Development investments are more effective and sustainable when they reflect a country’s own priorities and strengthen government’s accountability to its citizens. This is the starting point for MCC’s approach to country ownership. Through investments in areas like agriculture, energy and education — with partner governments taking the lead in setting priorities — MCC helps countries better deliver vital services to their citizens and open up new opportunities for businesses.

This week, to mark Feed the Future Week, we’re taking a closer look at programs in MCC partner countries that support food security, country-led development and economic growth. …

Over the last 25 years, Morocco has made significant gains in expanding access to education, including doubling primary school completion rates. But as Morocco diversifies its economy from agriculture and tourism to increasingly complex, highly competitive global industries such as auto manufacturing, electronics and aeronautics, there is a new challenge for the country’s education system: schools are struggling to provide youth with the skills employers need to compete. …

July, 2017

1. Our New Work With Us Page

Working with others helps to increase the scale, impact and sustainability of MCC’s poverty-reducing programs. Last week, we launched a redesigned Work With Us section of our website featuring updated information for individuals, businesses and organizations interested in working with MCC. Easily navigate to procurement opportunities with MCC and our partner countries, our business forecast, partnership opportunities, and internships and jobs.

2. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Works to Strengthen U.S.-Africa Trade

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA), Ranking Member Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Karen Bass (D-CA) introduced the AGOA and MCA Modernization Act (H.R. 3445) this month in the House of Representatives. The bill gives MCC increased flexibility to promote regional trade, collaboration, and economic integration by allowing up to two simultaneous compacts with an MCC-eligible country. Developing countries can grow faster, create more jobs, and attract more investment when they are part of dynamic regional markets. …

This holiday season, we’re taking a look back at 9 ways MCC has created a better world at home and abroad this past year. Through MCC’s data-driven investments, we are:

1. Creating jobs and expanding markets

By supporting policy and institutional reforms and funding large-scale infrastructure projects in partner countries, MCC opens new markets for U.S. companies so they can create jobs here at home. Today, we live in a global economy where 95 percent of the world’s consumers are abroad. Already, half of U.S. exports go to developing countries, and six of the 13 fastest growing economies in the world are located in Africa.

Every year, through our partner countries, we issue approximately 550 competitive solicitations worth, on average, more than $600 million. Read more about how we are unlocking private finance in frontier markets and learn about our open procurement opportunities. …

by Dana J. Hyde, MCC CEO

Madame Codjo owns a fish distribution company in West Africa in Benin’s economic capital of Cotonou. She is a savvy and ambitious entrepreneur, but when I met with her recently, she told me she struggles to keep her business afloat because of challenges outside of her control. Repeated electricity blackouts have forced her to rely on an expensive generator that drives up her costs, and even when electricity is available, wild voltage swings damage the equipment she relies on for her business.

As head of the U.S. government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation, I lead an agency that funds international development projects designed to unlock economic growth and fight poverty. Individuals and business owners across Africa know what Madame Codjo and MCC’s analyses show: lack of reliable electricity is the barrier to growth that is holding them back. …

By Sarah Crawford, MCC Director of Strategic Partnerships

This week, alongside the 71st Session of the UN General Assembly, business and government leaders from the United States and Africa have come together to pursue trade and investment opportunities at the U.S.-Africa Business Forum. As the director of a new office focused on strategic partnerships at the U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), I’m excited to announce a new collaboration designed to further these efforts.

MCC and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are joining forces to deepen the impact of our analytic tools to inform investment decisions that can not only unlock economic growth but also enhance well-being. Together, working hand-in-hand with our partner countries, we will convene the international development community, the private sector, and non-governmental investors to share our economic analyses and identify potential partnership and investment opportunities. …

by Chris Broughton, Benin Resident Country Director, Millennium Challenge Corporation

Electricity has become such a necessity to modern life — it powers our phones, our computers, our lights — that it can be easy to forget that the promise of electric power is still a distant hope for too many. More than one in seven people globally do not have electricity, and nearly 3 billion people still rely on wood or charcoal for cooking and heating.

The human impact of this energy poverty is stark. More people die each year from indoor air pollution released from the burning of wood and charcoal than from AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. …

It’s graduation season, and here at MCC, we asked staff to reflect on their first jobs, give an inside look at daily life at MCC, and share their best career advice with the Class of 2016. Many of our staff didn’t start their careers in international development, and there’s no single path that led our staff to MCC. From economists to human resources professionals, a variety of expertise is essential to MCC’s work to reduce poverty around the globe. …