United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)

Partnership with AFD

Relations with USAID are for the time being relatively limited. However, with the American agency reaffirming its strategy to support food security in Africa, there should be opportunities to work more closely with AFD on rural development. AFD also signed a partnership agreement with MCC in 2008. One of the aims of this agreement is to enhance consultation on a certain number of target countries (Morocco, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali, Madagascar) and to have operational exchanges on land issues and the private sector, as well as on country performance indicators.

Presentation of the institution

USAID is the implementing agency for the United States Government policy. It has 2,200 staffers and accounts for roughly 40% of American ODA. USAID traditionally relies heavily on civil society and NGOs.
The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) was announced in 2002 at the Monterrey Conference and was set up in January 2004. Its aim is to allocate pluriannual untied aid in the form of grants to developing countries that have the best performances. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is an autonomous agency set up in March 2004 to manage the MCA program. MCC manages 10% of the USA’s ODA commitments and operates via grants in “virtuous” countries with grant amounts of several hundred million dollars.

Last update in January 2011