ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Thank you Chairwoman Granger, and thank you Ranking Member Lowey, I am personally
very appreciative for your support, your commitment to these issues, your leadership and your
willingness to take time to offer both council and serious oversight to help us get better
at deploying our development mission around the world.
So I'm very grateful for the opportunity to be here and be with the committee and want
to thank you personally.
This is an important moment for development.
Drawing down from a decade of war requires rethinking how America projects (thank you)
projects power and values around the world.
And we believe development will continue to be elevated as part of our national security
and foreign policy engagements across the globe.
I recall just about a year and a half ago having the opportunity to visit Somalia in
the midst of a famine.
And in that context I met children who were on the verge of starvation and mothers who
had been through extraordinary challenges.
It was American support in any number of forms to which, which was keeping them safe and
allowing them to survive.
Just a few months ago I had a chance to be back in Somalia and this time not at a refugee
camp on the border but actually in Mogadishu and I saw the other side of what can happen
when we work to build hope and opportunity.
They had turned on 600 streetlights for the first time in Mogadishu and had a peaceful
evening celebration for the first time in two decades.
We're working in more than 400 communities to help displaced persons go back to their
homes, receive some seed, fertilizer and farm implements, and rebuild their own livelihoods
so they don't remain in a cycle of dependency.
And that, while there's so much more to do in that setting, it does give me hope that
the new model of development we've tried to pursue with a focus on self-sufficiency, dignity,
and partnership, has been one that is achieving results.
Very briefly, our Feed the Future program is a model of this engagement.
We cut our Agricultural programs in 23 countries to focus on 19 where we think we can deliver
the best results and we now know that our efforts have contributed to a 5.6% annualized
poverty reduction rate in those countries, reached more than 7 million farm households,
motivated $3.5 billion of private sector investment to accelerate and compliment our public investments,
and led to real policy reforms, including efforts to fight corruption in these settings.
Similarly, our partnership to end preventable child death around the world is working.
Again we had to cut programs in 22 countries to focus on those 24 that account for the
largest burden of disease.
And again we rely on large-scale partnerships with everyone from vaccine manufacturers to
zinc miners to help make sure that we get the products and technologies to children
in order to save their lives.
We hope to expand and bring this partnership model to education, water and sanitation,
and any number of areas that we agree are critical to expressing our values in the most
effective results-oriented way.
Underpinning these efforts is the USAID forward reform approach.
It's an approach that focuses on a new form of partnership and engagement, on a prioritization
of innovation, science, and technology, and on a commitment to measure and report transparently
on results.
Today you can download an application on your iPad that will show you 186 independently
conducted project evaluations unadulterated by us so we can all learn together from what
works and what doesn't.
Because of your support we have been able to rebuild our staff, hiring 1,100 Foreign
Service and Civil Service Officers over the last several years.
And that's been necessary to do improved monitoring, evaluation, and oversight of contracts and
programs to save American taxpayer program resources over time.
We've made our work transparent by joining the International Aid Transparency Initiative,
and we've prioritized local solutions that can at times cost less, and allow for more
sustainability in how those programs are implemented.
As part of this year's budget, the President has proposed an important reform to our Food
Aid Program.
This reform is designed to reach 4 million additional children with basic core nutrition,
during times of extreme need, without asking for additional funds.
This reform allows us to expand the flexibility with which we can meet needs in a changing
world.
Today, whether an opposition-controlled Syria or parts of Yemen, or Somalia, traditional
forms of humanitarian assistance are less effective, and more flexible modern approaches
are often required where there are real security threats for our humanitarian workers.
The reform promotes efficiency and incorporates new science as the underpinning of how to
deliver results-oriented aid and assistance.
And the reform retains and, in fact, renews the long-standing partnership with American
agriculture, allowing for the majority of products and commodities to continue to be
bought here in the United States and shipped on US flag vessels, but in an updated and
modern way that benefits from what we know about how to most effectively improve lives
for children and women.
I'd like to take this moment to thank our staff, and to thank you for your special concerns
about our staff.
This past year we lost one of our own, Ragaei Abdelfattah, in Afghanistan.
It was the toughest moment for most of us here in Washington and around the world to
have to go through.
And we recognize that his family has made a sacrifice, an ultimate sacrifice, because
this young man cared a lot about the education of the people he worked with in a community
in Afghanistan.
At a time when cuts across our government have required real efficiencies to be sought
and expressed in this budget, our FY14 request is 6% lower than our FY12 enacted level.
But we still believe that by doing things differently, by demanding more of others,
and by partnering for results, we can still have big aspirations.
And those aspirations were reflected in the President's State of the Union address where
he, like other Presidents before him, called for us to achieve big things: to end extreme
poverty in two decades, to end preventable child death in that same time frame, to usher
in an AIDS-free generation, to support transitions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, to improve
trade and economic ties with Africa and other parts of the world.
So I'm very excited to have this opportunity to be with you and eager to get into the topics
that you've laid out.
Thank you.