Samantha Power lays out her vision for USAID

U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power has laid out her vision for the agency — one focused on increasing local partnership and participation and making development more inclusive of marginalized groups. The goal is to make USAID not only an agency of “international development” but of “inclusive development,” she said in a speech Thursday at Georgetown University. The address, which took place before an in-person crowd and was streamed to thousands online, was Power’s first major speech as administrator. The three key pillars of the new strategy, Power said, are to make aid more accessible by diversifying the types of partners USAID works with, more equitable by focusing on the needs of those who are most marginalized and incorporating their voices, and more responsive by better listening to partners in the countries where the agency works. Here are the areas where Power made significant announcements: Localization One of the key commitments Power made is for 25% of USAID funding to go to local partners within the next four years. Today, about 6% of the agency’s budget goes to local partners, according to Power, despite numerous efforts and initiatives by previous administrators to shift its spending to them. In 2011, for example, former administrator Raj Shah announced a similar target of 30% but ultimately backed away from it — calling it an aspirational goal — in the face of stiff resistance from some U.S. development organizations and their congressional allies. This problem exists for a number of reasons — some of them historical. But many of the challenges are bureaucratic. And working with local partners is “more difficult, time-consuming, and it’s riskier,” and they often lack the internal accounting or legal expertise needed for USAID contracts, Power said Thursday. “The status quo is tough to shift. There is a lot of gravity pulling in the opposite direction,” Power said, adding that “we’ve got to try.” She has met with previous administrators and staffers to examine what has worked and what hasn’t, and she said the agency will expand capacity to support local organizations and will increase the number of local staffers with the authority to manage awards and assistance. Power has enlisted former USAID Deputy Administrator Donald Steinberg, who served under Shah, to lead the new localization push, in hopes of overcoming some of the obstacles that thwarted previous efforts. And there could be one significant change this time: Power said that Congress is supportive of the localization goal, adding that she hopes it will make changes allowing USAID to work closely with local organizations as partners. As an early part of this new effort, Power launched a $300 million initiative in Central America to work with local organizations “to create locally driven, sustainable progress” in the next five years, she said. Responsiveness USAID needs to listen more to local partners and be more responsive to local needs, Power said. To that end, she announced that by the end of the decade, 50% of USAID programming will “need to place local communities in the lead” by having them co-design programs and set priorities, as well as implement or evaluate them. She gave some examples of how USAID plans to do so, including a new dedicated emergency response unit focused on infectious disease outbreaks that can help countries respond rapidly to pandemic threats. On climate, she mentioned the White House’s new President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, or PREPARE, as an effort to respond to what “poor countries are asking” for as they try to respond to climate change. Power also launched a Global Defamation Defense Fund, which will help journalists get legal representation to fight defamation claims that could put them out of business and help them continue publishing stories that hold public officials accountable. That fund grew out of an idea from a group of journalists that Power — herself a former journalist — met early in her tenure at the agency. She did not state the amount of funding. A bigger tent In addition to bringing in more local partners and generally trying to diversify the organizations USAID works with, Power said she will also look to expand the number of private sector groups that the agency partners with. Today, USAID has about 750 active private sector partnerships worth about $60 billion altogether, according to Power. Those partnerships are too often “one-offs,” and USAID is “too slow and too bureaucratic for all but the most patient partners,” she said. "These partnerships often ask too little of the businesses with whom we work,” Power said, adding that too often the work focuses on specific projects rather than how to partner on policy or broader changes. To increase USAID’s work with the private sector, Power on Thursday launched a new centralized, flexible fund at USAID that will be dedicated to private sector investment. She said the agency will aim to make bureaucratic reforms to be more nimble and strategic in how it mobilizes businesses around its core priorities. In addition, USAID is also launching a new website — workwithusaid.org — intended to be a “one-stop shop” to help organizations pursue partnerships with the agency, she said. It will offer information and online courses about how to apply for USAID awards and otherwise engage with the agency. Inclusivity Power also acknowledged that USAID has not had a diverse staff representative of the U.S population and that minority staff members have not always had opportunities for advancement. USAID is expanding its workforce to make up for shortfalls, and as it does so, it will focus on hiring and retaining diverse staffers, she said. The agency will offer more paid internships, prioritize hiring and retaining underrepresented groups, and create more opportunities for locally employed staffers, she added. The agency will also look to make its programs more inclusive, in part by strengthening its inclusive development office. It will also aim to have a dedicated officer focused on gender equality and inclusive development at every mission — something few have today — in order to “institutionalize” the work, Power said.