Six predictions for 2023
This is the year for serious aid reform. Let's build a 21st-century government that works for everyone.
Dear Unlock Aid community,
With just two years left until the next Presidential election, we’re running out of time during the Biden Administration’s current term to reform foreign aid. That’s why we’ll be stepping up our campaign this year. We will need your help.
As you know, President Biden's State of Union speech is less than a week away. We’re looking forward to hearing how the U.S. plans to help turn the tide on a warming, conflict-ridden, and resource-depleted planet.
We have six predictions for what we’ll see in 2023:
The Biden Administration will make it cool to believe in government again
NASA shows that, by getting creative about how U.S. agencies design contracts, we can make it easier for the world's most innovative firms to partner with the U.S. government. That means better, faster, and more sustainable impact.
During the height of the pandemic, Operation Warp Speed also reminded us that the government and the private sector can work together to deliver seemingly impossible goals.
But too many federal agencies don’t operate with the urgency, flexibility and innovation required for this kind of success to be the norm. A myriad of unnecessary barriers can make the government feel impenetrable to more diverse and non-traditional players. Progress happens too slowly.
One of the biggest culprits is excessively complicated procurement practices. Complexity favors the few and the powerful who know how to play the game. But it leaves out the innovation we desperately need to address food insecurity, the effects of almost 90 million displaced persons, and under-resourced health care systems.
We predict 2023 will be the year that the Biden Administration champions a lot of really unsexy, in-the-weeds red tape issues and ushers in the reforms we need to build a 21st-century government that delivers. So cool.USAID will press pause on its planned $17 billion worth of anti-competitive global health supply chain contracts
USAID’s largest-ever foreign assistance package doubles down on colonial aid trib.al/cwQKMqx Via @WalterAKerr
USAID is on the verge of awarding its largest-ever foreign aid package, the $17 billion Next Generation Global Health Supply Chain awards. But none of the next-generation firms that are transforming the way that hundreds of millions of people around the world access their health care could ever compete directly for a dollar of these funds. Instead, these contracts double-down on an old-world aid model that doesn’t look like the future we need to build.
We predict that will change this year. Under USAID Administrator Samantha Power’s leadership, USAID will issue new RFPs to enable the United States to transition its relationship with countries away from dependence on aid toward mutually-beneficial trade. The Development Finance Corporation will play a role, including by scaling up the impact of existing health care and supply chain operators in place of international aid contractors.Congress will pass landmark legislation to make transparency, results, and innovation synonymous with US global development
Leaning into innovation – and connecting countries with the world’s most innovative firms to solve the planet’s most intractable problems – is one of the single best ways for the United States to become countries’ partner of first resort.
Last year, we saw a surge of interest from Congress on issues related to foreign aid transparency, results, and innovation. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a bipartisan subcommittee hearing at the end of 2022 to put a spotlight on these issues. That’s where we shared with them our vision for the future.
The need for aid reform is one of the few areas left in Washington, DC where the two parties still agree, so we predict this will be the year that Congress passes bold legislation that reimagines how we do aid.
Committee Chair @JoaquinCastrotx & @RepYoungKim introduced the Fostering Innovation in Global Development Act (FIGDA), bipartisan legislation that will modernize the way @USAID works with world-class innovators to solve the planet’s hardest problems.Today, @YoungKimCA and I introduced the bipartisan Fostering Innovation in Global Development Act or FIGDA – legislation that is directly informed by my @HouseForeign subcommittee’s work over the last two years. (1/7)
Joaquin Castro @JoaquinCastrotxPressure will increase dramatically on USAID to deliver on Administrator Power’s localization pledge
The rubber will hit the road this year on Administrator Power's target to get 25 percent of USAID funding to "local" groups. We predict a growing chorus of increasingly diverse actors, including Congress, who will want to see USAID show faster progress on Power’s pledge.
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a new generation of organizations take on some of the planet’s hardest problems, like food insecurity, climate adaptation, and health access. These enterprises have driven much of the breathtaking economic and social progress we've seen across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They’ve done this by growing their organizations outside of traditional aid.
USAID needs to proactively identify these pacesetters and help them scale their impact. This is the best way to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and transition to a world that does not need foreign assistance. Firms like these are not hard to find, either. For example, in light of prediction #2, above, here is a sampling of 30+ such innovators that are transforming health supply chains across Africa.
Count on advocates to step up the pressure in 2023.USAID will crack down on exploitative subcontracting practices
Administrator Power has talked about the issue of "bid candy," where a big aid contractor promises partnership with smaller, more innovative firms and then drops them when the award comes through. 73 percent of firms tell us that big aid contractors routinely cut them out of promised work.
Check out this video of Administrator Power talking about this problem last May:"The goal is not programming, it’s progress... Not building the capacity of local partners just to transform them into organizations that can win and manage USAID contracts...not pulling in a local organization as a subcontractor simply to win a bid, only to see them ignored..."We predict this year, under Administrator Power’s leadership, USAID will crack down on exploitative subcontracting practices. USAID will be on the lookout for contractors that:
Cut smaller partners out of promised work. Or wait to subcontract to smaller outfits until the last year of a multi-year award, after they've cut the budget in half, changed the scope, and given the firm just a fraction of the time they need to deliver results.
Routinely ask smaller partners to write substantial parts of their proposals, cut them out of the final product, and then submit the technical approach to USAID as if it were their own.
Block smaller firms from even talking to USAID or the host government, including during planning sessions that affect their work, and then place blame on them when things go wrong.
The first step will be for USAID to embrace transparency, like it insists on for other countries. This year, we predict USAID will begin to require its biggest contractors to publicly disclose what they promised they’d sub-award to smaller partners in order to win large grants and contracts; then, publicly report quarterly progress made against those goals. We also expect this is the year that USAID will make all of its award data public, not just bits and pieces of it.The public will increasingly understand how the issues they care about – equity and diversity, climate change, Ukraine, democracy, public health, food security, and migration, to name a few – are intimately connected to foreign aid, and they’ll clamor for reform
For many Americans, foreign aid has long felt like an esoteric topic reserved for government insiders. But migration and climate change are showing everyone how much we need to fix a system that’s been too inaccessible to too many people for too many years. The strength of a health care system anywhere can be the difference between a short-lived outbreak and the next global pandemic.
Our prediction: This is the year that Americans start waking up to the fact that the US spends tens of billions of dollars every year on foreign aid and too much of it goes to pay for office parks in Virginia and Maryland. Not enough is getting to communities on the front lines of solving these issues. That needs to change.
What do you think? Will any of this come up in the SOTU? And what are your predictions for 2023? Tweet at us @unlockaid and let us know!
To progress,
Unlock Aid Coalition
P.S. If you’ve ever tried to work with one of USAID’s largest contractors and got cut out of the deal, please let us know. Our coalition members have plenty of stories to tell. But we want to hear yours, too. We won’t publish anything without your permission. Collecting stories from people like you will help us build a better campaign.
I love your ambition and support your goals. But thinking any of these will happen is delusional - especially now with the partisan split in Congress, etc. As Hemingway wrote, "It's pretty to think so."
Still, there's plenty scope for progress, and secondary goals. I"m sure you'll be on top of those!!