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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by J. Brady Anderson,
NAFSA Conference
USAID Administrator
June 2, 2000
Thank you and good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be here.
Let me begin by saying that I applaud the work NAFSA does to encourage international education-as President Clinton has said, to compete in a world that is getting smaller and moving faster, we need to develop a broad understanding of the world and all its cultures. And the best way to develop that understanding is through education.
I studied Bantu and Nilotic languages and cultures in East Africa and Swahili-I learned how they viewed time, how decisions were made, their concepts of ownership and the roles of women and men. All of this greatly enhanced my performance as an Ambassador because I had learned why and how things are done in that culture.
I always enjoy speaking to people like you about the importance of an international education; there is nothing I like better than preaching to the choir.
There has been a lot of talk about education in the news lately: how do we get American children trained for the new challenges they will face in the 21st century?
Globalization is not a choice, it is a fact. To compete in a global system in which ideas and capital can circle the globe with the push of the enter key requires an educated workforce.
But just as important, we need well-informed citizens who can hold our leaders accountable. The issues our government will be facing in the 21st century are global: the environment, terrorism (UBL and Dar), drugs and crime, diseases, proliferation of WMDs.
And we will be operating in a global economy in which American profits and jobs depend on the sale of goods and services in places like India and China.
Frankly , the more successful you international educators are in broadening the world view of tomorrows' leaders, the easier it will be for us to get the foreign affairs budget through Congress. I'm your biggest fan!
But it is not just the leaders we have to educate. One of the biggest challenges we face is narrowing the gap between the haves and the have nots -- or the educated and the under-educated, both within societies and among nations.
And that is why the biggest domestic issue-education-is also one of the biggest international issues.
In developing countries all over the world, USAID works to improve people's lives by helping them gain access to economic opportunity, better health care, and a stake in their political future.
Education is the foundation of all of these. It is, in fact, the linchpin of development.
As my friend, the late President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, once said, "Education is not a way to escape poverty, but a way of fighting it."
I would add that education is also the key to building a democracy.
We all know that democracy is about more than voting-certainly you don't need to be educated to be able to cast a ballot.
But the goal of democracy is not just to get people to the polls-it is to get them involved in their government and in shaping their own futures.
My father served in the Arkansas legislature for 25 years, and I know his proudest achievement in all those years was a bill he sponsored that created Arkansas's community college system.
My father did not come from a wealthy background himself. He believed that it was important for every Arkansan to have access to an affordable education.
In a government of, for, and by the people, the people must have meaningful involvement in the political process. And this is as true for Nigerians or Indonesians as it is for Americans.
So education and democracy go hand in hand. And, as it turns out, both are also essential to development.
It used to be that when people spoke of development they spoke almost exclusively of economic growth: GDP per capita and so on.
But what people really want, all over the world, is the same thing that you and I want: clean water and enough food to eat, access to good health care, and a relevant education for their children.
They want to have a say in selecting their leaders and criticizing them without fear of punishment.
Yes, these things require money, but they also require a system of government with leaders that are elected to serve the people, and who are therefore accountable to the people. This is what makes democracy different from all other forms of government: accountability!
Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, has said that a famine has never taken place in a functioning democracy.
When we first hear this we think that can't be right-we often hear about food shortages in countries that are not totalitarian states.
But a famine occurs when a country has a food shortage and the international community can't get food supplies from other parts of the world to the people who need it.
Sometimes this happens because an authoritarian government won't cooperate, and puts political conditions on food aid. Sometimes famines happen because during a war or conflict, the food is hijacked by the country's armed forces-or the opposing rebel forces.
This has been the case in every famine in the world-from Ethiopia in 1984 to Sudan in 1998.
On the other hand, when India-a democracy-faced a massive food shortage in 1951, the Indian government mobilized the international community quickly, and famine was avoided.
There can be no doubt that the Indian leaders worked hard to avoid famine because they did not want their people to starve. But because India is a democracy, they also knew that if they didn't help, the Indian people would remember on election day, and they would soon be out of a job.
But political participation, which is the foundation of everything I've just talked about, is not easy to bring about. (And it is not, I should add, a guarantee of freedom and prosperity.)
But we do know that education plays a big part.
At USAID we have education programs in over 30 countries.
Through President Clinton's Education for Development and Democracy Initiative, we are helping girls in 26 countries like Mali, Rwanda, and Senegal get a basic education.
In Africa a woman with at least four years of education is twice as likely to see that her own children are educated than a woman with no education. It is often the education of young girls that brings the greatest benefits to a society.
Important as programs like these are, education isn't always about school.
When Ford Motor Company opened a factory in Chennai, India, they needed skilled workers.
Working parents also needed trained child care workers.
USAID helped establish a sort of community college system in Chennai, where factory workers were trained to use the new automotive equipment. Others were taught to read and write, after which they were trained as childcare workers.
Employment rates have skyrocketed in Chennai since we started this program, and other cities in India were so impressed that there are now similar community colleges in four other Indian states.
I know my father would be happy to hear that.
Education is not a panacea for the challenges the developing world faces-neither is democracy. But we know that better education leads to stronger democracies. The freedoms inherent in a democracy are essential to an open and growing market economy.
And all of these things help us meet the number one challenge in developing countries: poverty.
But we can't expand our efforts to build democracies and market economies in places like eastern Europe or even maintain them, unless Congress gives us the budget resources we need.
Most Americans are astonished to learn that we devote a smaller percentage of our wealth to assisting overseas development than any other industrialized country. During the past decade, our rate of investment has declined by half; and since the days of Truman and Marshall, by more than 90 percent.
Question: which country provides the most assistance to Latin America? Even though it is our own backyard, the correct answer is Japan.
This year, Congress's budget plan would slash the President's request for international affairs funding by 12 percent. Right now, Congress is considering a budget for USAID that would cut our ability to fund programs for education, democracy, and economic growth. We need for Congress to support the President's request.
Before I go let me say one last thing about education:
The real value of an education is that it opens our minds and our hearts to new experiences-and these cannot be measured.
In this technological era it is sometimes easy to think that we can go anywhere we want to with the click of a mouse.
I spent eight years living and working in East Africa-many of them in Tanzania, home to Mt. Kilimanjaro
I know that today a jr. high student here in San Diego can sit at her computer and go online and research Kili (as they say in Africa) and learn all about how to climb it without ever leaving her bedroom or removing the cell phone from her ear. And this is a good thing-technology has made it easier than ever to learn about other parts of the world.
But going there yourself is another thing altogether.
No article can ever duplicate the experience of standing at the foot of Africa's tallest peak and looking up at that seemingly endless mountain.
No essay can reproduce the rhythms of a Tanzanian village on Lake Victoria as very early the sun is rising over the water, the women gather with babies strapped on their backs to buy tilapia from the men in their dugout canoes.
These things, and the warmth and genuineness of the Tanzanian people, are part of the essence of Tanzania-and I believe you can only truly understand it by being there.
My own life has been immeasurably enriched by the knowledge and understanding I have gained through formal and informal education in the four countries where Betty and I have been privileged to live and work.
So again, let me applaud the work that you do to bring the people of the world closer together-not only through technology and the internet, but through human understanding.
I believe our future will be brighter because where there is understanding there is hope.
Thank you.
This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
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Last Updated on: July 12, 2001 |
