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- 05/06/09: Testimony of Dr. Dennis Carroll, Special Advisor to the Acting USAID Administrator on Pandemic Influenza, before the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health - "2009-H1N1 Influenza Outbreak"
- 04/07/09: Remarks by Dirk Dijkerman, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, at the 2009 International Food Aid Conference
- 04/01/09: Statement of Dirk Dijkerman, Acting Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, before the Senate Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs - "Assistance for Civilian Victims of War"
- 04/01/09: Testimony of Maureen A. Shauket, Senior Procurement Executive, Director of the Office of Acquisition and Assistance, Bureau for Management, before the House Subcommittee for Oversight and Investigations - "Efforts to Ensure Accountability and Oversight for Contractors Operating in Iraq and Afghanistan"
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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore
Administrator, USAID and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance
Welcome and Remarks
Opening Dinner
Higher Education Summit for Global Development
April 29, 2008
Objectives
 Good evening. Secretary Rice regrets she is not with us tonight, but she will see you tomorrow. It is an honor to host such a distinguished group of presidents from leading academic institutions from around the world, leaders from the business and philanthropic community, and our guest of honor, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Let me welcome Chairwoman Nita Lowey, Congressman Brian Baird, and the Honorable Diane Jones, Assistant Secretary of Education for Postsecondary Education, attending on behalf of Secretary Margaret Spellings. I am also pleased to note that among the university presidents here tonight we have many alumni of U.S. Government training and visitor programs.
President Kagame, I want to begin with a story about good news from your country. Last year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- whose president, Susan Hockfield, will be co-chairing a breakout discussion group at our summit tomorrow - published a study on the use of mobile phones in microenterprises in Rwanda's capital city of Kigali. Microenterprises are defined as those with five or fewer employees. The study illustrated the benefits of mobile phone technology by highlighting the story of one young man who operates a bread bakery in his home. After buying a mobile phone - his first phone of any kind - he increased his customer base and the timeliness and efficiency of his access to supplies. He estimates that his business has grown by 30 percent just because of the opportunities provided by the mobile phone. His income growth allowed him to buy a bigger home for his family.
The MIT study concludes with an observation that users such as the baker in Kigali were not the intended market for mobile phones. "The takeup [of the mobile phone technology] by the developing world has exceeded all expectations, and has resulted in significant new investments in infrastructure, marketing, and R&D to serve the surprising demand. This evolution is strong evidence for the power of the user in the technology-adoption process."
The story of the young baker in Rwanda illustrates how innovation is a driver of economic growth. Thousands of innovations, large and small, across societies, happen to create prosperity for mankind. While this may seem a statement of simple common sense, it has a far- reaching impact on our work in international development. USAID has just recently released an Economic Growth Strategy which states,
"Capital accumulation and productivity growth both result from the independent efforts of millions of individual producers, constantly working to create new, better, and less costly goods and services through ingenuity and investment."
Governments can help to create the environment for growth, and can make investments in order to accelerate development. But innovation comes from many places, and those of you in this room-the leaders of universities and companies and foundations and NGOs, and budding entrepreneurs in your communities -play a crucial role in this process.
The world is changing, and we need more innovation to help meet the needs for food and water, health, and energy. We need innovation to help us in the current food crisis. In the short, medium, and long term, we need to:
- Improve the productivity of agriculture, doubling productivity and production of food staples in key countries;
- Find more efficient and effective means of transporting food; and
- Enhance the operations of markets, doubling regional trade in key markets in Africa and Asia.
Each of these is a significant challenge. What actions must we take to create the environment which supports the innovation which will meet these challenges? I will suggest three.
First, we must recognize that higher education is a foundation of development. This is something that we at USAID have long recognized, and have found a steady partner in with U.S. universities. Over the past few years, we have supported programs with more than 140 universities, colleges and community colleges in the U.S., partnering with an equal or greater number of higher education institutions overseas. These are spread across a number of sectors - education, agriculture, health, etc. For example, our Higher Education for Development program alone has implemented more than 300 partnerships between higher education institutions in the U.S. and 67 countries worldwide. Each of these offers a variety of partners - public, private, NGO, and higher education institutions. In addition, university and private sector contributions to these efforts have matched USAID investments on a nearly one-to-one basis.
Second, we must explore and adapt to evolving new models for higher education. As the modern research university enters its third century, we must consider how this model, which has served us so well, can best operate in a more global world and in a wide variety of environments. I believe that a great deal of this has to do with partnerships. All kinds of models are being tried-international campuses, partnerships with existing universities, distance learning, shared research, shared curriculum, and more.
I believe that this surge of innovation will serve us well. The Internet and other electronic media will allow new participants to resonate in what I call the "Global Development Commons."
As the name indicates, the Global Development Commons is not a government program, nor a business enterprise in the traditional sense, nor a strictly non-profit activity. As a commons, it is a community of continuous and real-time exchange, collaboration, partnership and action involving public and private donors, agencies, NGOs, businesses, the higher education community, host governments and civil society - at the intersection where our interests overlap.
Just as the learning environment for higher education is no longer limited to bricks-and-mortar classrooms, so too the environment for information, thought and action for global economic and social development now increasingly is as electric and instantaneous as cyberspace. Just as with the young baker and other microentrepreneurs in Rwanda, planners, policymakers, investors and technology creators are getting surprising and beneficial feedback by demonstrating "the power of the user."
One of the "Global Development Commons" efforts that USAID is supports is the "Communication Initiative Network," found at comminit.net (c-o-m-m-i-n-i-t dot net). This website aggregates best practices and innovative use of communication and media in development. Within weeks, we plan to convene a meeting of the Communications Initiative Network and other similar networks to build an alliance with universities, private sector partners, NGOs, and others to broaden development knowledge. It is knowledge sharing we are focused on. May I ask each of you in this room to partner with us to create or expand communities of practice for education, health, agriculture, transportation, and other vital sectors so together we may foster the innovation we need to meet the 21st Century challenges facing the developing world. Please discuss your ideas over the next two days, and indicate your willingness to participate by sending an email to gdc@usaid.gov.
Third, we are encouraging public-private partnerships across disciplines and institutions. In Mexico, USAID supports a broad public-private sector alliance known as the Training, Internships, Exchanges and Scholarships (TIES) initiative. This alliance has driven the formation of 60 partnerships between U.S. and Mexican universities. US Government funding for partnerships is awarded through a competitive solicitation process that explicitly requests university collaboration with public and private sector partners. As a result, the proposed partnerships address critical development problems identified by Mexican higher education institutions and their public and private partners. For example, when partners indicated the need for business development programs, a partnership between the University of Texas at San Antonio and the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara was developed to support entrepreneurship and spread the model of Small Business Development Councils throughout Mexico. Other partnerships have helped meet needs and build capacity in areas such as microfinance, health, software engineering, environmental protection and civil society development. What is especially remarkable about this program is the extent to which university, public and private sector partners not only collaborate in problem definition, but also contribute respective resources and expertise to problem solution.
And in Rwanda, President Kagame, a partnership linking Michigan State University, Texas A&M University, the National University of Rwanda, and USAID has helped promote economic development and reconciliation. The partnership created a network of coffee grower cooperatives throughout the country, fostered the development of high grade coffee beans for the international gourmet market, and generated significant employment. The project introduced Rwandan coffee growers to U.S. and European buyers of specialty coffee, including: Sustainable Harvest Coffee of Portland, Oregon; Intelligentsia Coffee of Chicago; and Vermont Green Mountain Coffee, whose customers include McDonald's. As President Kagame will be happy to confirm, international taste testers proclaim the Rwanda Maraba coffee grown through this partnership some of the best in the world.
Over the next two days, we have an ambitious agenda planned. As our summit meeting unfolds, I ask you to think about these three actions, and the role that you and your organization can play in carrying out each of them:
- Development is one of the most exciting areas in the world today. How will you encourage and accelerate the work of international development in your university?
- Are you pioneering distance learning and shared research?
- How might your university partner with businesses and others here in this room, to bring your abilities to your students, your professors, your institutions?
And may I challenge each of you, as an outcome of this meeting, to initiate at least two new partnerships to carry out these actions for each of your institutions.
It would be tempting to think, watching news headlines, that we are entering a time of limited possibility. But deeper consideration should make us realize that we are living with immense possibility. The economist Paul Romer that I keep in mind:
"Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. The difficulty is the same one we have with compounding: possibilities do not merely add up; they multiply."
New recipes and ideas - that is exactly the point illustrated by the MIT research. The mobile phone industry had a great product and its own idea for how to use it, but the young baker in Kigali, Rwanda, found new ideas, new recipes for the technology.
My hope is that the partnerships we create and compound here, and the innovation and reduction of poverty that happens as a result, will be part of millions more success stories like the one of the baker in Kigali. The multiplication can begin here.
Again, my warmest welcome and I thank you for your participation in this summit.
Introduction of President Kagame
I now have the privilege to introduce His Excellency, Paul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda. He won that office in 2003 in the first-ever democratically conducted, multiparty elections in his country.
President Kagame has been credited with constitutional and social reforms fostering reconciliation and renewal in a country that had suffered some of the worst civil violence - and indeed genocide - in modern times.
In 2003 he received the Global Leadership Award from the Young Presidents Organization in recognition of his role in reconciling his countrymen.
President Kagame also has been recognized by universities for his leadership. In the United States, The University of the Pacific and Oklahoma Christian University have awarded him honorary doctorates.
Last year he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Sir Muir Russell, Principal of the University of Glasgow, said, "Paul Kagame is the central figure in the rebirth of Rwanda and he is one of the most impressive leaders in Africa. He preaches a doctrine of security, guided reconciliation, anti-corruption, and above all a drive toward self-reliance that he hopes will free his country from its heavy dependence on foreign aid."
I believe these words of a distinguished university head best summarize the honored reputation of our speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome His Excellency, President Paul Kagame.
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