3 minute read
President Emeritus, MSI, A Tetra Tech Company
Institutional Capacity Building
U.S. development firms play an important support role to USAID and other USG agencies helping partner countries build the institutional capacity essential for fostering resilient and sustainable country-led growth.
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Support for strengthening host country and regional governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, universities, think tanks, and businesses has been a central feature of USAID programming since the late 1960s. The rationale for this support includes both the central roles played by these organizations in achieving national goals, and the opportunities to deploy a major U.S. asset in support of those national aspirations in priority counties.
The list of institutions that have benefitted from these investments is long -- ministries of Health, Agriculture, Education, Water, and Environment; prominent national teaching and research institutions; local and regional government agencies; regulatory and anti-corruption commissions; cooperatives and small businesses; courts and legislatures; advocacy and service delivery institutions; and more. The U.S. commitment to support and strengthen these local institutions has been bipartisan and stands in stark contrast to some traditional forms of charity and foreign aid from countries such as China that prioritize loans and cash transfers or, at the other extreme, bypass established local organizations. By contrast, U.S. assistance has prioritized building the capacity of local institutions and supporting specific institutions to enhance their self-reliance, performance, responsiveness, and accountability.
Private U.S. consulting firms have played an essential and unique role in this effort since the outset drawing on the capabilities of a robust U.S. consulting sector, serving as a flexible and on-call source of expertise and a gateway to U.S. innovation, and providing a force magnifier for USAID’s direct hire workforce. Today, more than 300 U.S. companies, working at the behest and under contract to USAID, the State Department, and other USG agencies, support these efforts and contribute to the scale, sustainability, and impact of development solutions. More than half of these firms are small businesses, and the owners of these businesses represent a diverse cross-section of America. The world has changed dramatically since U.S.sponsored institutional development efforts began five decades ago. Today, it is possible to complement, and often to substitute for, U.S. technical assistance with a wide array of host country and third county expertise. There are also a range of capable host country public and private institutions that serve as benchmarks for worldclass performance.
But the need for deliberate efforts to strengthen the capacity, transparency, and responsiveness of local institutions remains significant. Today’s institutions are called upon to solve a new and complex array of challenges, many of them with transnational implications. These institutional challenges are particularly pronounced in fragile states. Post-conflict work on state capacity and reconciliation, responses to the second and third round effects of the pandemic, managing the impacts of internal displacement and forced migration, and climate change mitigation are but a few of the problems facing over-burdened and under-resourced institutions in these nations which also face more familiar challenges in meeting the education, health, food, justice, and livelihood needs of their people.
Conclusion
No other country has developed an array of service providers comparable to the development consulting industry in the United States, and none has a comparable track record in providing technical support for the array of host country and regional institutions that are so essential to resilient, sustainable, country-led growth. This capability and track record, and this commitment to strengthening host country institutions, are significant differentiators for U.S. development assistance and serve as a strong example of public-private partnership in the service of national objectives both here at home and in the countries we serve.
Larry Cooley, President Emeritus, MSI, A Tetra Tech Company
