3 minute read
Snelbecker, CEO, International Development Group
In measuring success of foreign assistance projects, we need to look at the development results achieved—the sustainable capacity built—given dollars spent, rather than focusing on whether foreign assistance dollars went to international or local organizations or staff.
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A key aspect of most U.S. foreign assistance is: A Hand Up Rather Than a Handout. That is, rather than simply give cash or goods directly to beneficiaries, most American foreign assistance programs aim to transfer skills, knowledge, best practices, capabilities, or institutional capacity to beneficiaries so that they can better meet their development challenges in a sustainable and ongoing way. With the important exceptions of disaster response and humanitarian relief, most assistance programs aim to improve how health systems provide medical care, to strengthen how schools provide early grade education to children, to reduce corruption in how governments manage expenditures and procurements, to increase private-sector generation of jobs and livelihoods, to overcome barriers to international trade, among countless other activities. The intended outcome of most development programs is to improve how local systems function, and, in essence, to work ourselves out of a job.
If one accepts this principle that the most effective, long-term foreign assistance is A Hand Up Rather Than a Handout, what matters most is how well any aid implementing partner—whether local or international—succeeds in transferring capability to the ultimate beneficiaries, i.e., where is the greatest bang for the buck? Sometimes local implementing partners may be able to successfully transfer knowledge to beneficiaries at a best-value cost, and sometimes international implementing partners such as those represented in the CIDC will be most adept at doing so, along with ensuring the required regulatory compliance and sound financial management.
When considering which development partner, local or international, is providing the most direct benefit to a recipient community, it is important to remember that projects implemented by American contractors will largely be staffed by local technical and operations experts, with international experts only participating in a few specialized roles where a country lacks sufficiently qualified local experts, such as in specific technical areas or in the minutia of U.S. foreign assistance regulatory oversight. Conversely, local implementing partners might staff their projects with a mix of local and some international experts.
As an example: a project for USAID in Bangladesh is helping the country to increase international trade and improve the business enabling environment so that it creates more jobs. Of the 25 project employees, 21 are Bangladeshi citizens, one is an American, and three are third-country nationals. Similarly, Bangladeshi experts as used as shortterm consultants whenever individuals with the right skillsets are found, and only internationals when the right skill mix can’t be found in country. This project is working to streamline procedures to reduce trade costs at customs points, increase the use of Authorized Operators to transport goods across borders, build capacity for post-clearance audits, improve public education for small and medium traders, improve e-auction software used by customs, provide training to customs officials on the Harmonized System classification and on customs valuation, improve food safety protections while making regulations less onerous, streamline the company registration process and trade licensing, and support other business enabling environment reforms.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the appropriate way to judge the success of capacity building is not to look at what country the implementing partner is registered in, or the nationalities of the employees, but rather, to look at the development results achieved for the partner country relative to the dollars spent on the project.
David Snelbecker, CEO, International Development Group LLC
