For decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development followed a well-worn path. Invest in the basics — such as education, health care, and agriculture — and assume liberalized markets would take care of the rest. At the start of the Biden administration, less than 5% of USAID’s budget was going toward core economic growth programming, explained the agency’s outgoing administrator, Samantha Power. And when she first took the helm of the multibillion-dollar agency, that lack of focus surprised her.
“I had thought [core economic development work] would be really at the center of what USAID did around the world," Power said three and a half years later, speaking at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, earlier this week. “When I travel around the world and meet with foreign leaders in the countries where USAID has partnerships, I hear again and again the same thing. … We want trade, not aid. We want to grow our economies. We do not want to be dependent, in any fashion, on foreign support.”
Despite such calls for change, it’s easier said than done. USAID’s funding is more than 90% earmarked, Power explained, with the U.S. Congress channeling pots of money to specific initiatives within the USAID umbrella. As a result, the agency’s economic growth programming is funded by a “very, very small band of discretionary” funds, Power said — and this past year, such discretionary funding was at an all-time low.