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- 10/01/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the Ceremony Marking the Full Operational Capacity of Africa Command (AFRICOM)
- 09/17/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, at the "Doing Business: Five Years of Reform" Event- "Building Business, Restoring Relationships"
- 08/21/08: Press Briefing with Henrietta H. Fore, Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance via telephone from Tbilisi, Georgia - "Humanitarian Assistance to Georgia"
- 07/24/08: Remarks by President George W. Bush on The Freedom Agenda
 RSS Feed for Recent USAID Speeches and Testimony
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Remarks by Rear Admiral R. Timothy Ziemer
President's Malaria Initiative Coordinator
Before the Global Business Coalition
Brookings Institution
March 12, 2007
It's a pleasure to be with you - the "corporate sector" this afternoon. Your role in the fight against malaria is becoming more significant each day. Before I answer Steven's question, I want to make a couple overarching comments. The President's Malaria Initiative (or PMI) like the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief or PEPFAR are critical components of the US Government's Foreign Assistance Strategy.
President Bush has made unprecedented commitments to Africa and global health through these two initiatives, quadrupling aid to Africa from $1.4 billion annually in 2001 to $4 billion. He pledged to increase humanitarian and development aid to the continent to almost $9 billion by 2010.
The PMI has revitalized the U.S. global malaria strategy fundamentally in scope, size, and structure, ensuring greater effectiveness and accountability, and providing critically-needed global leadership to combat a devastating yet preventable and treatable disease.
You've just been reminded of the devastating health and economic impact of malaria. One day, in the not too distant future, I hope to be reporting the lives saved as the result of PMI and our collective efforts - and less time on the dramatic and gruesome figures that challenge us today.
I'm convinced that if we come together to leverage the expertise and abilities of the corporate sector with our African partners under on plan, we can scale up and sustain these life-saving programs and beat a preventable and treatable disease.
I was asked to speak about what PMI and USAID does at the community and our interface with the private sector
In malaria the "home is the first hospital". The most important health care decisions are made by the mother - and sometimes the father - on the recognition of the illness and treatment for the child, the acquisition of an ITN, the use of IPT, or the acceptance of the IRS sprayman. The home is our focus too, , and we recognize that is it the NGOs, the CBOs the FBOs and all the other networks of civil society that are working there, day in and day out, at the household community level that will make the difference and bring this shared vision to reality.
To date, the PMI has supported at least 29 non-profits and faith-based organizations. Over one third of these groups are local, indigenous organizations. Of the $28.5 million disbursed to Phase I countries (Tanzania, Angola, and Uganda) in FY06, 55% of the non-commodity funds ($14.7 million) supported NGOs/FBOs. These groups have significantly contributed to the PMI's year one successes across all focus areas.
We are building-upon existing NGOs with the help of our Malaria Communities Program (MCP) - these are members of the team fulfilling unique roles - roles only they can perform due to their expertise, positions and responsibilities.
The RAPIDS/Zambia program, where GBC has been instrumental, is a model partnership that blends the core strengths of business, government, community and faith-based organizations for public gain. The Zambia model can be a platform for more public/private ventures. If we can replicate this experience in a thoughtful and strategic way in other settings, we will be successful and show impact.
With regard to the commercial sector, USAID and PMI have developed number of innovative strategic partnerships
As detailed in the discussion paper, we support the NetMark Project, a time-limited investment by USAID to reduce the burden of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa by increasing the commercial supply of and public demand for insecticide treated nets. This is achieved primarily through partnerships with commercial companies and national malaria control programs, and national scale public education and promotional efforts. Begun in 1999 NetMark and its formal commercial partners, including 39 African commercial partners and 9 international partners, have delivered more than 20 Million Insecticide Treated Mosquito Nets throughout Africa. In addition, NetMark has worked to reduce taxes and tariffs on mosquito netting and insecticides and proved technical support for African textile manufacturers to enter the market, and technology transfer for them to produce Long Lasting Insecticidal Nets.
One innovative tactic NetMark has developed is the use of discount voucher for mosquito nets to target subsidies for vulnerable groups. The vouchers or coupons are distributed by clinics or NGOs and redeemed for a net at a participating retail outlet. Some of these schemes, in Ghana and Zambia for example, were done through support from Exxon-Mobil.
Other partnerships are supported through the USAID Global Development Alliance, or GDA, whose work includes a partnership with a bio-pesticide company to develop innovative vector control tools. GDA also supports a partnership with artemisia growers in Africa and several pharmaceutical companies to build artemisinin extraction facilities in Kenya and Tanzania.
We support the Medicines for Malaria Venture who build and manage a research and development portfolio capable of leading to the registration of at least one new antimalarial drug every five years. Partnered with industry, MMV's manages and directs research and development activities carried out at a broad variety of institutions, comprising 42 academic and pharmaceutical organizations located in 10 different countries. At present, there are 22 candidate antimalarial agents in MMV's portfolio, including 8 completely new therapeutic targets.
We have numerous other country-specific examples of partnerships among the public sector, the private and commercial sector and civil society. Sometimes we act as the funder, sometimes as the broker, the marriage maker, but we recognize at the core that only through these collaborations with the private sector and civil society will we succeed.
Your second question asks what are our major successes and challenges in community mobilization and impact, how will we address the challenges?
First let me sat that Government, private, bilateral, multilateral and national governments must work together in harmony towards one agenda - one mission - the support and successful implementation of ONE PLAN - that is where we must start. Success is achieved when we understand our own limitations and recognize the strengths of others.
The RAPIDS/Zambia model is a good example. Here you have an existing network, visiting some of the most vulnerable households in the community week in and week out, a capacity far beyond what we in the public sector can perform. ( Likewise the discount voucher program for ITNs that I mentioned above, the clinic distributes the voucher to the target group, but the logistics and financial accounting for the net is handled by the commercial sector.) We each know our limitations and our strengths and we define our partnerships to achieve our common goal.
Challenges are many, but let me mention two here.
In many countries there are vast networks of NGOs, CBOs church groups, youth groups, etc. The challenge is how to engage, communicate with and coordinate all these different groups so that we can move in a common direction. To that end, the country programs work closely with umbrella groups, such as in Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal and Zambia who can reach across the networks for HIV/AIDS, education, micro-enterprise, agriculture, etc. not necessarily to create "quote" 'Malaria NGOs de novo, but to expand the work of existing groups to include malaria, again, with the RAPIDS program as a good example.
The second challenge is the management capacity in the public sector, specifically the National Malaria Control Programs. A moment ago I used the phrase "malaria control makes good business sense", as Steve here can show you with the numbers from the AngloGold Ashanti in Ghana.
But let me turn that around, to say that "Business sense makes good malaria control." Make no mistake, increasing corporate investment is important. But beyond financial support there is great potential for more strategic partnerships that take advantage of the commercial sector's core competencies and corporate visions. For example, there are discussions, including GBC members, with groups in the IT sector to improve the connectivity and information management capacity of the national ministries responsible for implementing malaria control. We would like to discuss more partnerships for improving Human Resource Management, Financial Management and supply-chain logistics - elements that lie at the core of commercial sector competency. Bottom line - by building capacity = sustainability!!
The Global Fund and World Bank provide funds, not capacity to manage those funds for results. At the moment there are few, if any, alternatives for NMCPs to turn to for management skill-building. In the large number of countries with no USAID presence, the options are even more limited.
In the current donor environment of performance-based funding from all the major donors, and particularly the Global Fund, we are seeing that implementation capacity is the main stumbling block for national programs' ability to scale interventions up to national level. This includes planning, ordering and procurement, monitoring and supervision, logistics, and accounting- all functions that businesses perform routinely every day.
The third question I was asked to address is how do we scale up? I would like to expand that question with the word "sustain": How do we scale up and sustain our efforts against malaria?
Local ownership is essential to the sustainability of programs over the long term. But how do we elevate your involvement and apply your "business plan" mentality so that more will come to the table, not lose interest. This focus on sustainability - and ultimately on local ownership is a major challenge.
The PMI is identifying and enabling groups to become new partners in malaria control in Africa, specifically aiming to: identify potential new organizations uniquely positioned to work at the community level in the 15 PMI focus countries; increase local and indigenous capacity to undertake community-based malaria prevention and treatment activities; and build local ownership of malaria control for the long term
Like business, the hallmark of the PMI is programming based on clearly defined numerical targets for outcomes. Second is transparency in how the money is being spent. Third is a robust and effective monitoring and evaluation plan. This approach provides assurance that money is being spent effectively and the results are achieved. As businessmen and women, I know you can appreciate this shift.
I'm convinced that if we come together to leverage the expertise and abilities of our African partners, other international donors, the private sector, nonprofits and faith-based groups, we can scale up and sustain these life-saving programs.
I hope you leave here today knowing that you can Save Lives! If we embrace the country plan, work together creatively recognizing our strengths, our limitations, our core competencies and our corporate visions; If we build partnerships with the understanding that, literally, lives depend on it, we can't be stopped.
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