I don’t know what Nora Schenkel was talking about in the New York Times on Wednesday in her personal essay, “I Came to Haiti to Do Good…,”. The former aid worker argues that Haitians are stuck in a cycle of dependency, fueled by inequalities perpetuated by the aid industry.

I don’t know what she’s talking about because I just came back from Haiti myself last week, and that’s not at all what I experienced. While I was riding around in a white vehicle, I was talking with Haitian farmers who are clearly in control of their futures and who are actively pushing back on the aid system.

In February, 118 farmers in Saint-Marc, Haiti gathered in a community hall to share their views of how well the US government’s Feed the Future program is working in their community. Over the prior six months, the Haitian NGO, Plateforme Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un Développement Alternatif (PAPDA), had been working with farmers groups in three communities in the Artibonite region to develop a report card based on The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness to assess the WINNER Project in their area.

Frank Saint Jean of PAPDA (on right), speaking with members of the Fédération des Agriculteurs pour le Développement de Goyavier (Federation of Farmers for the Development of Goyavier) earlier this month. Photo: Jennifer Lentfer / Oxfam

Community scorecard processes have been used by many development agencies and aid organizations over the years to rate local services like clinics and schools. I was there to learn what happens when that process was utilized to report on the progress of a large, bilateral aid program. Franck Saint Jean, a PAPDA representative, explained why they got involved in the process, “It is important for us to speak up so that [aid] money doesn’t just go in circles.”

Reports from the farmers about improvements made since the February meeting where they gave their feedback, was underwhelming. Farmers in all three communities reported that they had seen increased communication with WINNER project representatives (employees of Chemonics). Especially from the perspective of farmers in Deluge, a communal section of Saint-Marc, they had not seen sufficient actions taken to address the problems raised in the February meeting.

Specifics of the project aside, what excited me during my time in Haiti was the fact that PAPDA’s efforts had obviously strengthened the ability and the resolve of the farmers to continue engaging WINNER and with other projects in the future, either from aid donors or the Haitian government. Farmers in all three communities encouraged PAPDA and Oxfam to continue this work throughout the country. One farmer in Bois Neuf explained:

“We have a glimpse of what to do next, when another NGO comes…People coming here have to come with a written document of what the project will look like to see if it’s what we need. We can offer alternatives and contribute our own resources. And we can ask for translation into kreyòl!”

Members of the Association of Irrigators in the Côte des Arcadins in Bois Neuf, Haiti. Photo: Jennifer Lentfer / Oxfam

I will say that such frank reflections about the difficulty of “doing good” like Ms. Schenkel’s are still too much of a rarity among practitioners in the aid industry and in the popular media. But if I had written a personal essay for the New York Times, I wouldn’t have wasted the opportunity reiterating tired, old criticisms of the aid industry. Rather, I’d talk about the Haitians in the driver’s seat and Oxfam’s latest report, A Quiet Renaissance, which demonstrates that changes to the US aid system are upon us. We can do better to support the Haitians who are bringing about development in their country.

How? Aid providers can invest in direct engagement with civil society organizations like PAPDA who are supporting local groups to make their voices heard. And they can strengthen tools to integrate priorities and feedback from people like those with whom I spoke in Haiti, who had clearly realized they no longer “have to be spectators to all this aid.”

Pa gen anyen pou nou, san nou. Nothing for us, without us.

It feels good to be productive. As a Kansas farmer and rancher, I like the fact that I help transform air, water, and minerals into wheat and meat that can help sustain people. And as an agricultural advocate for Oxfam America, being productive means supporting sisters and brothers around the world to farm as I do and help feed their neighbors.

A US wheat field in Kansas. Photo via Flickr http://bit.ly/16AoUvd

An Ethiopian wheat field in Oromia. Photo: Eva-Lotta Jansson / Oxfam America

That’s why the reforms to US food aid are so important to me. As a member of the Farm Bureau, it’s also why I am so disappointed that the Farm Bureau would distort the need for those reforms in a recent editorial.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Stallman calls in to question the accountability and efficacy of using cash, rather than shipping food, when he writes that:

“Shipping a cargo load of food, rather than the money to buy food (if it is available), is the best and most secure way to ensure that taxpayer-funded international food assistance actually makes it to hungry people overseas.”

Really?!? When the distance between the US and the country we are supporting means an average of 130 days between procurement and delivery, I find this hard to believe. When over half of those taxpayer dollars that could be helping to feed people are siphoned away into the pockets of middlemen before one hungry child is fed, I’m concerned that there are many a slip between the cup and the lip.

Yes, I like to know that what I do as a farmer can help people to be fed around the world. But I don’t think that way when I consider that my “feeling good” (Stallman uses the word “pride” here) hurts the ability of other farmers in developing countries to feed themselves and their communities.

Mr. Stallman is concerned about “good international relations.” So am I. Consider the effects on a Haitian farmer with rice to sell when the earthquake hit in 2010, as “free” commodities flooded the local market in Port au Prince. This same question arises for crisis areas in other countries and their neighboring regions, where food is available, transport is closer, and markets are functioning.

The proposed reforms don’t eliminate US-produced commodities from being used for aid. In fact the majority of emergency food aid will remain in that form. But, these reforms are something of which the Farm Bureau should be “proud”.  First, they follow the conservative principle that public money needs to be used efficiently and seeks to achieve the greatest bang for the buck. Second, the reforms hope to take of advantage of and support existing markets by purchasing food locally or regionally when feasible.

From where I sit, overlooking my land on the Great Plains, US support of international agriculture has undercut neither our farmers, nor our national security over the decades. Some of the biggest markets for US commodities are in countries that used to struggle with food security. While emergency food aid may be a band-aid for a day, our support of long-term agricultural programs and market development helps create stability, more food, and new customers for our own goods.

Now that is the pathway to friendship—something we can feel good about for years to come.

This is a cross-post from the Gates Foundation’s Impatient Optimists blog.

Aid does not cause development; people do.  I’m talking about the local leaders who can access and actually use that aid effectively towards development outcomes.  Oxfam is hearing that local leaders are starting to give the US government better marks for how the US invests its aid.

These local leaders are not telling us that the US government has fixed all its problems.  And they still have many criticisms of the US approach.  But they are observing positive changes in how the US government seeks to engage them and support local priorities.

For too long the aid that the US government provided was not a useful tool for local leaders.  Too often it actually undermined what they were trying to accomplish.  But over the past few years, as the United States has confronted the limitations of this approach, a number of US policymakers and political leaders have increasingly tried to reorient US development policies and programs to make them more responsive to and useful to local partners.

But have changes in US government development policies in Washington changed practice on the ground?

The beginning of the current reform trend can perhaps be dated to the establishment of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, but since then, it has gained momentum.  The US government now has a range of policies designed to support and leverage the leadership of local partners, such as:

• Millennium Challenge Corporation – investing in locally-defined priorities and rewarding good governance;
• Feed the Future – Increasing support for and investments in national agriculture plans, and engaging smallholders in an effort to boost their success;
• Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS)  – restoring investment choices to the country level, and doing it via a deliberate process that begins with country priorities;
• Implementation and Procurement Reform (now called local solutions) – actually making direct investments in local leadership.

Oxfam has applauded these policy approaches along the way.  They are not all directly related or comparable, but they all have the same DNA; they are built around the priorities and agency of local leaders.

But we wanted to know:  Have changes in US government development policies in Washington changed practice on the ground?  Do local leaders see a change?  And do they like the changes they see?  So we conducted extensive field interviews with citizens, civil society representatives, business people and public officials in Bangladesh, Ghana, Malawi, Peru, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Senegal to find out.

The overwhelming response we heard?  YES: 83% of the local leaders we surveyed saw a significant, positive change in the US approach over the previous few years.

This is not to say that local leaders are completely happy with the behavior and practices of the US government.  In fact, we often heard continued frustrations about difficulties working with the US government, as well as demands for the US government to continue to improve partnerships.

Oxfam spoke to a narrow number of people in a group of countries where US reforms are most advanced.  Thus it would be wrong to generalize too broadly about how what we heard might apply in other cases and contexts and it is much too early to draw conclusions about the developmental impact of most of these still short-lived reforms.

But, what we can say is that we are getting early positive feedback on how local partners are observing changes in US approaches.  Those we interviewed overwhelmingly observe increased US alignment with partner country priorities, more stakeholder engagement, and ultimately, more opportunities for local leaders to build partnerships with the US government that they didn’t have before.

In particular, the US government has a lot more work to do to close the feedback loop with local actors.  While three out of four of the people we surveyed told us they were having more and improved communication with US government development personnel, two thirds still felt they lacked influence over US government decisions regarding development in their country.  This information can help inform how these steps in the right direction are taken forward and strengthened.

The fight now is not only to ensure that these reforms prevail politically in Washington, but also to help improve their implementation and accelerate their progress, in order to restore the United States’ historic role as a global development leader.

These US government reforms to support local ownership have been hard to implement, both politically and practically.  But Oxfam believes this remains the most direct path to supporting local leadership over the development agenda.  One civil society leader in Bangladesh framed the ownership challenge thusly:

“If you have a direct road or a diverted road, which way do you go?  You go the direct road.”

You can read the survey findings and Oxfam’s recommendations by clicking here. 

Right before recess last week, Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) re-introduced the Global Partnerships Act (H.R. 1793), the first major rewrite of foreign assistance legislation in decades. The bill is an enormous accomplishment, created through a three-year effort led by former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, Howard Berman.

Source: Brookings Institution, 2006.

A rewrite of the Foreign Assistance Act is long past due. US Foreign Assistance programs have not been reauthorized since 1986; the underlying law dates from 1961. The problem isn’t just the quaint and kitschy references to Kampuchea, East Pakistan, or Zaire; it’s the fact that good legislation should actually help US government implementers do their job well, and should help Congress conduct effective oversight. On both counts, the existing system is failing miserably (see chart).

Like most huge pieces of legislation, this one offers something for (almost) everyone—Pollyannas and pessimists alike. Cynics will be quick to point out that, with 889 pages and no Republican co-sponsors, this bill is hardly on a fast track to enshrinement in the US Code.

But such cynicism misses the point. An effort like the Berman/Connolly bill is not only important once it becomes law. It can also be important for the conversation it drives among different stakeholders. As we’ve noted before, the most important reason to update foreign aid legislation is to try to get a new consensus between the President, the Congress, and the American people about what we’re actually trying to achieve with our development programs and what success looks like. And the Berman/Connolly bill provides a wealth of specific improvements for policymakers to convene around, including, but not limited to:

• linking US funding priorities to country-level planning (Sec. 1018);
• greater aid transparency and predictability (Sec. 8301); and
• better coordination of US efforts to promote trade & investment in partner countries (Sec. 7002).

Oxfam has heard from local leaders in the field that recent US reform efforts are starting to get noticed. But few of these reforms have actually made it into law. Without legislation to protect these reforms—and more important, without political consensus around them—it’s possible many reforms won’t stick long enough to really pay off for people in the developing world.

We don’t expect Congress is going to swallow the Berman/Connolly bill whole. But it’s worth them spending some time chewing on it, trying to figure out where they can make real progress towards a new political consensus around US development efforts.

***

Here’s what else I had to say about the bill from last week’s InterAction Forum:

Five Minutes at Forum with Greg Adams from InterAction on Vimeo.

Tariq Sayed Ahmad is a Researcher with the Aid Effectiveness Team at Oxfam America.

The New York Times this week published an incriminating article about the CIA giving “wads of American dollars” directly to Afghan President Karzai to win influence over the palace and his network of leaders in Afghanistan. The article argues these funds have fueled corruption over the course of a decade, potentially undermining the prospects for development in a country long plagued with violence and conflict.

Photo: Creative Commons via Flickr

It’s unfortunate that corruption occurs in Afghanistan, where it is widely accepted as one of the major constraints to economic growth in a country plagued with violence and stuck in vicious cycles of poverty. According to Transparency International, Afghanistan ranks only above Somalia in their corruption perception index. And it’s more unfortunate that US policy is implicated in these corrupt practices.

This type of grand corruption is precisely the kind of thing that makes US policy makers’ skeptical of providing US foreign assistance directly to country governments. And rightly so. When a political corruption scandal such as this breaks, all government-to-government programs are implicated, including the type USAID is pursuing.

Of course not all government-to-government funds transfers are alike.

Helping domestic institutions deliver services to their citizens is one of the primary objectives of USAID’s new reform efforts. Through USAID’s local solutions efforts, the agency isn’t simply throwing money at corrupt regimes, rather, they are using a new range of analytical tools to intelligently invest in government systems. Oxfam’s inquiry last year found that USAID is investing in analytical tools such as the Public Financial Management Risk Assessment Framework (PFMRAF) and the Fixed Amount Reimbursement Agreement (FARA) to test and strengthen capacities of government institutions. Giving US officials new impetus and tools to appropriately manage the risks involved in using country systems maximizes the US’s ability to help strengthen partner governments’ institutions so that they can provide for their citizens accountably.

When the CIA provided money to Karzai, little, if any, of those funds were used to help the Afghan people hold their institutions in check. Yet when USAID helped build the capacity of the Afghan Ministry of Health, infant mortality decreased by 57%, child mortality by 62%, and maternal mortality dropped by 22% since 2002.

Oxfam recently conducted interviews in seven countries and found that policy reforms, like those that help the US more closely partner with accountable government institutions, are being well-received. 83% of people Oxfam surveyed said the US is becoming a better donor than they were 4-5 years ago. In addition, Oxfam uncovered a number of cases when using government systems resulted in some early indications of strengthened and more accountable institutions.

• In Peru, for example, mayors are better able to deliver the types of services their citizens have demanded.
• In Bangladesh, the US helped strengthen the financial system in the Ministry of Agriculture. Now the Ministry is able to leverage more resources from other donors.

At the same time, USAID, admittedly, still has a lot to learn and is still facing a number of challenges when it comes to building country systems appropriately. They are continuing to build their own expertise. This is precisely the premise behind USAID forums on country systems strengthening and utilizing ongoing research on institution building.

While USAID still has a long way to go to make sure citizens and their governments are at the helm of their own development, they are making progress. Unfortunately, the only way this progress will be protected and maintained is if members of the US congress are able to distinguish between types of foreign assistance. As with Karzai, we see that politically-motivated “wads of cash” within government-to-government partnerships actually fuel corruption and a lack of accountability.

But the US government is also capable of government-to-government partnerships that promote accountability, strengthen systems, and ultimately lead to promising developmental outcomes—a much more worthy investment of taxpayer dollars.

“Exports via food aid are a small drop in the market…Our concern is less about decreasing an important revenue stream for U.S. agriculture. It’s more about the loss of a sense of pride.” ~Veronica Nigh, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation in 5/1 Reuters article

A vegetable seller measures bitter eggplants grown in Touba Ngembe for a customer in the village market of Ndiaganiao, Senegal. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / Oxfam America

Dear Ms. Nigh and the American Farm Bureau,

We’re glad you’re proud of supplying the US food aid program. But there are millions of people around the world facing hunger and crisis who might appreciate it if you’d step aside and let Congress and our leaders improve the program.

The program is vital to address hunger around the world, but is desperately in need of reform. It’s inefficient, slow, wastes money, and as a result, doesn’t help nearly as many people as it could.

Maybe you could be gratified by doing the right thing, that is, making sure that food aid supports small farmers and local economies and is delivered more efficiently and effectively.

Doing so might actually help feed an additional 4 million people worldwide, which is truly something of which Americans could be proud.

Sincerely, Oxfam America

The President is moving towards putting more aid resources directly into the hands of local citizens around the world in his 2014 budget, particularly with regards to food aid reform.

Why does this matter? Changes to foreign assistance could mean more for farmers like Emiliana Aligaesha.

Photo: Brett Eloff / Oxfam America

Emiliana Aligaesha (pictured) formed a successful private company selling coffee and beans with her fellow community members in the Karagwe District of northwest Tanzania in 2007. They have become so successful that the World Food Programme is now a customer of the group, which is known as Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. USAID, through the Karagwe Development and Relief Services, has been helping to guarantee better prices for Aligaesha and her fellow farmers.

Since 2008, Kaderes Peasant Development Ltd. (KPD) has sold 1600 tons of beans to the World Food Programme, ensuring that farmers benefit from more competitive prices. As part of their success, in 2012 the World Food Programme upgraded KPD’s status from a small supplier to a large supplier of food in the region.

Partnerships with local farmers offered through companies like Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. saves the money and time it might take to bring the same food aid from the US or Europe, and, more importantly, ensures a market for hardworking and innovative farmers like Aligaesha. These purchases also have a multiplier effect as KPD uses profits to support other farmers with training, access to farming implements, and information on markets.

Despite these common-sense reforms to US food aid and US foreign assistance broadly, they have come under fire from vested interests in Washington and globally. The food aid reform fight is the latest in a series of reforms, led by the administration, to make foreign assistance much more effective.  The US government is identifying local partners where US foreign assistance can be used effectively, allowing the US to look in places they haven’t looked before. This is not just good policy; it’s the right thing to do with people like Aligaesha, whose company is exactly the type of supplier that the US government can support through steps towards local and regional procurement of food aid.

Emiliana Aligaesha and her fellow farmers in Karagwe, Tanzania formed a successful private company selling coffee and beans. The World Food Programme has been a customer and USAID has been helping to guarantee better prices. Photo: MaishaPlus2012 / Oxfam

Emiliana Aligaesha taught herself to farm when she became a widow and her teacher’s salary did not make ends meet. When Aligaesha found herself facing a lack of reliable markets, changing weather patterns, and a shortage of farming equipment, she joined forces with fellow farmers in her community to make sure they got the best prices for their produce. For example, in 2012 Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. bought coffee from local farmers at 1500 Tanzanian Shillings per one kilogram (equivalent to 1 USD), while other buyers paid 900 Tanzanian Shillings.

As well as leading Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. and growing coffee, bananas, beans and maize herself, Aligaesha owns six cows, operates her own irrigation systems, and also supplies quality seedlings to other villagers. Even though she has had little formal agricultural training, Aligaesha has become a kind of researcher in the village, testing out new agricultural techniques for others to follow, and encouraging women to be more involved in agriculture and business.

At Oxfam, we’re excited that the US government is finally recognizing that supporting people like Aligaesha and her fellow farmers at Kaderes Peasants Development Ltd. can be a sound investment of our food aid dollars.

As a former teacher, most important to Aligaesha is that her eight children have all been put through university as a result of her hard work.

ren·ais·sance  (REN-nay-sahnce and Re-NAY-Sahnce)

(noun)

a. A revival or rebirth of intellectual or artistic achievement and vigor.

b. The period of such a revival.

A couple of years ago, a number of new initiatives and reforms were introduced to change the model of how parts of the US government provide poverty-reducing aid to developing countries.

These reforms—the four Oxfam examined included Implementation and Procurement Reform (now called Local Solutions), Feed the Future, Country Development and Cooperation Strategies, the Millennium Challenge Corporation—all bring attention to country ownership of aid.

Photo: Rajendra Shaw / Oxfam

Ownership is the idea that countries, governments, and citizens,—not donors like the US—are the lead actors in development around the world.

So with these reforms in place, Oxfam set out to talk to people living and working in seven developing countries, leaders in recipient governments and civil society, to find out how they think the US is doing as a donor.

Oxfam surveyed 148 non-US government officials of the total 257 people who participated in in-depth interviews. The survey was not intended to be a statistically significant sample of development stakeholders; rather, Oxfam intended to capture a quick, but broad snapshot of how officials who are familiar with US foreign assistance witness changes in US practice.

Oxfam today will share that local development leaders are noticing—and valuing the change. Of the people Oxfam interviewed and surveyed last year, 83% said they see that the US government is a better donor than they were four to five years ago.

Those interviewed observe increased alignment with country priorities, more stakeholder engagement, and ultimately, more opportunities for local leaders to build partnerships with the US government that they didn’t have before.

Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / Oxfam America

Oxfam found that US reforms are helping the US government’s ability to work with partners in two important dimensions: 

The Power to Decide—Changes to US policy and practice are helping the US government to invest more aid in the things citizens and governments say they need and want.

Photo: Patrick Brown / Oxfam America

The Power to Execute—New policies allow the US to partner with local institutions in ways that strengthen them, support domestic accountability, and ultimately help citizens find long-term solutions that do not require US assistance.

Photo: Patrick Brown / Oxfam America

The policy changes have aroused opposition in Washington DC among those interests that want to protect the status quo. So now is the time for the US government to accelerate and deepen these reforms if it hopes to meet the expectations of people in developing countries.

Despite the promise of increasing the impact of US assistance through country and local ownership, respondents remain unsure of the future direction of US policy reforms.

Respondents in Oxfam’s interviews overwhelmingly wanted to know…

Will the US government continue down the same path? 

Read the report summary and Oxfam’s recommendations here. 

We’re still looking over the details, but the first look at President Obama’s proposal to overhaul the international food aid program looks very good. Oxfam has been working this issue for more than a decade and we observe that the changes would:

(1) Cut funding of the primary food aid program (PL 480), which in FY13 was funded at $1.36 billion.

(2) Shift $1.1 billion to a different disaster response budget account under USAID for emergency food assistance. This would allow using more flexible food assistance tools like local purchase of food, or using vouchers instead of food distribution;

(3) Shift $250 million to a development budget account at USAID to support longer-term food assistance programs with food aid resources. This is an addition to the $80 million in funding within this account that is already available for this purposes, bringing total DA funding for non-emergency food aid to $330m;

(4) Create a new highly flexible $75 million emergency contingency fund; and

(5) Shift $25 million to the US Maritime Administration to ensure that US military readiness of the US shipping industry is maintained, since less food aid is likely to get shipped overseas.

A child in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia stands near a wall made of USAID food aid containers in the flood-destroyed area of Bahere Tsege in 2006. Photo: Liz Lucas/Oxfam America

The proposal would end the practice of “monetization” which provides cash to NGOs doing food security programs in developing countries but is highly inefficient and wastes a lot of money.  The proposal would require that 55% of the emergency food aid be procured from the US.  We hope that there is a continuing effort going forward to reduce the requirement that US food aid is tied to domestic sourcing. We recognize that US commodities still have a role to play in addressing hunger, but USAID should not have its hands tied in making the decision about how best to reach those in need.

Already today, two Republican Senators have expressed openness to looking at the proposal and making reforms.  Looks like this could have legs!

USAID Administrator Raj Shah will make a speech on the proposal later today.

Paul O’Brien is the Vice President for Policy and Campaigns at Oxfam America.

Will Raj Shah commit USAID to joining the top 10% most transparent donors by the time he leaves his USAID Administrator post?

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Photo: Eric Bridiers / US Mission via Flickr http://bit.ly/10bPOkO

He might do so, but looking at his recent speeches, it’s no sure thing. More likely, “technological innovation” will continue to win out over “governance” issues like transparency in his priorities. If yesterday’s New York Times interview on child mortality is any indication, he mentions innovation seven times for every mention of transparency. His speech last year on agriculture is fairly typical. Even when he talks about tackling corruption, his proposed fix is to call on “the world’s brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and engineers to design breakthrough technologies to make all voices count.”

Don’t get me wrong—I believe Mr. Shah gets it. His recent progress report on USAID Forward shows his bona fides on transparency. But if you believe that poverty is a function of power imbalances as much as innovation deficits, then you want USAID’s leadership talking about governance, incentives and democratizing “power” as much as helping people to get more and better “stuff”. Teach a man to fish with a high tech rod, and you will feed him for a lifetime. Unless of course, someone steals all the fish, the water gets polluted, or the government sells off the access rights!

So I hope that in the next four years, Mr. Shah and USAID will talk more about power and governance. I hope he will seek to strengthen institutions by holding his own and then others more accountable. What’s one concrete way to do this?  Don’t just talk about transparency as an end in itself. (It was hearing him deliver this speech on the International Aid Transparency Initiative last year that got me worried). I want Mr. Shah to explain why transparency is so important, and explicitly link transparency to making local institutions more politically accountable to their own citizens. I want him to talk more about how functioning, inclusive domestic institutions in developing countries are the indispensable foundation for innovations to take hold.

In 2004, the Minister of Finance in Afghanistan asked me to explain what the US government was spending on development in his country. Finding out turned into a massive undertaking. It wasn’t just that USAID had no one spreadsheet capturing their work. There were a dozen other US agencies working there and no-one had managed to put it all together. As a competent technocrat, the Minister and his President wanted to build up political legitimacy and to report to the Afghan people on what international aid was delivering. We had no answers. They wanted to hold other ministries accountable for how they managed funds in health care, education and rural rehabilitation. They couldn’t.

That’s why it frustrated me to no end when Publish What You Fund’s pilot ranked USAID in the bottom 36% of most transparent donors in 2011. It is why I took heart when USAID had climbed into the top 37% by the 2012 full assessment. That progress made me wonder whether Mr. Shah and USAID do get the importance of transparency after all.

Now, he should commit USAID to becoming a top 10% donor on transparency by the time he leaves, and explain once and for all, how transparency can help local institutions become more accountable to their own citizens in delivering lasting development results.