That Development Lady

By Fid Thompson
Dakar
16 September 2009

The U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation and the government of Senegal  Wednesday signed a five-year $540 million grant to reduce poverty in the West African nation.

The grant will focus on road rehabilitation and food security initiatives in two of the poorest regions of Senegal.

“The funding itself will be invested in the rehabilitation of two roads, one in the Casamance region and one in the Senegal River Valley.  Additional funds will be invested in rehabilitating and expanding existing infrastructure for irrigation and water resources management,” said Madolyn Phillips, Director of the Corporation’s Senegal country program.

Launched in 2004, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is an independent agency of the U.S. government. It has a specific mission to invest in poverty reduction through economic-development projects in some of the poorest countries in the world.

To be eligible for an MCC grant, governments must meet three main criteria - ruling justly, investing in people, and promoting economic freedom.

Phillips says the Millennium Challenge Corporation takes a new approach to international aid.

“One of the things that is unique about MCC is that we work in very close partnership with our eligible countries and one of the guiding principles for the MCC is that there be a high degree of country ownership of our programs. Through a consultative process, through economic analyses and through various other mechanisms for project identification it was the government of Senegal that targeted these regions and these projects for investment by MCC for a number of reasons,” said Phillips.

Senegal’s government identified the troubled Casamance region in the south and the northern rice-growing region of St. Louis for MCC investment.

The grant will improve infrastructure in both regions and will develop 10,500 hectares of land in the fertile Senegal River Valley. Senegal imports 70 percent of its rice. With better irrigation and drainage, the government aims to bring the country one step closer to food security.

BRUSSELS — The United States on Tuesday appealed for more European aid to refugees fleeing the fighting between the Pakistani Army and Taliban militants in the Swat Valley, arguing that their plight was increasing instability in the region.

“This is more than a humanitarian crisis — it is a strategic crisis,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “These refugees are in the exact area where the Taliban and Al Qaeda are. We have to have the same degree of stability and control on the Pakistani side of the border.”

Speaking in Brussels after meetings with NATO and European Union officials, Mr. Holbrooke also conceded that Western strategy in Afghanistan had not been sufficiently well explained in Europe, where concern is mounting in some nations over military casualties.

But his main goal was to call for greater use of Europe’s so-called soft power, suggesting that a commitment of an additional €50 million, or about $71 million, would help stabilize the Swat Valley.

“Pakistan needs more attention from the Europeans,” Mr. Holbrooke told reporters. He added that the United States had provided $335 million, a larger percentage of relief aid than Washington would normally expect to provide.

The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, last month promised to contribute €72 million, but it also said that together with contributions from European governments, the E.U. contribution was significantly higher.

“In purely humanitarian aid, the E.U. has provided $263 million in the last six months alone,” said John Clancy, European Commission spokesman for development and humanitarian aid.

Mr. Holbrooke declined to criticize Europe’s commitment to the war in Afghanistan, rejecting such complaints as the “fruitless unproductive drama” that he said characterized the position of the Bush administration. He said that because the new U.S. administration had inherited “no strategy” from the Bush years, the purpose of the campaign in Afghanistan had not been sufficiently well explained in Europe.

His comments came a day after David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, outlined his government’s Afghan policy in comments widely seen as a way to ease concern among Britons about British casualties in Afghanistan. Mr. Miliband called for greater engagement with moderate elements of the Taliban, a policy advocated by Washington. According to an opinion poll published by The Independent of London, more than half of British voters would like to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

Separately, Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, which holds the rotating E.U. presidency, highlighted the need for more effort to “include in the Afghan political system people who either feel excluded or have chosen to be excluded.” Speaking at a foreign policy conference in Brussels, Mr. Bildt said the period between Afghanistan’s presidential election next month and its parliamentary elections in 2010 “is the crucial time when we can create the opportunity for people to become part of the political system.”