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  • Annual Report:  2017 Annual Report
  • March 2018

Partnering for Results

MCC continues to seek new and innovative ways to collaborate with partner country governments, public donors, the private sector and other U.S. Government agencies to produce lasting advances in the developing world. These partnerships allow for increased data-sharing, wider outreach, and improved efficiency of investments.

MCC Launches Partnership Annual Program Statement

MCC launched a Partnership Annual Program Statement (APS) in order to foster collaboration and partnerships to reduce poverty through economic growth. The APS showcases specific MCC partnership opportunities through an open, fair and transparent competition, and fosters proactive collaboration and engagement among MCC and potential partners. This enables MCC and prospective partners to best use of each organization’s distinct knowledge, networks, innovations, investments, personnel, and resources.

MCC Launches Strategic Partnership with The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation

MCC and The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF) have collaborated on projects since 2013 in connection with MCC’s Cabo Verde Compact. As part of TCCAF’s flagship Replenish Africa Initiative, TCCAF invested alongside MCC in improving water access for more than 22,000 people by developing a social access fund. In 2017, MCC and TCCAF formalized a global partnership and TCCAF announced new funding to support MCC’s Zambia Compact, which includes investments in water supply, sanitation and drainage infrastructure in Lusaka, the country’s rapidly urbanizing capital, in order to reduce poverty and drive economic growth. The funds will support an innovative pilot project that is delivering safe water to the people of Zambia through a public-private partnership.

MCC Launches Strategic Partnership With the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

In FY2017, MCC and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched a strategic partnership to help catalyze investment in the developing world. Through this collaboration, MCC and the OECD are exploring how each organization’s respective tools can strengthen development in partner countries, maximize the impact of investments, and generate additional investment in and around MCC programs. In FY2017, MCC and the OECD held two events focused on the Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire constraints analyses.

Innovation in Partnerships

MCC catalyzes private investment by partnering with countries to enact market-based reforms and developing innovative public-private partnerships that leverage private capital and expertise. MCC’s compact in El Salvador and threshold programs in Guatemala and Honduras advanced the objectives of MCC’s Public-Private Partnership platform, or P3, established in FY2015, by supporting the development of seven transactions and funding an internationally recognized P3 training program. MCC hosted a nationwide investment roadshow that highlighted power sector investment opportunities across Africa and featured compact programs in Ghana and Benin. MCC continued its efforts to reach out to American businesses by holding a partnerships and procurement forum for American businesses in Utah and participating in the Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s Expanding Horizons workshop series. In support of partnership development, MCC rolled out a relationship management system and developed its first Partnerships and Innovation College.

Powering Africa

To fulfill the agency’s goal of removing constraints to economic growth, MCC is making major investments in sub-Saharan Africa to reduce energy poverty. The agency is implementing approximately $1.5 billion worth of power projects that will improve the quality and reliability of electricity in Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi and Sierra Leone, while also developing power projects in Burkina Faso and Senegal. These projects focus not only on building physical infrastructure but also on improving the enabling environment to attract private sector investment. Examples include the concession of the electricity distribution company in the southern part of Ghana to a private operator; financing a photovoltaic solar power project in Benin with independent power producers and project finance lenders; and improving the financial position and operations of the utility in Malawi, enabling it to work with independent solar power producers.

Food Security

MCC worked with 10 other U.S. Government agencies and departments to develop the U.S. Government Global Food Security Strategy FY2017–21. The strategy provides an integrated whole-of-government approach, along with agency-specific implementation plans, as required by the Global Food Security Act of 2016. MCC has invested more than $5 billion in supporting food security, including $1.8 billion directed to the agricultural sector. In FY2017, MCC partnered closely with other development partners to promote the agency’s goal of sustainably reducing poverty through accelerated agricultural development.

Data for Development Capacity Building

The impact and sustainability of MCC and other U.S. Government foreign assistance programs would benefit if partner governments and other stakeholders had greater capacity to use data, technology and evidence to make decisions on policies, budgets and programs. In April 2015, MCC and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) entered into a $21.8 million interagency partnership, known as the Data Collaboratives for Local Impact (DCLI), to build the capacity of sub-Saharan countries to join the data revolution and enhance efforts relating to HIV/AIDs, gender equality and economic growth. DCLI builds the data skills of government agencies, civil society organizations and citizens connected to MCC and PEPFAR programs.

Tanzania was selected as the program’s first partner country, and projects have been underway since April 2016. In Tanzania, DCLI established a data lab that provides training and data science services; an innovation hub that enlists and supports entrepreneurs in designing data-based solutions; and a subnational project, Data Zetu, that exposes local authorities and citizens to the benefits of data use. More than 1,400 individuals have been trained, with more than half of those in the health sector and including more than 300 in PEPFAR-priority subnational areas. The program has successfully involved youth and entrepreneurs and is contributing to the economic empowerment of young and adolescent women. To ensure a future supply of data scientists that can support PEPFAR and foreign assistance programs, the data lab and the University of Dar es Salaam, where the lab is hosted, are launching a data science degree for the university’s students, the first of its kind in Tanzania.

Scalable solutions with direct relevance to PEPFAR programming are emerging, from ways that predictive data analytics can reduce school dropout rates (a factor correlated with increased risk of contracting HIV/AIDs) to SMS-based solutions linking health experts with people who need care or helping verify medicine stocks at local pharmacies. The DCLI program is also beginning to inform MCC core business: it has already helped inform MCC’s Kosovo Threshold Program as well as the proposed Togo Threshold Program—and has raised awareness of the benefits of building data and technology skills among key country stakeholders. Most recently, the memorandum of agreement between MCC and PEPFAR was amended to enable the expansion of the DCLI program to Côte d’Ivoire, where MCC recently signed a $525 million compact and PEPFAR expends more than $130 million per year.

Gender and Education

MCC’s goals, mission and country-driven approach provide women and girls with the skills they need to succeed economically. For example, the Georgia Compact’s STEM Higher Education Project is designed to increase women’s participation in STEM degree programs. To attract and retain girls and minorities in the joint degree program offered by San Diego State University, MCC supports targeted outreach and recruitment efforts as well as scholarships to attract and retain girls and minorities. A recruitment effort with focused gender messages has resulted in increased female participation—60 of 126 students in the 2017–18 cohort are female.

MCC embraces strategic partnerships to support the empowerment of women, recognizing that shared values and the inclusion of all citizens strengthen MCC’s ability to help reduce global poverty.

Partnering With India to Strengthen Regional Integration

In January 2017, MCC and India’s Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) released a joint statement announcing their intent to cooperate in an effort to reduce global poverty by focusing on regional integration in South Asia, particularly in the areas of energy, trade and investment. MEA and MCC contemplate working together in building capacity in partner countries, exchanging information and experience in relevant sectors, and facilitating site visits to cross-border or other relevant projects. The joint statement represents a significant step forward in collaboration for the United States and India in meeting common regional goals. While the goals of the joint statement are regionwide, they also align with the cross-border component of the MCC Nepal Compact, signed in September 2017, which serves as one area of mutual interest and cooperation.

A Commitment to Partnerships in Georgia

In line with the agency’s aim to use partnerships to increase the impact and sustainability of its investments, MCC helped the Government of Georgia and it’s compact partner San Diego State University (SDSU),  to partner with nearly a dozen major companies and industry leaders in Georgia last year, thereby securing $3 million in scholarships for students to pursue STEM degrees under the compact’s STEM Higher Education Project. Many of these same partners are already employing SDSU Georgia students, giving them invaluable experience in their fields before they graduate. Such examples of strategic cooperation are win-win undertakings, enabling MCC to significantly increase the total number of beneficiaries while establishing linkages between the country’s top STEM employers and SDSU Georgia—linkages that will last well beyond the compact and that will serve as a pipeline for talented, highly sought-after engineers.