Development Assistance

Description

The Development Assistance (DA) account supports two goals: ending extreme poverty and promoting the development of resilient, democratic societies. Funding supports core interventions and partnerships in 43 countries and regional missions enabling inclusive, sustainable growth, promoting free, peaceful, and self-reliant societies with effective, legitimate governments, building human capital, and creating social safety nets that reach the poorest and most vulnerable in a comprehensive effort to end extreme poverty.

What Does This Buy?

Funds are provided to partners through grants, cooperative agreements, and other mechanisms to implement need-based programming including microfinance, food security, water and sanitation, and basic education.

Justification for the Request

767 million people around the world still live on less than $1.90 a day. These populations, concentrated mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, comprise over 10% of the global population. DA funds support the following programming:

• Microfinance: Provides financial services to the poor in a sustainable manner using credit, savings, insurance, and other products to improve people’s ability to participate in their local economy and better cope with risk.
• Global Food Security Strategy: Feed the Future helps the world’s poorest countries transform their foodsystems, giving families and communities the opportunity to lift themselves out of food insecurity and malnutrition.
• Basic Education: Provides children with safe and equitable access to quality education so that they develop the necessary skills to join the global workforce. The programs work to ensure pathways to self-reliance for the individual and the community.
• Adaptation, Clean Energy, and Sustainable Landscapes: Promotes activities that help countries and communities prepare for and adapt to climate change, invest in renewable energy sources, and support sustainable landscapes, mitigating the effects of climate change and decreasing carbon emissions.
• Biodiversity: Conserves biodiversity in more than 50 countries in partnership with foreign governments, civil society, the private sector, and local communities to comprehensively address direct threats and the underlying drivers of biodiversity loss.
• Water and Sanitation: Supports water, sanitation, and hygiene programs in the poorest countries. Water is essential to health and food production. Coupled with poor hygiene, the lack of adequate water and sanitation is a leading cause of disease and death worldwide.
• Gender Equality: Promotes the cultural status and the political, economic, and social advancement of women and girls. Programs seek to strengthen women’s participation as political leaders and their capacity as citizens to constructively engage the government.

U.S. Interest

Development Assistance promotes American prosperity through investments that expand markets for U.S. exports, create a level playing field for U.S. businesses, and support more stable, resilient, and democratic societies.

Bold Vision

Increased funding would support new and/or increased programming that alleviates extreme poverty. Funds could be used to further reduce infant mortality, improve education and increase its reach, spur economic growth, promote stewardship of the environment and natural resources, and support democracy, good governance, and human rights.

Impact of Cuts

• Cuts would undermine progress toward inclusive, sustainable growth. Because development requires sustained efforts to reach lasting results, cuts not only impact near-term outcomes, they also damage long-term prospects to achieve self-reliance.
• Cuts will compromise popular programs, including Feed the Future, Power Africa, and the Global Partnership for Education.