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Event Summary: USAID Frontiers for Development ConferenceInvesting for Sustainable Development

June 13, 2012Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

Moderator:Donald Steinberg, Deputy Administrator, USAID

Panelists:Emilia Pires, minister of finance, Timor-LesteAmara Konneh, minister of planning and economic affairs, LiberiaRakesh Rajani, TwawezaPaul OBrien, Oxfam America

Donald SteinbergPanel will discuss sustainability in development: the cost of services, the need fornoncorrupt processes, and stakeholders necessary for long term development.Flip around the old adage, Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach him to fish,and he eats for a lifetime. If you give a man a fish, you know that hes going to eattoday. While teaching a man to fish is good, it takes a long time and is very complicated.

Emilia PiresWhen I became minister, Timor-Leste was in crisis.Development is a long-term issue. Addressing crisis is short term, but you need to planboth short and long term.Had a hard time convincing other ministers within Timor-Leste to plan for the long-term;they had been acting unsustainably.First sorted out Timor-Lestes IDP situation within two years, which allowed the creationof a long-term development plan, which brought in foreign donors and investment.Addressing the short- and long terms together is beneficial.

Amara Konneh[Regarding the fragility of Liberia] Every fragile state has history of conflict. Liberia had acivil war.

o People usually think about the hard destruction physical destruction ofinfrastructure but forget about the soft, like interruptions in social services andother human capital.

Focused on a few issues, namely country ownership building the capacity of Liberianinstitutions.

o Learned from our first poverty reduction plan (a three-year plan), which focusedon a few priorities, and had the development community adding things to that list.

o This list became long. A laundry list of interventions without real implementation

isnt helpful.Second poverty reduction strategy is committed to just four things: Youth,unemployment, capacity-building (for example, Liberia has only six surgeons) andconflict reconciliation.The development community wants Liberia to focus on certain things, but they havebeen able to step aside and say Ok, we need to focus on the things that Liberia thinks itneeds.Our open budget plan is now going to require that ministries write quarterly reports abouttheir expenditures.

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Paul OBrienDevelopment is about trade-offs. If the consensus at the forum is that its not about us,how do we do that? Development workers dont want to get in the way.Public institutions with a public purpose are essential.Private institutions with a private purpose (the private sector).

o Despite concern about CEOs coming in with private money, the state has beenthe real winner.

o Of course NGOs should be talking to the private sector, but they fundamentallyhave a private purpose something very different than what the developmentworld wants.

Public institutions with a private purpose (public workers using resources for their owninterests). This is not teaching a man to fish, nor is it giving a man a fish.Private actors with a public interest: perhaps we arent challenging the power-structure.

o Transparency and accountability dont automatically lead to economic growth,and that is fundamentally an issue of power.

o Ethiopia shut down Skype yesterday. What can we do about issues like that?

Rakesh Rajani[What has worked? What hasnt] Development is a workshop, where you talk; the way todo capacity-building is to not do capacity building. These are institutional problems, butthe wrong types of solutions are being generated.

o Water pumps dont work, but a 20-year old bike does.o A 1970s Peugeot works, but a new computer doesnt.o People, including poor people, are really curious, and what they want are ideas,

and tools, and markets, and data in a real sense, evidence.Capacity-building is about communication.

o Mobile phones allow for cheap communication.o Accountability caused the president to reshuffle the cabinet. That happened

because the president couldnt ignore the problem, because the problems wereso widely communicated.

o People communicating changes the world, when there are lots of insights andperspectives. What matters to people is whether and how things get done.

Learning does not equal just sending kids to school. What would accountability look likeif it were really about getting things done?

PiresEven in states where leadership is good, the behavior of people engaged indevelopment can improve.

o There is a tendency for agencies to protect or isolate themselves in guardedcompounds.

o The international community says it doesnt have capacity, while it stays isolatedand doesnt engage with local populations and governments.

International partners need to support the locals, not expensively contract with outsiders or at least work inside a government and teach locals, so that when internationalpeople leave, locals can continue to work.There are so many reports, but no cross-cutting analyses.

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SteinbergThis is a brand new world. USAID is trying to figure out its role in this new world. Noagency can do this on its own. No institution has a monopoly on resources, on newideas, or moral authority.

KonnehFinance ministers are presumed corrupt. The majority of people are poor and have no jobs, and feel that finance ministers should be getting them out of that.Development partners need to align with the locals. The current development frameworkagreement with the U.S. is the same one that was created in 1926.Most fragile countries dont want to be fragile. Its not sexy to be called a fragile state.Must now be transparent, open up to our citizens and our partners.There needs to be unprecedented openness of the budget process.

o Partners wont tell finance departments where their ODA money is going.o Accountability isnt just on the side of the recipient countries, but should be on

both sides.o Working all the time toward benchmarks to gain international trust; as soon as

you hit one benchmark, another is introduced.Information is really key, the foundation of which is an educated population. Therefore,need more funding for education and published accounts of how much money is going toeach district.Sent people to investigate the outcomes of a construction project; in one instance,videotaped a building whose wall was pushed over by hand. Who takes accountabilityfor projects like this that fail?Have worked hard to build one of the best financial systems in the government, a pilotprogram called the Fixed Amount Reimbursement Account.

o The Liberian government puts money into this system, and we get reimbursed forthe money if development benchmarks are met. Hope to replicate this programso that foreign aid is no longer needed in 10 years.

OBrienPrivate donors are acknowledging more often that it is not about us , it is about needypopulations.Must make clear to Congress that learning to manage risk and get money to local peopleis necessary if theyre ever going to be truly self-sufficient.

RajaniWhat kind of results really matter? The problem with focusing on results is a tendency tomicromanage them, to make results mean success on all points of a 79-point plan.Instead, the actual results are whether students actually learn and whether a kid actuallyrecovers from a disease.