Innovation in Foreign Assistance Delivery

What is the problem?

There is widespread recognition that the U.S. government and its major partners have been unable to make significant inroads in their overall goals of reducing poverty and building accountable, democratic states. International campaigns lobby the U.S. government to spend more money fighting poverty (the current rate is less than one-half of one percent of the national budget). Yet funding alone is not the problem: approximately $2.3 trillion1 has been spent over the past five decades by the West, and significant amounts over the last few years by the U.S. government in Afghanistan and Iraq, and yet far too many people remain deeply mired in poverty and live in poorly governed societies.