Administrator Samantha Power at the Global Development Strategy Launch

ADMINISTRATOR SAMANTHA POWER: Thank you so much, Paula [Tufro], I'll say a word about you in just a minute. But let me start by thanking Jake [Sullivan] for another master class. We come to always have things clarified when Jake formulates a world view and a vision, and he has lived a dedication throughout his time in government - not just you know, in the job that he has now, such an important job, but his conviction that our security is linked to development progress around the world - our human security at home, our stability as a planet, and of course, with transnational threats that cross borders, everything we hold dear. And and we have seen that through every incarnation Jake has been in government, it's just been incredible to have you in this role with that agenda so foremost in your mind and ultimately in our policies. So, thank you.

We have a dream team here. I'm kind of worried about this room. Everybody has to stay safe because the entire development A-team is with us. Deputy Secretary [Rich] Verma; MCC CEO Alice Albright; Alexia Latortue, Assistant Secretary at Treasury; Nisha Biswal, DFC Deputy CEO. I saw Carol Spahn from the Peace Corps. I could go on. So, thank you all.

I think this strategy is a vision for going forward, but it also, in many ways, captures what you all have done so ably these last years, and what we at USAID - are so grateful to be able to partner with you on. I also want to thank Paula for herding the cats, but also so much of what is in here is what you have helped spearhead in the world by coordinating, but also by driving, by driving this agenda across all of the agencies within the U.S. government, and not just here, by multilateralizing this agenda in profound ways. So, the strategy is a symptom of that, and it will fuel further progress going forward, but it's really a tribute to you and the work of your team. I also want to thank Michele Sumilas, who's our Acting Deputy Administrator, and Lauren Baker at USAID, who worked hand-in-glove with you and your team in pulling this together.

So, on the substance, I feel you know, my job, in some ways, to link the world's largest bilateral development humanitarian Agency to this strategy is very easy to do because every word in that strategy is what we are trying to live every day. But it is worth, I think, stepping back and thinking about the last time we updated a strategy. It was 2010. It was a very different world. We were in the home stretch of the millennium development goals. The goal had been to cut in half the percentage of the world's population living in extreme poverty by 2015; and that goal had been met, in part because of, of course, the progress in very large populated countries, but in part because there was a lot of momentum and a lot of innovation being brought online, and in part because of the work of so many of you here. There was historic progress being made in getting kids into school, and combating TB and Malaria, reducing the number of children dying before their fifth birthdays.

And today, the picture is much more complicated. The years after COVID not only brought the first rise in numbers of people living in extreme poverty in decades, but I feel like this really orients us at USAID, the first decline in life expectancy in half a century. And to some degree, when I think about all that we are trying to achieve, that's a sort of simple metric we can all rally behind. How can we get back on track to increasing something as basic as how long you live? And so many of the strands in this strategy come together, I think, in allowing us to work toward achieving that ambition.

Conflict, of course, has been a major blow to life expectancy. More of the world's population is experiencing conflict today than at any point since World War II. And climate disasters are battering communities, as we know all around the world. And so for us, as we think about even generous allocations of resources from Congress and a pretty sturdy bipartisan majority that has stood behind those investments - the fact of the matter is, the resources that we are being provided are just not keeping up with the challenges that we are facing. And for that reason, among others, we at USAID, have been thinking a lot about how we do things differently in light of that core fact.

In fact, we've been sort of obsessing about that question for some time. How can we be a leveraging agency? How can we be a catalytic agency? How can we bring peripheral vision to all of our investments and not just think vertically? How can we use what are limited resources ultimately to spur broader and more lasting and enduring change? And we have come to a few answers that, of course, are at the heart of the strategy that we are launching today and at the heart of the changes that we have been trying to make at USAID over the last several years.

I think that, for starters, we are transforming the way we work with the private sector, and this is a key pillar of the new strategy. Historically, in truth, we didn't invest nearly enough as an agency in trying to spark those partnerships, to try to figure out; what would it take for a business to bring online its comparative advantage? You know, was there a little de-risking capital? Was there something else that we could do? And with the support of the White House, we have created a now two year-old fund called the Edge Fund, which is $50 million a year. And it's kind of an incentive fund, a catalytic partnership fund that allows us to go to businesses and, in effect, say, what will it take for you to bring that comparative advantage to bear? I'll give you one tiny example because I feel in the abstract, there's so many funds out there, it's never quite clear what we're talking about.

But in Ecuador, many of the country's farmers live in poverty despite working grueling hours. One of the country's largest businesses, and certainly the largest supermarket chain in the country, is called La Favorita, and it was open to buying produce directly from small-scale farmers. But the problem was, the way the farmers were actually growing their produce. It didn't really align to consumer preferences, so there were multiple middlemen who got involved and managed to ensure that the farmers earned far less. The supermarket eventually got the produce, but it really wasn't allowing farmers to make investments in creating their own businesses and the like. So, we figured out what the supermarket chain needed. Through a little bit of Edge Fund capital, we convinced the supermarket chain to go further afield into the Amazon, to reach marginalized communities and bring their refrigerated trailers far further than they had gone before. And so now farmers have the training that they need to know exactly what the supermarket chain needs. The middlemen have been eliminated, and the ability now of what had been self-sufficient farmers to actually expand their businesses, hire other people, and expand their productivity and their profit has gone way up. And this is just a small example. It took tiny money - was catalytic, and now USAID can go away, and the supermarket chain and the farmers can continue to do their business going forward.

So, a diversified supply chain is something we're all looking for. Figuring out what catalytic investment can do to make those kinds of things happen is really, really important. From FY 2021 to FY 2023 alone, thanks to an agency-wide push, private sector partner contributions to USAID activities like these jumped by over 60 percent and today, I'm pleased to announce that our next round of Edge funding is open for business, and we invite private sector partners out there to reach out.

We are also building on the success of the Lobito Corridor that Jake mentioned, and has so much to do with making possible, and this, of course, is very much in keeping with the broader strategies, commitment to quality infrastructure development, of which we know the Lobito Corridor is really just the first of what will be many pillars. USAID, though, in the Lobito context, is supporting the public private partnership unit in Angola's Transportation Department to facilitate investment in building rail and infrastructure that will connect communities across Angola and beyond to economic opportunity. So again, it's not something we're doing out there if that Transportation Department is better able, from a regulatory standpoint, or by, again, making adjustments that will allow foreign direct investment, far more will happen far more quickly, and it will be much more sustainable.

So, this is just the start of what USAID will do to support PGI, critical supply chains, and greater economic resilience. Likewise, as Jake mentioned, and in keeping with the strategy, we're breaking new ground in partnering with international financial institutions, very much partnering and supporting the Treasury Department in countries like Ghana, Malawi, and Sri Lanka. We are leveraging our new economic resilience efforts to help countries meet milestones to access IMF financing and unlock billions in much needed concessional funding.

We're also conducting rigorous analysis of our own spends. We have built a new Office of the Chief Economist. It's incredibly exciting for USAID building out that team with some of the top development economists in the country, the top behavioral experts as well, and one of the key features of this new effort is to really do deep dives on cost effectiveness. If you have a dollar and you're interested in an educational outcome, where should that dollar be spent? And this is a science and an art and it is one that is really important to incorporate and also to share up on Capitol Hill so there is an understanding that we are always scrutinizing what we are doing to make sure it goes as far as possible.

A key pillar of this strategy is locally led development. This is something that we all know that local leaders have the contextual knowledge, the deep relationships in their communities, and they will keep working on making change and transforming their societies long after USAID's and broader U.S. government investments have wound down. So we have been upping our direct engagement with these groups, we have done more targeted outreach, we have slashed millions of hours of unnecessary bureaucratic requirements so that smaller, local organizations don't have giant stacks of paperwork in a foreign language standing in the way of working with USAID. And so in the past few years, we have increased the amount of funding going into local organizations by 60 percent. That's good but the number was so low to begin with that that actually means that, today, just 10 percent of USAID's total funding is going to local partners, and obviously that has to change.

We are looking to reduce barriers that hinder our direct engagements with governments. Over the last decade, what's called G2G, government-to-government assistance, has stayed in the single digit percentile in total funding amounts for most fiscal years, but working with governments to improve their public services can be crucial, of course, to that sustainable change that we seek. So we are developing a global so-called G2G strategy, which will outline practical ways our missions can work directly, where appropriate, with local governments.

And finally, we are empowering USAID's global workforce to undertake impactful development diplomacy. And what this is, to put it simply, as we say many times, we at USAID, we in the broader development community, we can't and we don't now only work on behalf of objectives that we can fund, right? We have a whole set of objectives in the world that we may not have the resources to be able to fund. Development diplomacy allows us to move out in really profound ways and use our convening power as America, not necessarily doing the funding ourselves, but putting on the agenda causes and initiatives that are absolutely vital to execute.

I'll give you one example to hopefully inspire you in closing. Nine months ago at Davos, I was the first head of a development agency to convene a panel dedicated to the scourge that not many people are thinking about or know about, which is global lead exposure. Global lead exposure, turns out, kills 1.5 million people a year, more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

My modest $4 million announcement was nearly a third of the $15 million spent annually by donors. But there, we began what is becoming a truly tectonic shift in the international system, from national governments, major philanthropies, the World Bank and other international organizations. Next week, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, we will launch a major new global initiative to finally move toward a lead-free future for every child in developing countries. And here, at the height of the Flint Michigan crisis, one in 20 kids with elevated levels of lead in their blood, right now in developing countries where all of us work is one in two. So that gives you a sense of the scale of the problem that we need to all hustle and figure out who else can come to the table to address. Boosting collaboration, to push for broader changes, we need to unlock progress at scale.

As Jake said, so many of the challenges that we face transcend borders, whether it's lead poisoning or climate change or threats to agriculture supply chains.

So, investing in development and building a stronger global system that is integral to the security and the prosperity of the American people, this strategy will be absolutely essential in guiding these efforts. Thank you to all of you who put so much into doing this work every day and to creating this moment for all of us, and we're so looking forward to the next phase of all we can do together.

Thank you so much.

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