The Millennium Challenge Corporation has made significant strides in its first two decades, but now as it confronts existential challenges, the question arises: How can the aid agency adapt and remain relevant in an evolving global development landscape?
Since its inception, MCC, a U.S. development agency, has invested nearly $17 billion in 47 countries. It operates through a unique model, selecting partner nations based on a rigorous set of policy criteria, and then co-designing transformative, large-scale grant agreements to tackle critical barriers to economic growth.
These grants, termed compacts, are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and their allocation hinges on MCC’s scorecard — a thorough measurement of factors such as corruption, political rights, civil liberties, fiscal policy, health spending, employment opportunity, land rights, and gender.
About the author
Adva Saldinger@AdvaSal
Adva Saldinger is a Senior Reporter at Devex where she covers development finance, as well as U.S. foreign aid policy. Adva explores the role the private sector and private capital play in development and authors the weekly Devex Invested newsletter bringing the latest news on the role of business and finance in addressing global challenges. A journalist with more than 10 years of experience, she has worked at several newspapers in the U.S. and lived in both Ghana and South Africa.
