Innovation in water

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Jonathan Brooks, Managing Director for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America

The Honduras Compact’s Agricultural Public Goods Grant Facility sought to increase the productivity and business skills of farmers who operate small- and medium-size farms, as well as their employees.

A community irrigation system created with the help of MCC’s compact with Honduras recently received international recognition—the latest example of how MCC’s investments provide a model for sustainable poverty growth in our partner countries.

The Cosechas de Agua rainwater harvesting project, developed through the compact’s Agricultural Public Goods Grant Facility and managed by CHF International, received the Latin American prize for innovative water management projects in the face of climate change at the World Water Forum in Marseille, France, on March 15.

Cosechas de Agua harvests rainwater for use in irrigation in the arid southern municipalities of Nacaome, Langue, Goascorán, and Aramecina. It captures rainwater and then uses a system of hydraulic works, dams and pipelines to store and distribute the water to fields. The project aims to introduce complementary irrigation systems for 188 agricultural producers over 98 hectares of land, intended to increase their income.

Access to irrigation and other support through the compact was intended to allow farmers to diversify their crops, increase their yields and expand their access to new customers nationally, regionally and internationally.

The $50,000 prize—sponsored by the Mexican national water authority Conagua, the FEMSA Foundation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Water Center for Latin America and the Caribbean—will be used to develop the project over the next three years. Cosechas de Agua officials will also be invited to present progress on the system's economic, social and environmental impacts at the next World Water Forum in March 2015.

The Agricultural Public Goods Grant Facility was part of the $68 million Rural Development Project, which sought to increase the productivity and business skills of farmers who operate small- and medium-size farms, as well as their employees. The project is expected to help more than 357,000 people over the next 20 years and raise their household incomes by $53 million.

Will Mozambique be Africa’s next big growth economy?

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Patrick Fine, Vice President for Compact Operations

Patrick Fine, MCC's vice president of compact operations, recently visited compact project sites in Mozambique and left optimistic about the country's economic future.

Nampula Province in central Mozambique is 2,200 kilometers north of the capital Maputo, about the distance from the East Coast to the Mississippi River. The countryside is marked by granite domes that tower hundreds of feet off the lush plains and by isolated mountains that rise up in surreal silhouettes worthy of artist Shane Devries. The land is not heavily populated, and villages are simple collections of traditional thatched-roof rondavels plastered with mud from ubiquitous conical ant hills. Rural electrification has not yet reached most of these villages, roads are simple dirt tracks, most people still fetch water from rivers, and boys stand by the roadside holding out bags of freshly shelled cashews for sale.

You can see signs of growing prosperity, including the results of MCC’s $506 million partnership with Mozambique: Our investment has helped build hundreds of village water points; pave major routes to facilitate agriculture, mining and commerce; and upgrade and expand straining municipal water and sanitation systems.

A year ago, these projects were seriously behind schedule and over budget, causing MCC and the Government of Mozambique to create an action plan to overhaul the approach for completing the work within the five-year deadline. I was impressed by the way Mozambique’s management authority, MCA-Mozambique, had consistently met its implementation milestones since the revised plan was adopted in March 2011.

Last week, with only 18 months remaining in the compact, I visited Nampula to get a firsthand view of what is being accomplished.

I was encouraged by the road and water system construction underway and came away with increased confidence that Mozambique will complete its work on time. In one rural community down a narrow 13 kilometer dirt track, I inaugurated a new borehole and water pump that serves 700 community members and will eliminate the need for women and children to spend up to two hours a day fetching water.

In the town of Nampula, I witnessed the distribution of property titles that give people secure property rights for the first time. The ceremony took place in an open neighborhood square where local officials called out names; the property owners came forward from the large crowd, signed a ledger and took their titles. At the end of the ceremony a number of people started to angrily call out, demanding their titles. The officials explained that the titles would be distributed each day that week. I found this spontaneous demonstration of the demand to have a title a reassuring indication of the value of MCC’s investment.

While my focus was on the MCC-financed projects, what really caught my attention was the extraordinary economic opportunity in Mozambique. Already, Mozambique exports electricity from the largest hydroelectric dam in Africa, and it still has unexploited capacity. A Portuguese contractor working on the MCC road project drove up in a Ford Ranger and had American-manufactured scientific equipment in its materials lab. Recently an American company, Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, announced it had discovered one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas off the northern coast; the center of the country holds huge deposits of coal, and as more exploration takes place it is very likely that other minerals will be found in commercial quantities. Anadarko has plans to invest approximately $20 billion over the next five years! A Brazilian mining company is already shipping coal and has announced a $6 billion expansion.

I see all sorts of opportunities, from village hardware stores, hair salons and groceries to the suppliers and services that new investments in mining will require. Seen in this light, American investments in basic infrastructure are prescient. And a U.S. company is the supervising engineer on the drainage activity in Nampula city—where one of the main customers and beneficiaries of the new water system is Coca-Cola.

But far more important than market opportunities created by individual MCC-financed projects are the market opportunities that will open up for U.S. goods and services if Mozambique’s economy takes off. Road-building and mining equipment, chemicals and a spectrum of products and services will be needed to build this economy. Now is the time for U.S. companies to invest in establishing a presence in the country so that they can be competitive. 

The government is implementing business-friendly reforms—such as the MCC financed land reform program—and there is a still-untapped entrepreneurial spirit among the youth. Mozambique’s economy has already been growing at nearly 8 percent per year over the past several years and is on the verge of an economic era that could transform its villages and create prosperity and opportunities not only for one of the world’s poorest populations but for the companies and individuals intrepid enough to join an economy just taking off.

I left Mozambique with the impression that almost everything is in place for it to become the next big growth economy in Africa.

A resource for Armenia’s future

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Jonathan Brooks, Managing Director for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America

A display at the MCC Resource Center at the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan offers information about MCC's $33 million Water-to-Market Activity, which aimed to increase productivity of farmers, agribusinesses and water-supply institutions through training and the

Although MCC's compact with Armenia closed at the end of September, the U.S. Embassy in Yerevan is ensuring the lessons we learned during our five-year partnership can improve the country’s future development projects.

The embassy’s new MCC Resource Center makes information regarding MCC’s $177 million investment available as a reference for future U.S. Government development projects, Armenians from the diaspora interested in building upon compact projects and others. The center includes an array of documents like farmer-training maps, public outreach documents, quarterly bulletins, and training materials.

The MCC Resource Center also provides embassy staff and visitors with information on MCA-Armenia’s successor, the Foreign Financed Projects Management Center (FFPMC). An FFPMC team led the compact development process, and we are pleased that they are involved again by helping monitor MCC’s investments over the next few years.

In Zambia, MCC’s newest compact brings clean water and improved sanitation and drainage services to more than one million residents

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Raja Kaul, MCC Resident Country Director, Zambia

Pictured: Residents of Zambia's capital city of Lusaka wait in line to gather water at a public fountain.

Last Thursday, the MCC Board of Directors approved a $355 million compact with Zambia that focuses on the water sector in Lusaka. MCC investments are expected to have a significant impact on the lives of more than one million Lusaka residents by improving their health and economic productivity and helping the country reduce poverty on a sustainable basis. Fittingly, the Board’s decision fell on the annual UN-designated World Water Day.

This single-sector compact aims to address one of the Zambia’s most binding constraints to economic growth through infrastructure investment in the rapidly urbanizing capital city of Lusaka. It is designed to reduce the incidence and prevalence of water-related disease, decrease the number of productive days lost due to disease and time to collect water, lower costs of water and new sanitation, and reduce flood losses for businesses and residential homes.

In addition to investments in water supply, sanitation and drainage infrastructure, MCC’s integrated investment will also support the government’s ongoing water sector reform efforts by strengthening responsible institutions. The investment is expected to significantly benefit Lusaka’s poor, as 73 percent of the more than one million Zambian beneficiaries currently have incomes below $2 per day. 

The Zambia compact will promote key MCC corporate priorities, including gender and social integration, environmental and social impact assessments, and private sector development. In the Zambia compact, social and gender integration is prioritized, and activities are designed to extend project benefits to women and vulnerable groups. 

Since its inception in 1993, World Water Day has served to spotlight the global challenge to provide safe water and sanitation services to those living in poverty. So far, MCC has invested $793 million in WASH-related projects in nine partner countries, and MCC’s compacts with Cape Verde, Jordan, and Mozambique, like Zambia, focus primarily on water sector development. Our growing WASH portfolio reflects our partner countries’ recognition of the important role of access to clean, affordable, and reliable water in promoting economic growth.

For more information on MCC’s water and sanitation projects, visit www.mcc.gov/water.

Building Community through Development

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Cassandra Q. Butts, Senior Advisor

Grade school students and teachers of the Bacjao Elementary School in Balangiga, Samar welcome MCC and MCA-Philippines teams on February 28, 2012. The public school is a recipient of two classrooms from the KALAHI-CIDSS project implemented by the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

I was in the province of Leyte in the Philippines on Tuesday to witness the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding by the municipality of Alang-Alang to begin participating in an innovative approach to development called Kalahi-CIDSS, which is included in the country’s MCC compact. Kalahi-CIDSS is a community-based approach to development that makes beneficiaries active participants in the selection, design and implementation of development projects that they believe are best for their communities.

While Kalahi-CIDSS isn't original to MCC—the program originally was funded in the Philippines by the World Bank—MCC's investment of $120 million will double the size and scale of the program and make it available to communities like Alang-Alang for the first time. MCC is also adding innovations in areas such as gender integration and environmental assessment, impact evaluation and engineering standards that will enhance the value of the program to beneficiaries as well as improve the sustainability of outcomes.

The hope is that Alang-Alang will find the same success with the program as the municipality of Balangiga experienced when it used Kalahi-CIDSS to build schools, a retaining wall to protect against typhoon flooding, a community road, and a bridge. Viscuso de Lira, the mayor of Balangiga, describes the Kalahi-CIDSS program as galvanizing community engagement in a way that had not been achieved before and building community support for sustaining projects that are the product of their own initiative and sweat equity.

MCC and the Millennium Challenge Account-Philippines are further using Kalahi-CIDSS to empower communities in a coordinated campaign against trafficking in persons, seeking to educate Kalahi-CIDSS communities as well as other communities impacted by our road project in the Samar region on preventing this global crime.

Kalahi-CIDSS is not only building and empowering communities but also promoting the principles of transparency and accountability in how development resources are used. This approach can be critical in improving local government at all levels of engagement.