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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Opening Statement By J. Brady Anderson,
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Administrator-designate
July 22, 1999
Thank you. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, it is an honor to be here today. I am grateful to President Clinton for the trust he has shown in me, and to this committee for your consideration of my nomination. If confirmed as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, I will work hard to be worthy of his trust and your support.
Since I am new to Washington, let me tell you a little about myself. I grew up in Helena, Arkansas, a small town on the Mississippi River. Both of my parents were schoolteachers, and my father and grandfather were members of the state legislature.
I graduated from Southwestern at Memphis - it is now Rhodes College - in 1967. That summer, while working here in Washington for Senator J. William Fulbright, I first met Bill Clinton, who was an employee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
I went on to spend three years as a navy communications officer, six months of it on a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam. After my military service my wife Betty Wray Anderson and I attended the University of Arkansas Law School, then returned to my hometown to open our own law office.
In 1977, after Bill Clinton was elected attorney general, I joined his administration as an assistant attorney general, and when he became governor I served as his special assistant and liaison for the departments of health and of human services.
After Governor Clinton was defeated in his bid for reelection, I taught politics and government at the University of Arkansas, then clerked for a U.S. District Judge. At the age of forty Betty and I quit our jobs, sold our house and moved with our two daughters to England to study theology and missiology for two years at All Nations Christian College.
As a summer internship we traveled to a village in Kenya near the Somali border where we stayed with a German family, Hanjo and Utta Rossbach and their three small children. The Rossbachs were members of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and were beginning a Bible translation project in the local language. However, they had to abandon their project when instability in Somalia made it unsafe to remain. I saw then for the first time how political instability and violence hold back nations and rob people of the potential that I believe God desires for every person.
After studying anthropology and sociolinguistics at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Dallas, Texas, we joined the Wycliffe Bible Translators and moved to Tanzania where we studied Swahili and began five years of living and working in the villages of East Africa. Our job, briefly put, was to move about the country and survey the entire language picture of various ethnic groups. Local church leaders used our research to set their priorities for new translations of the Bible. Our work contributed to eight Bible translation and literacy programs that are now in progress.
During those years, Betty and I drove our Land Cruiser through the African bush, slept in a tent, and met thousands of wonderful, generous, hard-working people. Late one afternoon we came upon a crowd of people in the middle of a dirt road. We stopped and discovered a pregnant woman who was in extreme pain. We placed her and a relative in our vehicle and headed for the nearest town. The muddy roads had deep ruts and each time we hit a pothole the woman screamed. I asked her kinsman if I should slow down but he said, "No, if you stop she'll die."
When we reached the government hospital we carried her limp body inside and lay her on a bare table in a bare room. The medical assistant said there was nothing that could be done for her because she had not obtained medical care earlier in her pregnancy. I had to wonder: How many of the hundreds of thousands of mothers and babies who die every year could be saved with adequate maternal and child health care?
Throughout our years in Africa, Betty and I kept in touch with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who always expressed interest in our work. After Clinton was elected President, he nominated me to be U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania, where I served for three years, starting in 1994.
Tanzania is a country with many problems, starting with widespread poverty, but it has known nearly forty years of peace and civilian rule. However, the country's development was held back because its leaders had chosen the socialist economic model. A woman in a market once told me why socialism failed. "I couldn't even sell my hens' eggs to my neighbor!" she explained. "I had to sell them to the government!"
I came to know the "George Washington" of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere. Although his economic policies were a disaster, Nyerere exhibited the courage and wisdom of a true leader by voluntarily stepping down in 1985 and allowing movement toward a market-based economy. Since then, Tanzanians have twice seen their national leadership change peacefully.
In the years when Betty and I were traveling from village to village, I knew that the people I met had no voice in political decisions and I wondered if they ever would. It was a thrill, in October 1995, to be an observer as Tanzania held its first free, multi-party election. We watched as multitudes of people, young and old, waited in line for hours to vote, first under a burning sun, then in a drenching rain. We saw the votes counted, one by one, by kerosene lanterns late into the night. Democracy was born before our eyes.
I was proud that programs sponsored by USAID had contributed to this transition to democracy. In my three years as ambassador I saw many times how our foreign assistance programs had a tangible impact on people's lives. I saw public health programs that saved mothers who otherwise might die in childbirth. I visited clinics that brought modern methods to bear on Africa's terrible HIV/AIDS problem.
I was particularly pleased that some USAID-supported programs focused on improving the lives of girls and women, particularly through education. One of the first things I had noticed in Tanzania was how hard the women work, fetching water from distant wells or streams, chopping and hauling firewood, working in the fields often miles away from the village with a baby on their backs and a hoe in their hands.
To live in a poor nation like Tanzania is to be an underdog, to live in one of its rural villages is to be an even greater underdog, and to be a woman there is to be the biggest underdog of all. I believe that to educate a girl in a developing country will bear fruit far greater than the very worthwhile goal of teaching her to read and write. Her health and that of her children will be better, her children are more likely to be educated and her family will be better able to compete in the economy.
Our foreign assistance programs have made a difference in the lives of people not only in Tanzania and Africa but all around the world. They work in Central America, where USAID is helping communities rebuild after Hurricane Mitch; in Asia, where the agency has invested in public health and child survival; and in the former Soviet Union, where the newly independent states are making the transition to democracy and free markets.
During the past thirty years, foreign assistance programs have contributed to dramatic improvements in the developing world. The literacy rate has doubled; the average woman now gives birth to three children, not six; life expectancy has increased more than ten years; smallpox has been eliminated; and the percentage of people with access to clean water has tripled. In the post-Cold War era, we have seen a growing movement toward democracy around the world, and USAID's pro-democracy programs have contributed to it in many ways.
Still, in the last analysis, I believe change can come only from within a country. The people and their leaders must genuinely desire to improve their lives. They have to root out the corruption that eats at the very soul of a society, reform their bureaucracies and ensure that the rule of law protects the commercial and civil rights of all of their citizens. If countries can do these things then we and others can help.
When we contribute to communities that educate girls as well as boys, promote the rule of law, and support the inherent desire of all people to work hard, to sell the fruit of their labors and to provide for their families, we are helping build strong, stable nations that won't start wars or export terrorists. Nations like that are good for America, because they will welcome the free flow of trade and ideas and become healthy trading partners and political allies.
Increasingly we Americans are selling our products, services and ideas all over the world. We should never be shy about also proclaiming the values embodied in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Our foreign assistance programs should be a reflection of who we are as Americans. We remain the last best hope for millions of men and women around the world. I believe the reason for this arises from our most cherished value as a people: our uncompromising belief in the dignity of the individual.
Before I take your questions, let me comment on two issues, the management of USAID and its relationship with the Department of State. I know, from my talks with individual Senators, that these are matters of concern to many of you.
Having been an ambassador, I have great respect for the Department of State and particularly for Secretary Albright. I believe that the decision to have the USAID Administrator report to the Secretary of State was a good one, and I intend to work with Secretary Albright and her staff to make this relationship strong and productive. The two agencies have collaborated for many years, and in recent months worked side by side to respond to the refugee crisis in Kosovo. I believe we can continue to improve our partnership as we pursue our nation's foreign policy goals.
As for management, it is the foundation upon which everything else rests. If confirmed by the Senate I intend to be a strong, hands-on manager at USAID, and to demand the utmost efficiency and fiscal responsibility. Our foreign assistance program can succeed only if Congress and the American people are confident that the funds entrusted to us by the American taxpayer are wisely spent.
I am honored by the prospect of heading this great agency. Ours is the most powerful nation on earth, politically, militarily and economically, and it is in our national interest to also lead the world in humanitarian relief and long-term economic development as well.
If confirmed, I will work with Congress, as well as with the Executive Branch, the international community, and USAID's many PVO, NGO and contractor partners, to advance American ideals and interests around the world.
Thank you for your time and attention. I will be glad to take your questions.
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 18, 2001 |
