The aim of development should be to improve human well-being in all of its major dimensions—not only the economic one but also environment and health, personal and national security, and civil society.
When the rain stops falling in Kenya, catastrophe strikes. The year 2009 hit the African nation with its worst drought in over 25 years. Crops were wiped out, entire herds of cattle killed. Farmers and livestock herders could no longer provide enough food for their own families, let alone the 23 million people across East Africa facing critical food and water shortages.
Staff
- About FrontLines
- Insights from Administrator Rajiv Shah
CLIMATE CHANGE
- Message from the Global Climate Change Coordinator
- Leading the Charge for Low-Emission Sustainable Development
- Financing Asia's New Clean Energy Markets
- Crafting a Strategy for a Changing Climate
- The Specter of "Climate Wars"
- Peru's Melting Glaciers Teach Community Strength
- In the Face of Change, Kenyan Farmers Learn to Adapt
- Exclusive Interview with U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy
- Q&A with Padu S. Padmanaban, USAID Senior Energy Advisor climate extra
- Harmony Within Bangladesh's Endangered Forests climate extra
SCIENCE + TECHNOLOGY
- Message from the Director, Office of Science and Technology
- What Counts as Innovation?
- Collateral Benefits: How the Pursuit
of an AIDS Vaccine Has Boosted African Research - 99-Minute Diagnosis: Will New Technology Turn Tide on TB War?
- Building True Capacity on a Shifting Delta
- LAUNCHpad for Innovation
- USAID's Grand Challenges for Development
- USAID-Sponsored Science Battles Avian Influenza S&T extra
- A Message from the White House Science Advisor
- Connecting the Future with the Present: Foresight Research
- For the Advancement of Science: USAID's AAAS Fellows S&T extra
- Ed Carr: Geographer on the Vanguard S&T extra
THINKING SPATIALLY ABOUT DEVELOPMENT
- What It Means to Think Spatially
- The Great Data Warehouse
- Thinking Spatially with an Eye in the Sky
- Mapping Out Disaster, Relief, and Recovery
ONLINE EXTRAS
- Wanted: Photos that Tell USAID's 50-Year Story 50th anniversary
- Environment Photo Contest Top-10
- FrontLines Photography Contest Archive
- Municipal Mentorship
- Family Planning + Fuel-Efficient Cook Stoves = Better Health for Tanzania
Grand challenges, as a term, is quite popular outside of the health and agriculture arenas and is often associated with not just one, but a series of competitions with sizable up-front cash awards. For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the Department of Defense (DOD), has long tried to bridge the gap between innovative technologies and military use by offering big prize money to whomever can develop a long distance, off-road, driverless car seen by the DOD as vital for next-generation warfare.
Steven Gale
In 1999, the Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative was founded by local scientists with the goal of developing a vaccine that would block infection of the strain of HIV most prevalent in Kenya. Just over a decade later, the USAID-funded and International AIDS Vaccine Initiative-supported center has established itself as a model for developing country research institutions, capable of rigorously and ethically evaluating AIDS vaccine candidates and playing a crucial role in the global quest for the vaccine.
Helen Thomson
