The U.S. Agency for International Development is promoting country ownership, mutual accountability and regional cooperation in its engagement in Africa’s Great Lakes regions, according to USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa Franklin Moore.
Moore said in a testimony before the House Subcommittee on African Affairs and Global Health that USAID is shaping its work in the region to better and more directly support the harmonization of aid strategies and to promote mutual accountability between donors and recipients. The agency is also supporting results-based programs, he added.
“Our work in the Great Lakes is coordinated with both host-country action plans on a sectoral basis, and with broad-reaching poverty reduction strategic plans,” Moore explained during the May 25 subcommittee hearing, which also featured Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs at the Department of State.
The USAID official added that USAID is increasingly tapping other donors and its private-sector partners in the planning and implementation of programs in the region.
Nutrition and food security
A significant portion of U.S. work in the Great Lakes region focuses on addressing food security concerns and undernourishment. The Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative, according to Moore, aims to boost agricultural production in the Great Lakes countries, Moore explained. The global food security and hunger program also covers construction of market and road infrastructure and other related activities geared towards providing the people living in the region with a better quality of life.
Two of the 20 countries shortlisted under the Feed the Future initiative guide are in the African Great Lake region: Rwanda and Uganda.
Troubling Statistics
Moore reported that the President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and the Presidential Malaria Initiative, or PMI, helped the region make advances in the health sectors.
“But in comparison to other regions in the world, the statistics are troubling,” Moore added.
The lifetime risk of maternal death is one in 13 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 1 in 25 in Uganda. DRC also has one of the highest mortality rates in the world for children under 5 years. In Uganda, malaria is the number one cause of mortality and morbidity.
