Applying the Comprehensive Development Framework to USAID Experiences

Abstract

Despite the potential benefits of globalization, and technological change, world poverty has increased, and growth prospects dimmed for developing countries during the 1980s, and 1990s. The Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), launched by the World Bank in 1999, responds to these difficult circumstances, whose approach addresses the increasing challenges faced by development practitioners, and its novelty lies in the joint articulation of its basic elements. First, development constraints are structural, and social, and cannot be overcome through economic stabilization, and policy adjustment alone. Second, policy reform, and institutional development cannot be imported, nor imposed, but domestic ownership, reforms, and investments should be sustained. Third, successful development requires partnership among government, local communities, the private sector, civil society, and development agencies. And, fourth, development activities must be guided, and judged by results. Thus, based on these four elements of the CDF, the analysis was applied to six U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) activities, selected because of seemingly conspicuous successes - assistance to the Republic of Korea: family planning, agricultural research, university training, and smallpox eradication - and, the sixth case - assistance to Egypt - chosen because of its most conspicuous failure. The analysis sheds light on how the CDF's elements contributed to USAID's performance, and offers suggestions on additional dimensions to be considered in applying the CDF.