Time to Rethink Development Assistance in the Sahel.

• Author: Wentling, Mark

Title: Time to Rethink Development Assistance in the Sahel

Author: Mark Wentling

The main assistance theme of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. embassies, other donors, and host government agencies in the impoverished Sahel Region of Africa has been focused for a decade on strengthening the resilience of rural households eking out a living on the edge of the Sahara Desert. More than 40 million people reside in this marginal arid geographic area, mostly pursuing subsistence agricultural and pastoral livelihoods. The countries most concerned by this effort to build rural resilience are Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

USAID and other donors have provided hundreds of millions of dollars to fund resiliency activities in the Sahel. These costly endeavors have kept hundreds of thousands of desperately poor people from becoming poorer and enabled them to better withstand natural disasters, but they have not advanced their countries to a higher developmental stage. USAID and other major donors are thus confronted with cruel options. Does USAID continue spending its limited funding on keeping poor people from becoming poorer or does it invest in supporting activities that have the potential to lift the country's development ranking? With assistance funding unlikely to be increased, USAID will be faced with making a choice: either it continues supporting resiliency and related activities or it switches its focus to supporting activities that enhance a country's overall development status.

Prioritizing Education and Health

A country cannot raise its development status without major improvements in both education, including formal, non-formal, vocational and training needed to respond to the job market, and health, including family planning, nutrition, sanitation and water. Therefore, if the aim of USAID and other donors is to help advance the development status of a country, these organizations must augment their support in these sectors. Although many other needs beg attention, until measurable progress is made in these two sectors, these three Sahel countries (and others) will remain mired in the lowest ranks of the poorest countries in the world.

The U.S has expended hundreds of millions of assistance dollars since these countries gained independence in 1960 and there is little credible evidence to demonstrate a lasting impact on improving the development status of these countries. Over this period, the U.S. has funded activities in almost every conceivable assistance area, but this assistance has been fragmented and inconsistent. To have a minimum chance of making a lasting positive difference, assistance funding should be concentrated for an extended period on education and health rather than spread over a wide variety of activities as well-meaning "Pixie Dust."

In retrospect, if the U.S. had concentrated its assistance resources on...