Issues

MFAN supports a model of development that prioritizes accountability, transparency, evidence of impact, and that gives greater voice, resources, and decision-making power to local actors to deliver sustained results from U.S. taxpayer investments.

Strengthen U.S. Agency Capacity and Coordination to Deliver Assistance Effectively

U.S. international assistance delivers life-saving aid and advances America’s national interests — but only when it’s managed effectively. To ensure the best use of resources and the sharing of best practices, strong coordination is needed across all the U.S. agencies that deliver international assistance including the State Department, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Development Finance Corporation as well as with international or multi-lateral bodies. Adequate staffing, skills, and systems to properly manage America's international assistance portfolio will be required, especially as the State Department takes the lead. Necessary skills and capacity at the State Department include strategic planning, technical expertise for program design, procurement, strategic partnerships, measurement and evaluation, risk assessment, and oversight. MFAN closely tracks the way our international assistance programs are structured, staffed, executed and evaluated to ensure program impact and sustainable results.

Improve Accountability, Transparency, and Congressional Oversight of Assistance Programs

U.S. international programs need strong oversight from Congress to ensure accountability to aid recipients and to U.S. taxpayers. Transparency is the cornerstone of oversight. As mandated by Congress, all stakeholders should have easy access to public websites and data sets to understand, improve, and hold the U.S. government to account for effective development and humanitarian programs. MFAN works to improve the transparency of the U.S. government’s funding pipeline in order to track where the money is going and how it’s used. We support the comprehensive and up-to-date reporting to the official U.S. government data base (foreignasistance.gov), including the publication of project status and timelines. For limited U.S. dollars to have a meaningful impact, the State Department and other U.S. agencies should continue to invest in and improve its approach to Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL), and to integrate cost-effectiveness evidence into decision making.

Shift Greater Voice, Resources, and Decision-making Power to Local Actors and Institutions

Development will be more efficient, effective, and transformational in the long run if it is led by country actors – the government, civil society and the private sector. As such, the U.S. government should strengthen its ability to transition its programs to local and national country actors with the total U.S. portfolio of programs decreasing over time. To better enable sustainable country transitions, the U.S. should increase its support for government-to-government assistance to improve country systems as well as domestic resource mobilization and public financial management to strengthen country capacity to raise tax revenues and do effective fiscal management. While international partners will continue to manage and implement some key programs, they should engage local actors in meaningful and equitable partnerships and provide more decisionmaking power, funding, and organizational capacity positioning local actors to lead these programs down the road.

Expand the DFC's Capacity to Mobilize Development Finance and Private-sector Investment

MFAN was an early leader in calling for the creation of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), and it has since worked to ensure the agency lives up to the bipartisan promise of its establishment: to serve as the U.S. government’s premier international development finance agency and an integral part of our foreign policy toolkit. MFAN works to strengthen the key areas that are critical to strengthening the transparency, accountability, and development impact of the DFC’s investments. To advance these objectives, MFAN has been actively involved in the congressional reauthorization and oversight of the DFC to ensure that the agency’s central mission – mobilizing private sector investment in low and lower-middle income countries – remains front and center.

MFAN is a bipartisan coalition of international development practitioners, policy advocates, and subject-matter experts working to make U.S. international assistance more effective, accountable, and results-driven.

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Issues

Strengthen U.S. Agency Capacity and Coordination to Deliver Assistance Effectively

Improve Accountability, Transparency, and Congressional Oversight of Assistance Programs

Shift Greater Voice, Resources, and Decision-making Power to Local Actors and Institutions

Expand the DFC's Capacity to Mobilize Development Finance and Private-sector Investment

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