After 10 years of country compacts, the Millennium Challenge Corp. is going regional, assuming the U.S. Congress signs off on the idea.
MCC’s development investment model works, according to the U.S. agency’s supporters, but it may be time to take the once-experimental idea beyond the single-country level. When the former President George W. Bush administration created MCC just over 10 years ago, it was supposed to gather all the lessons learned from a half-century of development implementation and distill them into a new “country-owned” and incentive-based partnership model for delivering foreign assistance.
The agency enjoys broad support, but that support hasn’t translated into the significant budget increases some expected would follow the successful demonstration of the MCC model. The agency’s budget has remained relatively flat, at around $1 billion a year.
About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
