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Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Shah Emphasizes Role of Development

NATE MOULTON/THE HOYA  Former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, who is now part of the SFS faculty,  gave a lecture Monday as part of the Global Futures Initiative.
NATE MOULTON/THE HOYA
Former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, who is now part of the SFS faculty, gave a lecture Monday as part of the Global Futures Initiative.

Former U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah highlighted the importance of development to American foreign policy in a lecture at the Lohrfink Auditorium Monday.

The lecture, sponsored by the Office of the President, was part of the Global Futures Initiative, launched in January to encourage the university to engage in conversations about global issues over the next four semesters. As each semester focuses on a different theme, the issue for this semester is the future of development. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and Chief Economist Kaushik Basu have previously given speeches as part of the initiative.

“We’ve engaged in thoughtful and nuanced discussions on factors that shape efforts to alleviate poverty and improve the human condition in a world marked by complexity,” University President John J. DeGioia said in his introductory speech at the event.

Shah served as USAID’s administrator from 2010 until earlier this year. Upon leaving the organization on March 1, he joined the faculty of the School of Foreign Service as a distinguished fellow-in-residence, primarily engaging with the Global Human Development Program led by former USAID Chief Economist Steven Radelet.

“We’re deeply grateful to have the opportunity to engage with [Shah] now as a member of our community,” DeGioia said. “In his commitment to innovation and development, Dr. Shah’s work considers that same question and reflects that same spirit of thoughtful engagement in action toward the common good.”

Shah began his address by outlining the importance of development to American foreign policy.

“It is important to recognize that development policy plays, and has played especially in the last decade, a much larger role in how American projects combined military, diplomatic, and development rights-based power around the world,” Shah said.

Highlighting examples of important development projects, such as health and education reconstruction in Afghanistan, refugee camps in Jordan and earthquake rebuilding efforts in Haiti, Shah explained that in the coming years, the developing world would provide an opportunity for the United States to create real change.

“A greater number of our foreign policy crises, policies and opportunities will emanate from fragile states, and the fight against extreme poverty, which is increasingly concentrated in these states, will become an increasing part of how we defend ourselves, how we build connections around the world and how we build a global economy that really has an on-ramp for the 1.1 billion people that still subsist on a dollar a day or less,” Shah said.

Shah highlighted particular successes of America’s development mission until now, noting advances in global health and child survival rates, new technologies, education and the fight against global hunger, which was addressed by the Feed the Future Initiative launched by USAID in 2010 to ensure food security.

“There are a handful of things that we do very well in projecting development leadership around the world, and they often have to do with health, hunger, water access, education, investing in people, investing in children,” Shah said.

Shah then moved to criticizing the U.S. development policy. He advocated for the United States to support infrastructure projects in developing countries and focus on climate resilience strategies to prepare for natural disasters.

“I believe in the next 10 to 15 years, if we don’t do the next things better, in a more creative and imaginative way, we will then cede 60 years of American leadership to a group of emerging economies that are already starting to come together to organize new ways of doing things,” Shah said. “In the process, I think we’ll end up with … an America that is not as connected to the frontier parts of the world with anything other than our military.”

One of the primary anecdotes Shah discussed was that of the Ebola epidemic, the devastation of which he attributed to inadequate data and preparedness. When real-time data on where cases were occurring began streaming into government offices, the tide turned against the disease.

“Good data makes all the difference,” Shah said.

Shah concluded his lecture by acknowledging his hope for the future of development policy in the United States.

“When America offers leadership in development and humanitarian affairs, it changes the way the world sees and interacts with us but more than anything, it helps our own politics come together to do some extraordinary things,” Shah said. “We actually have a political system that could support a far bigger and much-needed role of development in our foreign policy.”

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