U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama recently called on African lead­ers to clean up cor­rup­tion and mis-governance. As a response, OXFAM Amer­ica is call­ing on the U. S. gov­ern­ment to clean up the way to deliv­ers aid. OXFAM wants more trans­parency and account­abil­ity to the U.S. aid that is handed out to the under-developed world.

We read more about the response from this OXFAM press release.

“Get­ting to bet­ter devel­op­ment assis­tance will require that donors such as the U.S. keep a close eye on the crit­i­cal task of build­ing gov­ern­ment capac­ity and insti­tu­tions directly,” said O. Natty B. Davis, II, Recon­struc­tion Min­is­ter of Liberia. “This will ensure the effi­cacy of aid and its abil­ity to deliver results that can have a real impact on the lives of the peo­ple in these coun­tries in as short a time as pos­si­ble.“

The panel reflected grow­ing momen­tum in the for­eign aid reform debate in the U.S. Before leav­ing for Ghana, Pres­i­dent Obama was quoted in an AllAfrica.com inter­view say­ing, “Our aid poli­cies have been splin­tered among a vari­ety of agencies…Trying to cre­ate some­thing steady [and] bas­ing our poli­cies on what works and not on some ide­o­log­i­cal pre­vi­ous posi­tion — is going to be very important.”

Last Fri­day, Sec­re­tary of State Clin­ton announced that the State Depart­ment and USAID will be under­tak­ing America’s first-ever Qua­dren­nial Diplo­macy and Devel­op­ment Review (QDDR), in order to stream­line the aid bureau­cracy and insert devel­op­ment more coher­ently into debates over national secu­rity and for­eign pol­icy. In Con­gress, House For­eign Affairs Com­mit­tee Chair­man Howard Berman (D-CA) has intro­duced the Ini­ti­at­ing For­eign Assis­tance Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 2139), which has more than 75 bipar­ti­san co-sponsors.

“It is a good sign that the admin­is­tra­tion and Con­gress are talk­ing about devel­op­ment in a strate­gic way,” said Paul O’Brien, Direc­tor of Aid Effec­tive­ness at Oxfam Amer­ica and one of today’s pan­elists. “But if new strate­gies are going to deliver for the world’s poor, they must be poverty focused. Effec­tive devel­op­ment isn’t about fix­ing short-term polit­i­cal or secu­rity prob­lems — it is about putting peo­ple in charge of their own lives. The best sig­nal the U.S. can send to show it is seri­ous about devel­op­ment is to nom­i­nate a USAID Admin­is­tra­tor who will help rebuild the agency and bring back its capac­ity to be a true part­ner in development.”

Like

Unlike