after
five years in office for a teaching post at Georgetown University.
“We’re doing well and we should keep on doing
well,” said Schieck, surrounded in his office by Afghan
carpets, photographs of Asia, and other mementos of his decades
working on international development around the globe.
“Our work has greater visibility now because more people
in Washington understand the importance of development to
achieving strategic goals.
“AID has received a lot of recognition in the last
few years, but we also took the usual hits because of the
penchant of the press to accentuate the negative. We work
in difficult areas where it is not always possible to achieve
everything we want to get done. But our people are committed
and ought to be commended for working in difficult circumstances.
“This is very interesting work we do in USAID,”
he added. “To me one of the most rewarding things is
to visit the field where I get a different perspective. There
is a lot of gratitude by people for what we do—that is
not often translated or highlighted well here in Washington.”
Schieck plans to remain in his sixth-floor office where
he has worked as deputy administrator for the past four years.
He said he does not know how long he will serve as interim
chief, whether for a few weeks or for some months before President
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nominate a new
administrator, who will then require Senate confirmation.
Schieck was brought up in Washington—his father was
an Air Force officer—and earned his undergraduate degree
at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service. After stints
at the Department of Commerce and the Army, he earned a master’s
degree from Harvard Business School in 1965 and immediately
joined USAID as an International Development Intern and became
a loan officer.
“Most of our development assistance funding then was
provided as loans to governments. My job was to work closely
with government ministries to design projects and then help
with their implementation,” said Schieck.
Many loans were for large infrastructure projects such as
power plants, ports, and roads. Others were for “softer
sectors” such as education, schools, technical assistance,
textbooks, health centers, training health workers, and medical
equipment.
The loans to governments—similar to loans currently
given out by the World Bank and other international development
banks—were replaced by grants in the mid-1970s because
of congressional and administration concern with the increasing
debt load of poor countries. USAID continued to fund government-managed
programs until the late 1980s when the Agency began to channel
increasing amounts of funds through nongovernmental organizations,
contractors, and universities. Today, these groups have primary
responsibility for carrying out development programs for the
Agency.
“I’d like to open the door to working directly
with governments again where it makes sense—it builds
sustainability and builds capacity,” said Schieck. “Ministries
that manage projects learn important lessons, which encourages
them to expand these programs to benefit others in their countries
using their own funding or other donor funding,” he said.
“A popular misconception in the Agency today is that
moving to host government agreements means turning cash over
to government agencies and then taking our chances that the
money would be well spent for the purposes intended. In reality,
there are any number of mechanisms which would protect the
Agency from misuse of funds such as making payments directly
to suppliers. Also, we need to find ways to spend more of
USAID’s funds in developing countries,” Schieck
said.
Schieck is having a series of briefings with Agency staff
on the top challenges affecting the Agency, which he said
includes Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, global health issues, relationships
with the State Department, and the FY 2006 budget crunch.
Schieck served much of his career in Latin America, beginning
in Ecuador, then Bolivia, Chile, and Guatemala, where he was
mission director. He married a Bolivian woman, Sara, and they
have a daughter.
He also served in Asia as mission director in the Philippines
during an especially important period as the Marcos regime
wound down and democracy was returned through the direct efforts
of the Philippine people.
After stints as deputy assistant administrator of the bureaus
for Latin America, Asia, and Policy and Program Coordination,
Schieck retired in 1990 and then joined the Inter-American
Development Bank for another 10 years of work in development.
In 2001, he was nominated by President Bush to be deputy
administrator and he was confirmed in January 2002.
Asked to recall some of his fondest moments with USAID,
he recalled a fantastic two-week drive with his brother from
one USAID job in Quito, Ecuador, via Lima, Peru, to his next
post in La Paz, Bolivia. It was July 1966 and the roads went
up to 15,000 feet and then followed the slopes and valleys
of the Andes.
Finally, coming across the arid high-altitude desert of
the Altiplano at dusk, La Paz was hidden at first in a deep
valley until they reached its edge and viewed thousands of
lights twinkling in the darkness below. “It was a spectacular
sight,” he recalled, “especially since I had thought
we had already reached La Paz when we entered El Alto, a collection
of adobe houses near the airport with few lights to be seen.”
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Acting Administrator Frederick W. Schieck during 2003
trip to Afghanistan.
Colin Sperling/USAID |
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U.S. to Double Aid to $2.7 Billion to Help Developing Countries
Boost Their Trade
HONG KONG—At the World Trade Organization meeting
in Hong Kong Dec. 14, the United States announced it would
increase support for trade by developing countries from $1.3
billion this year to $2.7 billion by 2010.
The goal is to provide “developing countries with the
tools needed to benefit from the global trading system,”
said Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Karan Bhatia, who noted
that “the U.S. today is the leading single country provider
of aid for trade.”
Speaking at the world meeting, USAID Administrator Andrew
S. Natsios said food aid provided by the United States does
not greatly affect world food markets as some critics at the
meeting alleged.
Natsios and the Bush Administration have sought congressional
permission to use some of the $1.4 billion in U.S. food aid
each year to purchase food in local markets near hunger zones—instead
of continuing to supply all U.S. food aid from American farm
surpluses.
But he said Europeans went too far in calling for a complete
end to sending U.S. farm surpluses to deal with hunger abroad.
When Europeans recently switched from supplying their home-grown
food to giving cash, they then cut the total funding by two-thirds.
“There are now 852 million people around the world
who are hungry, according to the United Nations’ statistics,”
Natsios said.
“Hunger and malnutrition are still the greatest threats
to health worldwide. They claim 10 million lives each year.
And acute malnutrition is growing, particularly in the sub-Sahara
Africa, where agricultural productivity has been in decline
for a decade.
“The United States provides nearly 60 percent of all
global food aid at the United Nations World Food Program…about
three times the level of food assistance provided by the European
Union and all European aid agencies.”
However, U.S. food aid “was less than 2 percent of
U.S. agricultural trade—so it does not have any effect
in global prices,” Natsios said.
Natsios warned that “in 2005, the United Nations expects
to experience a $1 billion shortfall in total food aid contributions.”
He noted that in 1995, Europe and the United States each
gave about 4 million tons of food aid. But after Europeans
shifted entirely to a local purchase option—giving money
rather than European surplus food—European Union aid
is now down to around just under 1.5 million tons a year while
U.S. aid remains at the same 4 million tons.
“This has had a significant consequence for emergency
relief operations around the world,” Natsios said.
He added that food experts should have a greater say in
decisions such as the European shift to local purchases.
“We don’t think these kinds of situations, these
sorts of negotiations, should be the place that life or death
issues should be decided on assistance issues dealing with
food aid, unless experts are at the table, and they are not,”
Natsios said.
He noted that in some famines or food shortages, if a donor
tries to buy up food locally it would drive prices even higher
and make hunger worse.
Natsios, who leaves USAID Jan. 12 to teach at Georgetown
University, said that it is very troubling that “famines
that used to occur every 20 years then started occurring every
10 years, then every five years, and now it’s every two
years. That’s a result of bad agricultural practices
and policies within Ethiopia.”
“Ethiopian farmers cannot trade easily with Kenyan
[and] Ugandan farmers,” Natsios said. “We believe
if there was a free trading system—I believe, as a development
person—if there was a free trade system in the Horn of
Africa, there would be a reduction in the level of emergency
requirements in Ethiopia, which would be good for the Ethiopian
people and it would be good for the donors.”
He also said Ethiopia needed to develop a market economy
capable of storing, shipping, and marketing surplus food from
one season to the next or among its regions.
“So the absence of a free trading system in Africa
in food is leading to more emergencies, more malnutrition,
more hunger, and more famines,” Natsios said.
“Food aid is not the answer to Ethiopia’s problems
with famine,” he added. “The answer is development.”
He said some progress has taken place. “We are seeing
some economic growth in the country… We are putting a
lot more money into agriculture—the Canadians are and
the European Union is and the World Bank is.”
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