Minouche Shafik is right in saying that Donald Trump’s attack on USAID is “misguided, short-sighted and will have devastating consequences for millions of poor people around the world” (Opinion, February 11). But she is wrong to say that “reducing poverty at the country level may be most efficiently achieved through multilateral institutions”.
Historically, countries that have successfully reduced poverty have done so because they have had a settlement between domestic elites that has kept the peace, coupled with a social contract that has actively sought to reduce poverty. It is not about leveraging balance sheets or technical capability, whether multilateral or bilateral.
It is about understanding how positive change happens in any particular country so as to encourage a settlement that delivers better lives for citizens.
Shafik is right that the wanton destruction of USAID is a clarion call for new thinking. But the solution is to flip development on its head, recognise that sustainable change comes from within countries, and to design aid to support locally-led change that is much more likely to last.
Neil McCulloch, Gareth Williams and Laure-Hélène Piron
Directors, The Policy Practice, Oxford, UK
