Moving beyond aid
The Global Innovation and Prosperity Act would transform how the U.S. partners with hundreds of countries and communities around the world.
Dear Unlock Aid community,
It’s happening. Today, we’re publishing the Global Innovation and Prosperity Act (GIPA) and we need your feedback. This is the flagship proposal included within our Global Innovation Agenda to move “beyond aid” the way the U.S. partners with countries around the world.
While many existing legislative proposals promise to fix parts of the system as it is today, GIPA is our biggest proposal yet to revolutionize the way the U.S. invests $60 billion every year for global challenges – and build a new system for tomorrow.
By passing GIPA, we can create a world in which U.S. investments abroad can eradicate extreme poverty and spur innovation, direct investment into local communities, and support sustainable, inclusive, and broad-based economic growth. What does that look like? Here are some illustrative examples of what GIPA would enable:
Investing in market-creating innovations. In East Africa, GIPA would enable the U.S. to create a joint fund with three countries in the region and European governments to co-finance the construction of broadband cables and launch low-earth-orbit satellites, significantly increasing access to the Internet and digital inclusion. This market-creating innovation contributes to the development of new businesses and increased remittance flows.
Creating 21st-century jobs and innovation ecosystems. In the Indo-Pacific, GIPA would enable the U.S. and countries in the region to create a joint compact to co-finance investments in biomedical research and development centers, workforce training centers, and university science and technology programs, increasing the pipeline of highly-skilled workers in industries like aerospace, data science, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology.
Promoting “place-based” decision making and local community ownership. In Latin America, GIPA would enable the U.S. to facilitate a “debt for nature” swap for a country with high indebtedness to international creditors, forgiving the country’s debt in exchange for greater domestic investments to protect biodiverse ecosystems and promote more sustainable mining practices. In parallel, it would enable U.S. agencies to create a joint corporation with the country’s ministry of tourism, enabling affected Indigenous communities to lead in choosing the service providers, managing the land, and driving the investment strategy.
GIPA also changes how U.S. development dollars flow, too, such as by:
Enabling U.S. agencies to work directly with partner countries, subnational governments, cities, and local communities through joint corporations, compacts, and funds. Rather than issuing large public tenders that only big aid industry contractors can win, these jointly-managed funds would give greater agency to local actors to decide who to work with, against what priorities, and according to what timelines. This also positions the U.S. as a more responsive partner for hundreds of countries and communities around the world.
Directing the U.S. to create a “Missing Middle” Fund to bring to scale the most effective global development solutions that reach 1 million people or more to scale their impact to reach the next 100 million. This would provide hundreds of the world’s most effective social enterprises, startups, local groups, and other next-generation organizations with a mix of blended capital to increase their impact in the form of grants, debt, and equity.
Shaping global markets to increase R&D for global challenges. Taking a page from Operation Warp Speed, GIPA would enable the U.S. government to significantly increase its use of innovative finance tools like pay-for-success advanced market commitments to incentivize industry, research universities, and other players to invest huge sums in research and development to create global public goods, such as: alternative-to-cement building and road materials; diagnostics, therapeutics, and cures for diseases like tuberculosis and antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and; low-cost, low-power ways to heat and cool homes – an exploding need as energy demands balloon.
GIPA calls for more money for global development. But it also calls for those dollars to be better spent, especially to ensure that U.S. agencies and partners around the world can keep pace with the future.
GIPA requires the U.S. to “walk the walk” on its own development agenda, too, such as by publicly reporting its own progress towards internationally-agreed upon commitments like the Sustainable Development Goals – and finally joining nearly every other country in the world in doing so.
Read the GIPA bill summary, illustrative outcomes, and nearly 30 pages of proposed legislative text here.
We’d love your ideas on ways to strengthen GIPA.
To send us ideas, please reply to this email, send us a note at policy [at] unlockaid.org, or fill out this form.
Why now?
We’re publishing GIPA today because we need to build consensus and momentum for a bold proposal for Day 1 of the next administration, whatever it is, on January 20, 2025. In doing this work, we also want to grow the coalition of actors who we can count on to bring political support for a more 21st-century U.S. approach to global development.
As Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar wrote in January, lots of people have critiques about U.S. global development spending and ideas about ways to make it better. Few people think the system we have now is working.
Every year, the U.S. spends approximately $60 billion for global challenges like health, education, climate adaptation, and food security. However, U.S. development agencies are stifled by outdated rules, regulations, and business practices – and they are too dependent on a bloated aid industry that too often fails to deliver results, displaces markets, and causes harm.
In April, we argued in Foreign Policy why now is the time to propose big, transformational reforms.
GIPA is our biggest proposal yet to to do that.
How did you develop GIPA?
We developed GIPA by working with others. Last year, we went on a 6-month listening tour to ask hundreds of communities in the U.S. and around the world, “If we could start over, what would we do differently?” We wrote down what we heard and then worked with a team to translate those ideas into GIPA’s proposed legislative text.
As part of this process, we consulted with more than 200 organizations to develop this proposal, including diverse groups of people, communities, and constituencies, such as:
coalitions and organizations like Catalyst 2030 and Afrilabs that represent thousands of organizations, social innovators, community leaders, and entrepreneurs, especially those headquartered in Africa, Latin America, and Asia;
top science, climate, and innovation groups, like Project Drawdown and the Federation of American Scientists;
leading groups on U.S. national security and foreign policy issues, like the Truman Center and Foreign Policy for America;
organizations that drive the agenda on evidence-based policymaking and using data for good, like Results for America;
world leaders in cash benchmarking and cash transfers, like GiveDirectly;
faith groups, such as leaders and members of the Accord Network;
“local-first” social movements, like the Movement for Community-Led Development-US;
diaspora communities, like the African Diaspora Network;
as well as with U.S. government officials and agencies, think tanks, socially-responsible business groups, and universities.
We also looked at some of the best ideas we’ve seen from other proposals to modernize U.S. development spending, including published opinion pieces, think tank analyses, and legislative initiatives past and present, such as measures before Congress today, like the Fostering Innovation in Global Development Act (FIGDA) and the Locally-Led Development and Humanitarian Response Act, and ideas from proposals introduced in years’ past, such as the Global Development Lab Act (introduced in 2014) and the Global Partnerships Act (introduced in 2012).
What happens now?
This is just the beginning of a conversation to reshape the future of U.S. global development spending. We know there’s more work to do. And we know we need to work with others to make this a reality.
We expect that lawmakers will introduce this legislation or something similar to it, so we want to make sure that GIPA is well vetted, packed with good ideas, and that it enjoys support from a diverse set of constituencies.
So here’s our ask to you — take a look at what GIPA proposes to do with a critical eye towards pointing out what’s great, noting where it can be improved, and help us get it’s ready to go on Day 1 of the next administration.
Then, join us in making this proposal a reality. It’s time to move beyond aid. And we need your help to do that.
To Progress,
Unlock Aid