ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST PPC Evaluation Working Paper No. 17 April 2005 PN-ADB-770 Other papers relevant to Global Development Alliances include An Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Alliances (PN-ADA-850) The Global Development Alliances: Expanding the Impact of Foreign Assistance through Public-Private Alliances (PN-ACT-008) Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Business Model (PN-ADB-770) This paper can be ordered from USAID’s Development Experience Clearing House (DEC). To order or download, go to www.dec.org and enter the document identifi￾cation number (see front cover) in the search box. The DEC may also be contacted at 8403 Colesville Rd., Ste. 210, Silver Spring, MD 20910; tel 301-562-0641; fax 301-588-7787; e-mail docorder@dec.cdie.org. Editorial, design, and production assistance was provided by IBI–International Business Initiatives, Arlington, Va., under contract no. HFM-C-00-01-00143-00. For more informa￾tion, contact IBI’s Publications and Graphics Support Project staff at 703-525-2277 or mail@ibi-usa.com. Cover Photo: Sustainable Forest Products Global Alliance. Mark Hurley, WWF. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination Cynthia Clapp-Wincek Assessment Team Leader Katie Croake, Jill Jackson, Brianne Miers, Woody Navin, Dan O’Brien, Donald Pressley, Wendy Stickel, Jeff Swedberg, Caryn Sweeney, Lane Vanderslice Assessment Team Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Alliances in the Bureau for Asia and the Near East. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Stakeholders and Purpose of the Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A Mixed-Method Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ANE Public–Private Alliance Incentive Fund Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ANE Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Are Alliances Funded from the Bureau Incentive Fund Good Investments? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Comparing Incentive Fund Alliances to Other Alliances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Factors Leading to the Strength of Incentive Fund Alliances. . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Lessons and Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Annex 1. ANE Participation in GDA/PPC Midterm Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Annex 2. Sources of Funding for ANE Alliances, Pre-Alliances, and Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Annex 3. Private-Sector Participation in Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Annex 4. Assessment of Alliances in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Annex 5. Assessment of Alliances in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Annex 6. Assessment of Alliances in Jordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43 Annex 7. Assessment of Alliances in Morocco . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Annex 8. Assessment of Alliances in the Philippines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 Annex 9. Assessment of Alliances in Sri Lanka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 Contents ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST iii iv Tables and Figures Table 1. Funding for GDA Alliances, Pre-Alliances and Projects . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Table 2. Full GDA Business Model Alliances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Figure 1. Development Impact and Partner Resource Contribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Table 3. Mission-Funded Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Table 4. Resource Contributions from All Partners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Table 5. Sources of Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Table 6. Private-Sector Participation in Alliances. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Table 7. ANE GDA Alliances, Partner Types, and Partner Roles . . . . . . . . . . .13 EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST v Executive Summary Summary Lessons and Recommendations 1. Declare success. The GDA business model is alive and working in all regions of the world. 2. Accept GDA for what it is. GDA is an evolving and increasingly important business methodology that is taking hold at the country, regional, and global levels. Its potential is huge, but realizing this potential will take time and effort. 3. Modify the definition of a GDA al￾liance. Redefine what constitutes a GDA. Important components will still include sharing risk with part￾ners; sharing planning, responsibil￾ity, and decisionmaking between partners; and joining with new partners and approaches. However, the team recommends a fourth crite￾rion—leveraging development impact through private-sector partner contri￾butions. The team urges USAID to focus more on impact than on level of inputs. 4. Incorporate best practices. • Engage the partners’ core business. The best GDA alliances involved the core business interests and senior managers of private-sec￾tor resource partners. The stron￾gest alliances evolve beyond corporate social responsibility. This report assesses USAID’s Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model for creating public-private alliances. The GDA initiative, announced in 2001, actively promotes strategic alliances between USAID and private- and public-sector partners as a business model for achieving U.S. Government development assistance objectives. The purposes of the assessment are to 1) share learning, specifically on the current state and process of developing alliances and particularly in the mis￾sions; and 2) inform decisions, specifi￾cally concerning the GDA Secretariat, funding allocation and field support, and initiating and managing alliances. USAID has made remarkable accom￾plishments in designing and starting significant GDA activities. The purpose of GDA is now well known, the encour￾agement to enter into public-private partnership is well established, and suc￾cessful examples of successful alliances now exist. The GDA business model is alive and working in all regions of the world. vi PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 • Begin alliances with written agree￾ments. Resource partners should negotiate and sign agreements that include a common understanding of the planned development im￾pact and the roles, responsibilities, and contributions of each partner. • One size does not fit all. Alli￾ances must be crafted to meet the specifics of the local situation to maximize development results. • Invest the time to build good rela￾tionships from the beginning. Alli￾ances are relationships and require the trust and understanding that come with direct and honest com￾munication about the objectives and motivations of each partner. • Give more attention to monitoring and evaluation. Alliances are new and complex. There is much to learn and use in making decisions to strengthen future assistance. 5. Incorporate GDA into the Agency’s mainline operations. • Strategy. GDA should be em￾phasized as a specific priority of USAID strategy and highlighted more explicitly in the joint stra￾tegic thinking of the Depart￾ment of State and the Agency, in the strategic frameworks of the regional bureaus, and in the country strategic plans. • Funding. Agency and bureau GDA incentive funds should be elimi￾nated. For special seed capital, the Agency should consider maintain￾ing a small reserve to pursue very high-priority GDA opportunities. • Obtaining services. The Agency should devise a new way of entering into alliances that does not depend on current Agency grant and contracting rules. The Agency’s contracting staff has been creative in applying existing rules, but the Agency needs a new way of doing business that can better support this new business model. • Human resources. The Agency should focus more on recruiting, training, motivating, and advanc￾ing GDA champions. Steps can be taken in these four areas to expand the pool of staff that have the back￾ground, skills, and attitudes to be GDA advocates and practitioners. 6. Move the GDA Secretariat to Phase II. The structure and responsi￾bilities of the GDA Secretariat should be modified. The GDA Secretariat should be phased out over a reasonable transition period time (such as one year) and be succeeded by two elements in Phase II of GDA development. The first element should focus on advocacy and the second element should focus on alliance support. • Senior advocate. The advocate posi￾tion should serve as the internal and external central point of con￾tact for top-level GDA issues and initiatives and as the main inter￾locutor between USAID and the private sector on issues concerning the GDA. The advocate should be responsible for proactive outreach to the private sector, especially to large private-sector organizations at a global level. In addition, the ad￾vocate can be the primary propo￾nent and communicator of GDA issues with the U.S. Congress. Finally, the advocate should pro￾mote the GDA within the Agency. • Support. The Phase II GDA effort should also focus on supporting, from a central point, the vari￾ous Agency operating elements, particularly individual missions with GDA activities. The Agency should institute a knowledge management system to promote information sharing throughout USAID. It should also emphasize evaluation and monitoring of alliances to capture knowledge to share with other practitioners and provide good information for de￾cisionmaking. The Agency should formalize a support network for missions, including technical as￾sistance to help establish and run GDA alliances. In addition, an informal mentoring system should be formed and encouraged. The assessment of this team is that it is time to enter into Phase II, building on the successes of the GDA Secretariat and the importance of this USAID initiative. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 1 Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Alliances in the Bureau for Asia and the Near East Introduction The Bureau for Asia and the Near East (ANE) has been a leader in the Global Development Alliance (GDA) initia￾tive, demonstrating what a committed bureau can accomplish when supported by the momentum of an Agency-wide initiative. ANE was the first bureau to create an incentive fund, and it also led the effort to provide technical assistance to the field and develop a vision to cata￾lyze its work. This report summarizes a multicountry assessment of public-private alliances in ANE. The worldwide GDA initiative, announced in 2001, promotes strategic alliances between USAID and private￾and public-sector partners as a business model for achieving U.S. Government development assistance objectives. ANE supported the initiative and developed its own GDA plan. This report looks at progress in the ANE countries and high￾lights issues specific to that region, but the full report, Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Alliance Business Model, also provides relevant analysis. This report is a companion to the full GDA report. Topics, such as procure￾ment, are discussed only in the full report, while recommendations specific to ANE are included in this report. Stakeholders and Purpose of the Assessment This ANE assessment was part of a worldwide assessment coordinated by USAID’s Office of Development Evaluation and Information (DEI) on behalf of the Agency and its partners. The GDA Secretariat and ANE were key participants; funding for the study was provided by DEI and ANE. In early discussions, these stakeholders defined the purposes of the assessment to: • Share learning based on an assess￾ment of the current state and process of developing alliances, particularly in missions. • Inform decisions, including both Washington-led decisions on funding allocation and field support and mis￾sion-led decisions on initiating and managing alliances. ANE was the first bureau to create an incentive fund, and it also led the effort to provide technical assistance to the field and develop a vision to catalyze its work. 2 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 In addition, this assessment is expected to inform decisions by USAID and its partners on how and when to use alli￾ances for maximum impact. A Mixed-Method Approach Assessment methods included • a review of background documents and materials • more than 50 interviews in Washington • a web-based survey of randomly selected holders of usaid.gov e-mail addresses • brief field visits to six countries identified as active in alliances in their subregions (India, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Philippines, and Sri Lanka) The scope of work required a compari￾son between alliances funded by the ANE incentive funds and mission-fund￾ed alliances to determine whether the alliances were good investments. The team identified 27 potential alliances by looking at the Agency’s GDA database and talking to staff in ANE and each mission. Of these, 16 were at least par￾tially funded with incentive funds. The process ANE used to allocate incentive funds is described next and analyzed below. A randomized survey was added to the assessment methods to capture data from additional missions. To identify best cases and best practices, the countries to visit were chosen for the strength of their alliance-building program. Morocco and Jordan were added by ANE for geographic bal￾ance, although they lacked the depth of experience of the other countries. Teams of two people spent one week in most countries (three days each in Sri Lanka and Jordan) and collected informa￾tion on three to eight alliances in each country. This mixed-method approach enabled the team to present a comprehensive picture of the state of GDA in the field. ANE Public–Private Alliance Incentive Fund Design The ANE incentive fund required mis￾sions to submit alliance ideas, which were reviewed by a funding committee. This funding mechanism intended to encourage missions to develop alliances and provide a demonstration effect. The bureau allocated incentive funds in 2002 and 2003. Identifying the alliances supported by ANE funds was not a straightforward process. Because ideas, not activities with names, were submitted, it was difficult to match the amounts awarded with the alliances identified by the as￾sessment teams in the field. The incen￾tive fund process was complicated, with several subsets of incentive funds, as well as other sources of funds besides GDA funds: • Philippines and India received $2 million each for building alliances in 2002. • The Clean Air Initiative received a portion of ANE’s 2002 incentive funds, but some alliances received ad￾ditional funding as well. The Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture and Trade (EGAT) had a role in that process, and those ideas were re￾viewed independently. • The Mission Incentive Fund (MIF) represents the rest of the bureau’s funds—i.e., those that fit the incen￾tive fund model—and ideas submit￾ted for review by the ANE Public-Pri￾vate Alliance Review Committee. The team assessed the effectiveness of that process in terms of the alliances and whether they were good investments. ANE Alliances As requested in the scope of work, the team looked at alliances that received incentive funds as well as those that did not. The team began by determining which alliances met a rigorous applica￾tion of the principles of mature alliances used by the Agency in training. (This process is described more in the full GDA mid-term assessment report.) The team referred to alliances that met these criteria as “GDA alliances” and those that did not as “pre-alliances and proj￾ects.” The team judged 11 to be GDA alliances and 16 to be pre-alliances or projects. Team members concentrated on the more mature alliances. Table 1 shows the numbers of GDA alliances and pre-alliances and projects with and without incentive funds. Ten of the eleven judged to be GDA alliances received at least partial funding from ANE. The eleventh was the Mon￾santo Corn Alliance in the Philippines funded by the GDA Secretariat. Six of the pre-alliances and projects had fund￾ing from the ANE incentive fund. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 3 Virtually all that met the standards for GDA alliances were supported by the incentive fund, indicating they are pro￾gressing well. Of the other six, four were still in development, making it too early to tell if they would mature into GDA alliances. An example is the Children’s Television Network activity in India, which is modeled on alliances in Egypt and South Africa. A feasibility study is being carried out, and an exciting alli￾ance could evolve. This project was one of the four considered pre-alliances. The remaining two—Energy Wise in India and Scholarship for Success in Mo￾rocco—were characterized as excellent projects but not alliances. These two did not have the levels of shared responsibil￾ity, joint planning, and decisionmaking that are the key distinctions between alliances and projects. Scholarship for Success has plans to increase the role of its donors in decisionmaking processes, but it remains a small, creative project. The team focused on the eleven alli￾ances (table 2) that met all criteria and determined whether the alliances were good investments. Table 1. Funding for GDA Alliances, Pre-Alliances, and Projects GDA Alliances Pre-alliances and Projects Bureau incentive funds included 10 6 Bureau incentive funds not included 1 10 Total 11 16 Table 2. Full GDA Business Model Alliances Country Alliance Partner Contribution Philippines Alliance for Mindanao Off-Grid Rural Electrification (AMORE) Greater than $3 million Cleaner Fuels to Reduce Vehicle Emissions Greater than $3 million Monsanto Corn Alliance Less than $1 million Indonesia Papua Bird’s Head Alliance (Biodiversity) Greater than $3 million Cocoa Alliance $1–3 million Timber Alliance (Sustainable Forest Management) Greater than $3 million India Green Business Center Greater than $3 million Financing Solar Electrification (Solar Financing) $1–3 million India Livable Communities Initiative (Regional) Greater than $3 million Sri Lanka AirMac Pollution Reduction $1–3 million Ecotourism $1–3 million Source: ANE 4 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 in stimulating development of strong alliances in ANE. Comparing Incentive Fund Alliances to Other Alliances It is difficult to generalize about alli￾ances funded by mission budgets (table 3) because most are still in the devel￾opment stage. As noted, one mission￾funded project met the definition of a GDA alliance: the Monsanto Corn Al￾liance in the Philippines. Several of the others were considered projects—that is, lacking sufficient joint planning, decisionmaking, and shared responsibil￾ity to be considered GDA alliances. All have potential, but to varying degrees, to become GDA alliances under the right circumstances.1 The support and encouragement provided to the alliances that received incentive funds probably made a dif￾ference. But it is also possible that the incentive fund committee picked the ideas most likely to succeed quickly, passing over ideas that would take longer to gel. The Cities Alliance, for example, will take many years before being able to partner with the private sector in Tetouan, but this could lead to significant long-term development im￾pact. Although it cannot be considered a GDA alliance now, it is a worthwhile project that has the potential for private partnering. The missions are including GDA alli￾ances in program planning, thinking to scale up and is probably a good in￾vestment caught in an early phase. Two had less impact, but these were smaller alliances. Although this apparently makes them reasonable financial invest￾ments, the time and effort required by Agency staff to build alliances calls this into question. Also questionable was the alliance with a proportionally high resource contribution and low impact (Ecotourism). Perhaps some support for more ambitious impact for this alliance should be given, but again, it could just be that the alliance is still young. On balance, the team considered this group of alliances to be strong investments. With only one alliance in this group not supported by incentive funds, the evi￾dence is strong enough to conclude that the Bureau incentive fund played a role Are Alliances Funded from the Bureau Incentive Fund Good Investments? The quality of these alliances should be assessed in terms of their development impact. Although it is too early in these alliances to measure development im￾pact, some were clearly designed to have a strong impact and others were not. The amount of resources invested in an alliance has a positive correlation to the success of the impact. The team looked at the alliances in terms of the level of partner resources contributed and the expected level of impact (figure 1). Seven of the eleven alliances were found to have the potential for a strong impact (the top half of the chart). The alliance represented by the arrow (AMORE in the Philippines) has an explicit strategy 1 Information Technology Mentors Alliance is a regional alliance that the teams did not address as fully. Figure 1. Development Impact and Partner Resource Contribution High impact Low impact $1–3 million $5 million or more Alliance Alliance with strategy to achieve higher impact Key: ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 5 about partnering as part of many ac￾tivities. It will be a long time, however, before the partnering either takes place or has impact. Seeds have been planted, but it is too early to tell how many will grow or what they will grow into. Two other factors have led to the strength of these alliances. First, ANE’s experience, particularly with the US–Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), played a significant role. Alliances are built on relationships of trust, and US-AEP relationships were an advantage in building alliances in Asia, particularly because most funds avail￾able were for environmental activities. Second, the actions and efforts of the bureau in Washington were extended and complemented by the knowledge, experience, and commitment of the staff in field missions. Taking account of local culture, they developed alliances with their private-sector communities as well as the broader community of partners. Factors Leading to the Strength of Incentive Fund Alliances ANE did several things to contribute to the strength of this record, including providing the incentive fund. ANE had a vision for public-private alliances and made a significant commitment to the GDA initiative in terms of • staff support in Washington, both direct-hire and consultant • incentive funds and the review process • support to missions Combining these factors was an ef￾fective approach. The incentive fund played an important role by supporting the creation of alliances and demon￾strating what a GDA alliance is and can be. The participation of knowl￾edgeable bureau staff and the advice of a consultant, with support from the secretariat and other bureaus, distilled the best knowledge about public-private alliances and applied it to this set of alli￾ances. Mission staff indicated that they were already building alliances but the incentive funds encouraged them, and with support from Washington, they took more risks and developed alliances differently than they would have with￾out that support. This wasn’t a perfect process. Com￾munication was a problem in the early phases. At least one mission stated that Table 3. Mission-Funded Projects Country Projects Philippines Transforming the Marine Aquarium Trade in the Philippines Indonesia Incentive Fund Coffee Alliance India Capacity Building Program in Environmental Compliance for Indian Industry Small Enterprise Activity Fund Children’s Educational Television (Sesame Street) Quality Education and Skills Training Hydrogen Fuels (3-wheeled vehicle) Energy Wise India Morocco Cities Alliance in Tetouan Jordan INJAZ* As-Samra Wastewater Plant Information and Communication Technology (Case Foundation and King Abdullah Fund) * Arabic for “Achievement” Source: ANE. 6 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 communication between Washington and the field was improving over time. From the missions’ point of view, it wasn’t always clear why some alliances received incentive funds and others did not. The missions also did not under￾stand why some alliances were funded by ANE and others by the secretariat. There may have been some communica￾tion to the field, but it was not enough for them to understand how the deci￾sions were made. The review process required serious time and effort in Washington and the field. The bureau review committee in Wash￾ington included nine members over several weeks for a total effort of several hundred hours a year. There were time costs in the missions as well. In one field mission, a partner submitted an idea that the mission reviewed and rejected. The partner then submitted the idea to the bureau incentive fund, which re￾quested that the mission review the idea again, although it did not fund the idea itself. The partner then submitted the idea to the secretariat’s incentive fund, which asked the mission to review a new version—essentially the third evaluation of the idea. The missions also cited the support they received from ANE and the secretariat to think differently about alliances. This allowed them to take risks that they might not have otherwise taken. One mission staffer credited her GDA train￾ing with helping her think differently about alliances. The publicity carried out by the GDA Secretariat and the bureau was credited by a manager with “helping get the word out about how USAID wants to work.” In addition to the time invested by the staff and a consultant in Washington, ANE also provided technical assistance to several large missions that had the potential for alliances. The knowledge and skills gained by working with the private sector was particularly valuable to a number of missions. Some missions reported that they had some of these skills on staff, but that the additional as￾sistance allowed them to focus and build on their efforts. The team concluded that business acumen was a key factor in the successful development of alliances. Another key factor in the strength of these alliances is ANE’s vision that big￾ger alliances were more likely to engage senior management of private-sector partners as well as their core business interests. In support of that vision, ANE required a two-to-one leverage ratio for the bureau incentive funds to differenti￾ate alliances from activities and partner￾ships that the mission staff had worked with before. This resulted in half of the 11 GDA alliances having partner con￾tributions of over $3 million. ANE also required that part of the contribution be in cash. (The full report discusses at length the difficulties of valuing non-cash resource contributions.) The assessment team concluded that cash should be required. However, there are a few exceptions where the resource partner contributed a technology that was unique and essential. The team concluded, in agreement with ANE, that both cash and size can play a role in engaging senior management, as well as the core business interests of private-sector partners. These are impor￾tant elements in the success and sustain￾ability of alliances. Some GDA alliances in other bureaus lacked these elements, but they also displayed uncertain sus￾tainability. On balance, a large alliance, including a cash contribution from the private-sector partner, is the best model for high-impact, sustainable alliances. However, size alone does not make an alliance successful. Although early indications are that bigger alliances with private-sector cash contributions tend to lead to private-sector engagement that has the most potential for impact and sustainability, this is neither always true nor the only model. For example, the Monsanto Corn Alliance (with a $99,500 partner contribution) had an impact on a scale with its resources, and therefore is considered a good develop￾ment investment. When the time and effort of Agency staff are factored in, it seems to make the most sense to pursue larger alliances. In conclusion, ANE’s vision for GDA, conveyed through the design of the incentive fund process, support to mis￾sions and technical assistance, contrib￾uted to the strength of the alliances that received incentive funds. Observations The team analyzed the patterns of sectors and partners in the alliances, but did not focus on centrally funded alliances. The team could not link any of these factors to the strength of ANE’s alliances, but they may become impor￾tant in the future. Sectors All alliances were either economic growth or environment; and some were both. Eight alliances included environ- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 7 ment, and the rest included either sus￾tainable agricultural practices or energy. Two factors explained the emphasis on environment. First, most incentive funds were earmarked for environment. For example, in 2003, new funds were $10 million for environment and $3 million for agriculture. Even with the carryover of $2 million in economic￾growth funds and $0.4 million more for environment, the majority of the funding had to be used for environment alliances. Second, some sectors lend themselves more readily to public-pri￾vate alliances than others. This is partly because of the business skills and experi￾ence prevalent in economic-growth areas and those that developed in the environment area through the US-AEP. In other bureaus, the pre-alliance/proj￾ect group demonstrates that there is potential in other sectors for alliances that can achieve development impact as well. Moreover, centrally funded health alliances also have clearly demonstrated strength. The new initiative to develop educa￾tion alliances in ANE has potential, but education staff may not have the busi￾ness skills of staff working in economic growth. They may have more difficulty identifying partners and understanding the business culture, making negotiating alliances with the private sector more difficult. The bureau should give prior￾ity to support for the education sector as those alliances are developed. Partners Tables in Annex 3 show the 78 partners included in the 11 full GDA alliances identified by the team. The ANE aver￾age is 7 partners per alliance, compared to an average of 4.5 worldwide. This is explained by the three Indonesia alliances that average more than 12 partners each. The Philippines, India, and Sri Lanka are all similar to the worldwide average. The three multipart￾ner alliances in Indonesia are expected to have a strong impact, but so are a number of others. The Philippines and Indonesia alliances include multinational corporations as resource partners, while India and Sri Lanka primarily have local partners. Part of the explanation for this pattern could be that the South Asia alliances relied heavily on the relationships built during the US-AEP. The approaches are different, but there is no evidence to say which is preferable. The ANE region has a slightly higher share of for-profit private sector partners to NGOs than the worldwide average, but it is insignificant. In alliances from all regions, there was a nearly equal split between local and multinational cor￾porations and affiliates and NGOs. In ANE, 57 percent are multinationals and 43 percent are local. The team did not identify anything of operational impor￾tance in the analysis of partners. Lessons and Best Practices This section draws heavily on the Assess￾ment of USAID’s GDA Business Model. • The vision for something unique called an alliance and the tactics to support that vision play an impor￾tant role. Combining staff support in Washington, incentive funds, and support to missions jumpstarts the process of building strong alliances. • The participation of resource partners defines an alliance. Resource partners should contribute cash or unique technology or knowledge that drives the alliance. • All resource partners should be direct￾ly involved in negotiations and sign the most binding agreement that can be negotiated. The written agreement should include a common under￾standing of the planned development impact and the roles and resource contributions of all parties to achieve that impact. • Alliances should be initiated by USAID staffers who have experience with the private sector. If the USAID staff members do not have business experience, an expert should be hired Table 4. Resource Contributions from All Partners (Including Estimates for In-kind Contributions) Less than $1 million $1–2.99 million $3–4.99 million Over $5 million Number of alliances 1 4 2 4 8 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 (either as a direct hire or consultant) to work with them as they learn. • Missions should concentrate resourc￾es on developing alliances for which sufficient staff time can be invested in facilitating all partners’ agreement on the alliances’ objectives and in work￾ing together to make decisions and solve problems. • Investing the time and effort in plan￾ning and working together in the development of the alliance pays off in smooth (or smoother) implemen￾tation. • “Patience, persistence, and profession￾alism”2 are crucial to making alliances work. Recommendations ANE should continue to support al￾liances to achieve bureau and mission objectives, focusing on the objectives rather than the means. Because incen￾tive funds played an important role in encouraging missions to create alli￾ances, the team recommends that ANE shift to sustaining the momentum for GDA without a bureau incentive fund. The funds have stimulated interest and enthusiasm for this approach, but they function as an internal earmark. Like every other “carve-out,” they come from the same total USAID allocation. Global development alliances are useful but should begin competing for fund￾ing like all USAID activities. Carrying out the bureau’s education initiative through GDA alliances is a step for￾ward. It shows the bureau’s continued commitment to GDA alliances but also emphasizes GDA’s development impact on education, rather than the demon￾stration effect of the GDA approach. The team’s recommendations are syn￾thesized as follows: • Focus Washington resources on making existing alliances work and supporting missions in the creation of new alliances by – continuing to support GDA al￾liances with management and direction from Washington – strengthening communication to the field, reinforcing the Bureau’s vision for GDA alliances, em￾phasizing GDA alliances as a valuable approach, and sharing solutions to difficult problems – weaning missions from depen￾dence on Washington for GDA funding, although in the short term, limited funds may be necessary to sustain the prog￾ress of some existing alliances – funding those regional alli￾ances that are among the best in the Agency from mission budgets, but consider funding from Washington for a transi￾tion period of another year or so • Make technical assistance to missions a priority for existing alliances and new alliances funded from mission budgets by – helping education alliances identify partners, designing the alliance, and overcom￾ing procurement obstacles – helping existing alliances weather implementation rough spots, perhaps by helping negotiate written agreements to jointly solve problems or focusing at￾tention on partners not meet￾ing their resource commitments (either USAID or private) • Design a monitoring and evalua￾tion strategy that tells the bureau if GDA alliances achieve their planned development impacts (most alliances do not have this capability) Senior ANE managers can • Keep the bureau on message—high￾level support plays an essential role by reinforcing to mission directors that GDA alliances can be successful in achieving development impacts • Reward alliance champions in field missions and Washington with good onward assignments—there are few stronger signals of what the Agency values • Help make GDA champions in mis￾sions available to their neighbors for advice and counsel by letting mission directors know that their staff will gain valuable experience and that alliances will be strengthened in both countries • Help the Agency focus on the need for change in procurement policies The high level of commitment and enthusiasm of ANE staff should be applauded. The same commitment, energy, and resources should be invested in supporting alliances to make them work. 2 With thanks to Jeff Hill at the Ghana STCP Workshop. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 9 Annex 1. ANE Participation in GDA/ PPC Midterm Assessment ANE’s Office of Strategic Planning and Economic Studies has requested that a separate analysis and report be done as part of the worldwide GDA assessment to address issues of particular concern to ANE missions and bureau management. These issues fall well within the frame￾work for the planned assessment,3 and, with one minor exception (see number 2 below), can readily be incorporated without substantive adjustments to the planned methodology. The issues as identified by ANE are set out below; the response provides a reference to where they would fit in the context of the agreed assessment framework, and, in the case of the exception, how it can be accommodated: The issues as identified by ANE are set out below; the re￾sponse provides a reference to where they would fit in the context of the agreed assessment framework 1. What progress is being made in the alliances funded to date from the ANE Bureau Alliance Incentive Fund? Are they proving to have been good investments? See objective 2, especially questions 1 and 7. Alliances funded from the ANE incentive fund are in the GDA database of FY 2002-funded alliances, and so are included among those to be sampled for the fieldwork. 2. What other alliances have been fund￾ed from the mission’s own budgets? How are they progressing? Are they proving to be good investments? Do they differ in any important respects from those funded from the bureau incentive fund? This issue will require adding to the sample of alliances to be studied in the ANE fieldwork-selected mission-funded alliances not included in the GDA database. It will require in turn that the assessment team collect basic data on those alliances and that the countries selected for ANE fieldwork include both alliances funded from the ANE incen￾tive fund as well as alliances funded from the mission’s budget. 3 The objectives are set out and discussed in annex 1 “Scope of Work” in Assessment of USAID’s Global Development Business Model, April 2005 (PN-ADB-896). 10 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 be carried out by regional bureaus to support broader use of public-private alliances in the future. The team proposes that ANE’s partici￾pation in the assessment be organized as follows: • ANE will pick up all the direct costs of fieldwork to be done in that region, including preparation (includ￾ing collecting basic data on mission￾funded alliances) and report-writing. ANE would select its own consultant, if it so choses, who would be con￾tracted under a PPC contract mecha￾nism and who would work under the general direction of the GDA assess￾ment team leader. • The fieldwork funded by ANE will be done in countries selected by the bu￾reau, following the general guidance provided in the attached assessment framework paper as adjusted to reflect the response to issue 2 above. It will follow the protocol drawn up for the worldwide assessment, expanded to address the particular issues listed above. • Findings from the ANE fieldwork would be integrated into the overall assessment report and the ANE￾funded consultant would participate as a member of the overall team in analysis and presentation of find￾ings, and report-writing. In addition, (s)he would prepare a separate report presenting findings, conclusions, and recommendations following guide￾lines provided by ANE. These arrangements will be reflected in the contracted statement of work. 3. What can be said about the effective￾ness of the bureau incentive fund in promoting the use of public-private alliances in the region? Considering both the process and criteria used, what features of the fund’s opera￾tion have proven to be important in achieving its objectives? See objective 1, question 1. 4. What other organizational factors have been important in determining how effectively missions have used alliances in their development pro￾gram? These should include both bu￾reau actions as well as those taken at the mission level, e.g., the availability of technical assistance and/or train￾ing, the expertise and/or experience of available mission staff (e.g., prior experience in partnering with private sector under earlier bureau or Agency initiatives), support by embassy and other U.S. Government agencies, etc. See objective 1, especially question 1. Also, with respect to mission-level orga￾nizational and procedural factors, see objective 2, question 8. 5. Reviewing the distinct approaches taken in the last two years by ANE, other bureaus, and the GDA Secre￾tariat in promoting the use of public￾private alliances (e.g., use of incentive funds vs. funding targets and other mechanisms), what lessons are there for ANE in mainstreaming the use of public-private alliances in its develop￾ment programming? See objective 1, especially question 1. Also, objective 3, question 5 may identify functions and roles that might ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 11 Annex 2. Sources of Funding for ANE Alliances, Pre-Alliances, and Projects Table 5. Sources of Funding Alliance Source of Funding Funding Full GDA Alliances Philippines Alliance for Mindanao Off-Grid Rural Electrification (AMORE) MIF/funds allocated to mission 20024 Cleaner Fuels to Reduce Vehicle Emissions MIF 20035 (part of umbrella) $2 million Monsanto Corn Alliance Mission funding Indonesia Papua Bird’s Head Alliance MIF 20026 (Biodiversity) $3 million Cocoa Alliance ANE Regional Alliance MIF 5 and 6 (Tree Crops Alliance) $2 million (FY 2002) $2 million (FY 2003) Timber Alliance ANE Global Alliance MIF footnotes 5 and 6 (or Sustainable Forest Management) $2.5 million 2002 $3 million 2003 India Green Business Center (GBC) MIF/funds allocated to mission 20026 Financing Solar Electrification (Solar Financing) MIF/funds allocated to mission 20026 India Livable Communities Initiative (Regional) Clean Air Initiative7 Sri Lanka Air Pollution Reduction in Land Transport Clean Air Initiative7 Ecotourism MIF5 $900,000 (FY 2003) MIF—Mission incentive funds 4 MIF Funds 2002 not allocated through review process. Source: Action Memo to Janet Ballantyne, “FY 2002 ANE Public-Private Alliance Awards,” July 15, 2002. 5 Source: Action Memo to Gordon West, “FY 2003 ANE Public-Private Alliance Mission Incentive Fund Awards,” June 13, 2003. 6 Source: Action Memo to Janet Ballantyne, “FY 2002 ANE Public-Private Alliance Awards,” July 15, 2002. 7 The Clean Air Initiative was a subset of the 2002 Mission Incentive Funds. These proposals received a separate review process. 12 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Table 5. Sources of Funding Alliance Source of Funding Funding Pre-alliances and projects that also received Bureau incentive funds Philippines Sustainable Cocoa Extension Services for Smallholders Alli￾ance for SE Asia ANE Global Alliance6 Indonesia Livable Communities Clean Air Clean Air Initiative7 India Energy Wise India MIF5 Clean Hydrogen Technologies for Three Wheeler Transporta￾tion and Distributed Power Generation MIF5 Morocco Scholarship for Success MIF6 MIF—Mission incentive funds ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 13 Annex 3. Private-Sector Participation in Alliances Table 6. Private-Sector Participation in Alliances For Profit NGO Subtotals Local 19 7 26 Multinationals and Affiliates 17 18 35 Totals 36 25 61 Table 7. ANE GDA Alliances, Partner Types, and Partner Roles Alliance Partners Partner Type Partner Role Philippines Alliance for Mindanao Off-Grid Rural Elec￾trification (AMORE) Mirant Philippines PSA RP Winrock NGM IP USAID Cleaner Fuels to Reduce Vehicle Emissions Flying V Oil Co. PSL RP RRCG Bus Co. PSL RP Senbel Chemical PSL RP Shell Philippines PSA RP Chevron Texaco PSM RP USAID Monsanto Corn Alliance Monsanto Philippines PSA RIP USAID 14 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Table 7. ANE Alliances: Partner Types and Roles Alliance Partners Partner Type Partner Role Indonesia Papua Bird’s Head Alliance (Biodiversity) British Petroleum PSM IP Cocoa Alliance ACDI/VOCA, ACRI NGM RP Conservation International NGO RP IKEA PSM RP International City-County Management Association NGO RP Research Triangle Institute NGM RP The Nature Conservancy NGM RP UK Department for International Development (DFID) BD World Wildlife Fund NGM RP Natural Resource Management NGO IP National Democratic Institute NGM IP Civil Society Strengthening And Planning NGM IP Building Institutions for Good Governance NGO IP Performance Oriented-Regional Management NGO IP Coastal Resources Management Project NGL IP USAID Cocoa Alliance Masterfoods PSM RP World Cocoa Foundation NGM RP Archer Daniels Midland PSM RP Cadbury’s PSM RP Dutch Government Gov RP ACDI/VOCA NGM IP Philippines Department of Agriculture Donor RP Cocoa Foundation of the Philippines PSM RP USAID Timber Alliance or Sustainable Forest Management Home Depot PSM RP World Resources Institute NGM RP Tropical Forest Trust NGO RP Newbridge Capital PS RP ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 15 Table 7. ANE Alliances: Partner Types and Roles Alliance Partners Partner Type Partner Role Indonesia Caterpillar International PSM RP McKinsey and Company PSM RP Indonesian Wood Panel Association Trade Association RP ProForest NGO RP Goldman Sachs PSM RP Global Forest and Trade Network NGO RP Edelman Worldwide PS RP ABN AMRO and other banks PSM RP British Petroleum PSM RP Association of Indonesia Forest Concession Holders Trade Association The Forests Dialogue U IKEA PSM RP ESRI and ERDAS PS Indonesia Forest Product Companies—Sum￾alindo, Intracawood PS RP World Wildlife Fund NGM IP The Nature Conservancy NGM IP USAID India Green Business Center (GBC) Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) NGL IP Government of Andra Pradesh LG RP House of Godrej PSL RP USAID Financing Solar Electrification (Solar Financing) Syndicate Bank PSL RP PVTrust PSL RP Prathama Bank and other regional banks PSL ICICI PSL RP CTD NGL Winrock India NGM IP USAID 16 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Table 7. ANE Alliances: Partner Types and Roles Alliance Partners Partner Type Partner Role India India Livable Communities Initiative (Regional) Government of Delhi LG RP ITDP NGL RIP Bus Companies PSL RP USAID Sri Lanka Air Pollution Reduction in Land Transport World Bank Donor RP GTZ Donor RP David Peiris Motors PSL RP Sri Lanka Bus Owners Association PSL RP USAID Ecotourism Aitken Spense Hotels PSL RP Jetwing Hotels PSL RP Serendib Leisure PSL RP John Keelis Hotels PSL RP Tourism Association NGL RP Maturata Group PSL RP U. of Peradeniya U RP U. of Colombo U RP U. of Moratuwa U RP Field Ornithology Group NGL RP Ecotourism Society of Sri Lanka NGL RP USAID ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 17 TABLE 7. ANE ALLIANCES: PARTNER TYPES AND ROLES Key for partner type: Key to partner role: PSL For profit—local/country RP Resource partner PSM For profit—multinational corporation (MNC) RIP Resource and implementing partner PSA For profit—MNC affiliate IP Implementing partner PSR For profit—regional BP Beneficiary partner NGL NGO— local/country NGM NGO—multinational NGR NGO—regional GOV Host country federal government GPl Government parastatal LG Local government BD Bilateral donor PIO UN, World Bank, etc U University Cont M USAID contractor ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 19 Annex 4. Assessment of Alliances in India Introduction This report is part of a worldwide as￾sessment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model, part of a USAID initiative. PPC’s Center for Development Information and Evalua￾tion (CDIE) coordinated the assessment on behalf of the Agency—specifically the GDA Secretariat and the Bureau for Asia and the Near East (ANE). CDIE and ANE funded the study. The worldwide assessment methods included a review of background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey, and field visits to 10 countries. Due to the interest and support of ANE, India was one of six ANE countries selected. The findings and conclusions from the six ANE countries are summarized in Midterm Assessment of Global Develop￾ment Alliances in Asia and the Near East, February 2004. This report presents the findings of the work done in India December 8–12, 2003. O’Brien and Associates International was contracted by USAID’s Develop￾ment Information Services (PPC/DEI) to conduct a part of the GDA midterm evaluation, specifically in the Philip￾pines, Sri Lanka, and India. This report presents the findings of the work done in India December 8–12, 2003, and is organized into the following compo￾nents: • scope of work • methodology used to collect and analyze data • key findings • conclusions Scope of Work In order to advance the objectives of USAID’s GDA initiative, the Agency established the GDA Secretariat, which is a temporary unit reporting to the USAID Administrator. In anticipation of eventual demobilization of the GDA Secretariat, the Agency has proposed that a midterm assessment of the GDA initiative be conducted to inform and shape policy and organizational deci￾sions around the implementation of public-private alliances within USAID. 20 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 ing how effectively missions have used alliances in their development program? These should include both bureau actions as well as those taken at the mission level. Have the avail￾ability of technical assistance and/or training, the expertise and/or experi￾ence of available mission staff (e.g., prior experience in partnering with private sector under earlier bureau or Agency initiatives), and support by embassy or other U.S. Government agencies made a difference? Methodology The methodology used in the assess￾ment involved the review of nine alli￾ances, including their documents such as proposals and correspondence, as well as face-to-face interviews with key alliance managers, USAID/India senior managers, and partners. Following are the alliances that were reviewed: • Green Business Center (GBC) • Energy Wise India (EWI) • Financing Solar Electrification (Solar Financing) • Capacity Building Program in En￾vironmental Compliance for Indian Industry (ELI) • Clean Hydrogen Technologies for 3- Wheeler Transportation and Distrib￾uted Power Generation (Hydrogen Fuels) • India Livable Communities Initiative (Livable Communities) • Small Enterprise Activity Fund (SEAF) • Children’s Educational Television (Sesame) • Quality Education and Skills Training (QUEST) It should be noted that some within USAID feel that SEAF is not a GDA￾type alliance because it is structured as a venture capital fund designed to raise capital from investors and does not fulfill some of the GDA criteria. Nevertheless, it has been included in the analysis because the mission views it as an important partnership that leverages resources that are brought to bear on development issues. Within USAID/India, interviews were conducted with the mission’s director and deputy director, director and deputy director for program support, contracts officer, and a variety of alliance manag￾ers. Key partners that were interviewed included representatives of the Confed￾eration of Indian Industry, ICICI banks, Energy Conversion Devices (ECD), the Louis Berger Group, and Winrock India. All interviews were conducted according to pre-established interview guides in order to ensure that pertinent areas were adequately probed and that interviews retained consistency for viable compari￾son within missions and across missions. Findings America-India Development Alliance One of the most interesting findings from the team’s assessment in New O’Brien and Associates International was asked to focus on objective 2 of the assessment, which is to determine the effectiveness of the GDA business model as a development tool, as well as to identify the lessons USAID learned about applying the GDA business model in the field and its potential con￾tribution to development results. Specifically, O’Brien and Associates was asked to travel to Delhi, India to inter￾view key USAID/India managers and partners in order to answer the follow￾ing questions: 1. What progress is being made in the alliances funded to date from the ANE bureau alliance incentive fund? Are they proving to have been good investments? Should ANE continue the Mission Incentive Fund(MIF)? Should ANE provide more technical assistance? Any other ideas for what a committed regional bureau should do to push this aggressively along? 2. What other alliances have been fund￾ed from the mission’s own budgets? How are they progressing? Are they proving to be good investments? Do they differ in any important respects from those funded from the bureau incentive fund? 3. What can be said about the effective￾ness of the bureau incentive fund in promoting the use of public-private alliances in the region? Considering both the process and criteria used, what features of the fund’s opera￾tion have proven to be important in achieving its objectives? 4. What other organizational factors have been important in determin- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 21 Delhi is that USAID/India is currently laying the groundwork for a legacy in￾stitution that will replace USAID/India and promote collaboration on initiatives to address India’s long-term develop￾ment. Based on improvements in key social and economic indicators, and the fact that the government has asked 14 bilateral donors to wind down their op￾erations, USAID/India anticipates that the mission will need to find new ways to remain relevant and operate in India to make a difference. David Heesen, Deputy Director for Program Support, highlighted USAID’s dilemma when he commented that “India’s GDP is $500 billion, the total aid package to India from all donors is $4.6 billion, and USAID’s budget is $200 million…our assistance is a drop in the bucket as far as the government is concerned.” USAID/India’s multi-year strategy aims to establish and finance a partnership fund in 2004 that, in the short term, will seek new and creative ways to deliver development assistance including innovative partnerships between India and US private and public organiza￾tions. The partnership fund, referred to as the America-India Development Alli￾ance (AIDA), will also serve as a testing ground for a larger and more permanent legacy entity to be established towards the end of the current strategy period. The mission has already hired a project development specialist who is respon￾sible for promoting the adoption of new business models for conducting USAID’s business in India. The special￾ist is overseeing AIDA as well as GDA￾and ANE-funded alliances. Origin of Alliance Concepts The ideas and initiative for the current set of alliances in USAID/India came from different places. The GBC, Solar, and QUEST originated from USAID/ India. Interestingly, the GBC concept seems to have emerged from President William Clinton’s visit to India. Accord￾ing to Ram Berry, President Clinton committed USAID to supporting India in developing clean energy by helping set up a green business center. The idea received another boost from the chief minister of Andra Pradesh who donated government land on which to build the center. Berry traces the concept of financing solar energy to USAID/India’s efforts in promoting the use of solar energy to NGOs and banks for financing. Win￾rock International India, the current implementing partner, confirmed these origins in a separate discussion. USAID then took the initiative by forming an alliance with banks and contracted Win￾rock to manage the process. The alliance provides training to bank managers in order to increase loans to poorer villag￾ers to finance solar energy panels, based on a microfinance lending model. The idea for QUEST, which aims to address education quality through public-private alliances, emerged from discussion with several of the most important educational actors in India, including three of the country’s largest foundations that have an education fo￾cus. According to Ashi Kathuria, who is overseeing the project, “QUEST is still in the early concept stage and is look￾ing for creative ways to partner with the private sector.” SEAF, CET, and ELI resulted from those organizations approaching the mission directly with their respective ideas. SEAF approached the GDA Secretariat for funding and submitted a concept paper. The secretariat liked the venture capital concept and referred it to USAID/India for consideration and funding. CET was conceptualized and initiated by Sesame Workshop. Accord￾ing to David Heesen, USAID/India was searching for ways to combine technol￾ogy with education and the Sesame con￾cept satisfied both criteria. In a similar way, The Environmental Law Institute developed the ELI concept and submit￾ted it to the mission for funding. K. Baladrishnan, Regional Director for US-AEP, explained that EWI and Hydrogen Fuels have their roots in US￾AEP work. The Louis Berger Group, the contractor for the US-AEP initia￾tives, saw an opportunity to learn from Johnson and Johnson’s best practices in Mumbai and thus developed the EWI concept and submitted it to the GDA Secretariat. Likewise, ECD responded to the secretariat’s request for concepts by developing the Hydrogen Fuels pro￾posal. The GDA Secretariat passed it on to ANE for MIF funding. The Livable Communities and ELI came about from NGOs applying di￾rectly to the GDA Secretariat for fund￾ing. The concept for the livable com￾munities alliance originated with ITDP, an Indian NGO. Ram Berry said that ITDP responded to the GDA Secretariat call for concept papers and submitted 22 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 the proposed project that called for dedicated high capacity bus routes and buses using clean fuels in Delhi. With the approval of USAID/India, the GDA Secretariat funded the project. Coordination and Communi￾cation within Alliances An important characteristic of the GDA business model is effective coordina￾tion and communication among alli￾ance partners, which should result in a vibrant partnership that delivers the intended impact. According to the USAID/India activ￾ity managers and partners that were interviewed, all alliance projects involve periodic meetings and the partners communicate via telephone and e-mail on an “as needed” basis. However, the organization that has the cooperative agreement or grant from USAID gener￾ally takes the lead in calling meetings and flagging issues. The only issue that surfaced regarding the effectiveness of communication was in EWI, where the program manager is based in Washing￾ton, D.C., and a local coordinator has not been hired. Several of the respon￾dents indicated that they felt this lack of local coordination hindered communi￾cation at times. The involvement of USAID/India man￾agers in the alliances varies from project to project. In QUEST, Ashi Kathuria reported that she is actively involved in the negotiation, design, and recruitment of private-sector partners. In GBC and Solar, USAID/India activity managers seem quite involved in alliance meetings and other planning and implementa￾tion activities. In EWI, Hydrogen Fuels, Livable Communities, and ELI, the mission seems less involved and willing to defer to the implementing partners such as Berger, ECD, and ITDP. GDA and ANE Incentive Funds and Technical Assistance USAID/India is actually funding the majority of its alliances from its mission budget. It is providing $1.2 million to GBC, $400,000 to Solar Financing, $5 million to SEAF, and $1 million to Sesame. The mission also intends to fund QUEST. The GDA Secretariat is funding ELI and Livable Communities at $10,000 and $1.9 million, respec￾tively. ANE, through MIF, has allocated $990,000 to EWI and $500,000 to Hydrogen Fuels. According to Dr. Krishna Sapru of ECD, the Hydrogen Fuels project pro￾posal originally requested $2 million but ANE asked ECD to decrease the request to $500,000, a request with which it complied. Dr. Sapru went on to explain that Debbie McGlauflin provided tech￾nical assistance in the project’s design that was very valuable. Apart from Hydrogen Fuels, the mission did not receive technical assistance from either ANE or the GDA Secretariat. The implementing partner or contractor designed most of the alliance projects and submitted proposals directly to the mission, ANE, or the GDA Secretariat for funding. The respondents’ opinions of how much the GDA Secretariat and ANE influ￾enced partnerships is mixed throughout the mission. Heesen explained “GDA Secretariat was very helpful because it helped us learn more about partner￾ships that strengthen our AIDA con￾cept.” Pushkin Chandra, responsible for AIDA, attended the GDA training and has used some of what he learned in further developing the AIDA concept. However, one senior manager questions whether the GDA initiative has made any difference in the way USAID/India operates. He commented, “the GDA ap￾proach seems like a way to capture and communicate what missions are already doing. If this is useful for USAID and State to make the case to Congress, then that is fine.” Ashi Kathuria, Office of Social Devel￾opment, also participated in the GDA training in Bangkok. Kathuria credits the GDA training for getting her to think about partnerships differently. She said that she is using the new way of thinking to develop a concept paper for a new girls education project, negotiate with several of India’s largest founda￾tions, and think about how to involve the private sector in the project. Neither Chandra nor Kathuria have been able to share the learning from the GDA workshops with other mission staff. However, Heesen said he would be looking for an opportunity in the near future to bring interested staff together talk about the GDA and what Chandra and Kathuria gained from attending the workshops. Development Impact and Leverage One could argue that the two most important aspects of an alliance are its development impact on the beneficia￾ries and its resources, particularly cash investments that partners contribute. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 23 Development impact is important because it is one of the primary reasons why USAID exists. The contribu￾tion of resources is important because, in theory, as the level of contributed resources increases, a partner’s level of commitment, risk sharing, and respon￾sibility also increases. This correlation is especially strong when the contributed resource is cash. Development Impact. Several alliances could potentially have a significant impact. • Solar Financing. If Solar Financing occurs on the scope intended (5,000 bankers making 10 solar loans each), it could have a significant impact in the use of clean energy as well as providing electricity to villages that cannot be connected to the grid. The challenge, however, will be to convince the bankers to make these loans. Many stated that they are afraid that their top management does not support the solar financing initiative. On the other hand, the head of Syndicate Bank proclaimed that his bankers would exceed lend￾ing targets. • Livable Communities. The Livable Communities could also have a sub￾stantial impact in Delhi. If the project moves forward as conceived, the municipal government will commit to developing designated high occu￾pancy bus lanes and 30 buses that use clean fuel technologies. • Energy Wise India. The development impact of EWI will depend largely on how quickly industries pick up best practices and implement them. One thing that could help advance this initiative quickly is the Bureau of Energy and Efficiency putting into place regulations promoting energy efficiency. • Sesame Workshop. Another alliance that could have significant impact is Sesame Workshop. USAID/India is providing an initial $1million to launch the project and test markets. If the project can move beyond this “pi￾lot” stage, “the impact could be huge given the millions of households in India that have televisions,” explained Heesen. • Hydrogen Fuels. The Hydrogen Fuels alliance is also in a pilot stage of sorts. ECD is working with Mahendra & Mahendra on a technology that could be used to convert 3-wheel taxis to hydrogen fuel. If it ends up being financially viable for Mahendra & Mahendra, the company would begin manufacturing 3-wheelers that use hydrogen fuels. While the potential impact to the environment could be huge, the project must first prove to be financially and technologically feasible. • Green Business Center. The develop￾ment impact of the GBC is more uncertain. The challenge for the GBC will be to move beyond a demonstra￾tion project to truly mainstreaming energy efficiency ideas into businesses throughout India. Although CII has articulated several carefully thought out objectives, how they translate into development impact beyond the actual GBC remains to be seen. • ELI. The development impact of ELI is relatively modest. ELI intends to build the capacity of 150 small to medium-sized enterprises in the environmental compliance area. • Small Enterprise Activity Fund. Also with a relatively modest development impact, SEAF plans to invest in a portfolio of 12–15 small to medium￾sized enterprises in sectors other than technology. Given the thousands and thousands of enterprises that are in operation in India, these numbers are quite small. Even if the mission’s alliance projects have impact, such impacts may be dif￾ficult to measure. Several USAID/India managers believe many of the mission’s current alliance projects will have diffi￾culty measuring and reporting on results because they were conceived outside the USAID strategic objective (SO) frame￾work and were born without monitor￾ing and evaluation systems. Partner Contributions and Leverage. In most of the alliance projects, USAID/ India is contributing cash resources in the form of cooperative agreements or grants while most of the partners are contributing in-kind contributions in the form of staff time, per diem, travel expenses, and, in some cases, technologies. The only two alliances that have a cash contribution are the GBC and ELI. The GBC funds consist of $1.2 million from USAID, $1.9 million from the Godrej Foundation, and $2.72 million in land from the Government of Andra Pradesh. This puts the leverage ratio at 4:1. In ELI, USAID contributed $100,000 that matches a $100,000 grant given to ELI by the GE Fund. In EWI, the partners have pledged about $2 million in in-kind contribu- 24 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 tion and land from the Government of Andra Pradesh. CII is actually the owner of the green business center building. The Louis Berger Group and Winrock India receive funds through coopera￾tive agreements in the EWI and Solar Financing alliances. These projects look more like traditional development proj￾ects for which USAID provides funds to contractors who in turn implement the project. The Hydrogen Fuels alliance is struc￾tured a little differently. Balakrishna ex￾plained that the “ANE Bureau provided a PASA (participating agency services agreement) to DOE (U.S. Department of Energy) who subcontracted NETL who turned around and subcontracted ECD for $500,000, which is a very complicated way of contracting that is difficult to understand.” In the ELI and Livable Communities alliances, the GDA Secretariat provides funding through cooperative agreement mechanisms directly to the implement￾ing partners that have managed to meet the 1:1 matching leverage required by the secretariat. The level of funding is $100,000 for ELI and $1.9 million for Livable Communities. According to Heesen, the Children’s Educational Television project will in￾volve a $500,000 cooperative agreement with the Sesame Workshop, which will look for corporate sponsors and under￾take implementation of the project. Obstacles Most of the USAID/India activity managers interviewed felt that it was too early in the alliance process to identify New Approaches and Partners GDA-type alliances should result in USAID developing new approaches and working with new partners in finding creative and innovative ways to address development problems. During the course of the interviews, USAID/India managers were probed to determine the degree to which the GDA Secretariat and ANE helped support the mission in this direction. The responses were mixed. The mis￾sion was already working with the Louis Berger Group and ECD under the US-AEP initiative and with ICICI and other banks in the financing of solar power. ELI and ITDP involve new partners, but not new and innovative approaches to development. SEAF is a new approach and partner, but the venture capital fund and its investors, as noted previously, do not really fit the GDA business model criteria. The project that probably best captures the spirit of new approaches and partners is Sesame and the use of Sesame Work￾shop methodologies and television to educate children. Financing Mechanisms According to Jerry Kryschtal, Director of the Regional Contracts Office, all but one procurement mechanism involves a cooperative agreement between USAID and the implementing partner. The ex￾ception is SEAF, which received a grant due to issues involved with the profit￾ability of the venture capital fund. In the GBC, USAID provides funding through a cooperative agreement to CII for $1.2 million. CII acquired another $1 million from the Godrej Founda￾tions, such as training facilities, office space, corporate energy analysis tools, and technical encyclopedias. With USAID’s contribution of $990,000, the leverage ratio is approximately 2:1. Leveraging for both Solar Financing and Livable Communities is approximately 3:1. According to the Solar Financing activity manager, USAID’s contribution of $400,000 is leveraging about $1.4 million from banks in staff time, per diem, and transportation for orientation and training. In Livable Communities, USAID’s input of $1.9 million is lever￾aging $5.6 million in new buses and road construction in the Delhi area. In the Hydrogen Fuels proposal, ECD lists in-kind contributions from it￾self and Mahendra & Mahendra at $500,000, but these contributions are not valued. USAID is the only partner putting cash into the alliance: $500,000. The leverage ratio in SEAF is impres￾sive. USAID/India is providing a grant of $5 million that is leveraging an addi￾tional $40 million from investors in the capital venture fund, a ratio of 8:1. While the potential long-term impact and leverage of Sesame Workshop could be substantial, in the short term the figures are small. USAID/India is contributing $500,000 of a proposed $700,000 cash budget. ICICI is con￾tributing the other $200,000 from its corporate social responsibility funds. If the project goes to scale as anticipated, Sesame Workshop will raise funds from corporate sponsors that would signifi￾cantly increase the budget to about $10 million. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 25 obstacles that were impeding smooth implementation. However, several gen￾eral obstacles were identified. USAID managers and some partners most frequently cited USAID’s procure￾ment process as an obstacle. For exam￾ple, ECD complained that the hydrogen fuels project is in jeopardy because the $500,000 funding has not been released, despite receiving a pre-award letter. Apparently, the project request is going through congressional notifica￾tion, which no one seemed to know anything about. Another major obstacle mission manag￾ers noted is the issue of competition. USAID/India managers say they are reluctant to explore some alliance op￾portunities due to USAID’s competition requirements. Apparently, the competi￾tion rule has discouraged some manag￾ers from pursuing alliances because they were concerned that it might violate USAID rules. One activity manager commented, “The GDA APS process has been a very good way for USAID/ India to get around the competition requirement but we need more such mechanisms [if] we are expected to aggressively go after these kinds of partnerships.” Many USAID/India activity managers interviewed complained that they have too much work and not enough time to respond to all the demands of their work. This was cited as a major reason why some are not anxious to explore alliances, which are perceived to be time intensive compared to more traditional project models. Some mission managers mentioned that USAID staff do not understand what motivates the private sector and, in some cases, are uncomfortable ap￾proaching businesses to talk about part￾nerships. In fact, most of the alliances were initiated by organizations that ended up being contractors to USAID with a plan to work with the private sector. Lessons Interviewees were asked what lessons they had gleaned so far from the alli￾ances. Below are a variety of paraphrases and quotes that represent the sorts of lessons alliance partners are learning. • It is very important to have an alli￾ance project manager or representa￾tive in place locally to ensure smooth communications and resolve issues, especially in a country, such as India, where relationships are very impor￾tant. EWI has probably suffered to a certain extent for this reason. • As the number of partners in an alli￾ance increases, the complexity of the alliance increases and it becomes diffi￾cult to manage. EWI is an example. • The Louis Berger Group has found that many public- and private-sector Indian partners do not like to put cash into projects. They prefer to make in-kind contributions, espe￾cially staff time and training. • We found that energy can create a competitive advantage for businesses that rely on it in their manufacturing processes. The use of energy is one of the areas where a company can make or lose money. This helps make the business case for why companies should implement energy efficiency measures. • US-AEP and GDA are similar mod￾els. US-AEP has more of a focus on a trade benefit to U.S. companies while GDA seems to concentrate more on leveraging resources from alliance partners. • AIDA is one way to mainstream the partnership concept and get around procurement issues and competition issues because it operates outside the USAID’s bureaucracy, rules, and regulations. It is a more flexible and independent mechanism that the GDA itself might consider. • USAID does not encourage the kind of risk-taking required to develop creative GDA-type alliances. USAID managers are stretched thin and tak￾ing on something new like an alliance is something most do not feel that they can do. Recommendations As part of the interview process, USAID/India managers were asked what recommendations they would make to USAID Washington decision￾makers, such as the Agency’s Admin￾istrator or the ANE Bureau. A short summary of those recommendations is as follows: • Currently, the memorandum of un￾derstandings that USAID signs with its partners are not legally binding in￾struments. Missions should have the option to sign ones that are legally binding in appropriate situations. 26 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Conclusions 1. The America India Development Al￾liance (AIDA) will be USAID/India’s primary vehicle for building public￾and private-sector alliances between interested parties in the United States and India. In the long run, AIDA is USAID’s exit strategy for India and represents a legacy institution that will live on to continue the Agency’s development work. Outside of AIDA, the mission’s approach to mainstream alliance building is to champion the process and lead through example. 2. USAID/India has been doing public and private-sector partnerships for many years in various forms. A limited budget has created a neces￾sity to find creative ways to lever￾age additional resources. The GDA initiative has made little difference in the mission’s current portfolio of alliances, although some credit GDA for getting the mission to think more creatively about alliances. 3. Many USAID/India managers are confused about what constitutes a GDA alliance and the relationship between the GDA incentive funds and ANE Bureau’s incentive funds. It is unclear how and why propos￾als sent to the GDA Secretariat are passed to ANE for funding. 4. USAID/India managers struggle with how to balance alliance building and how to adhere USAID’s strict com￾petition rules. While the GDA APS process has been useful in helping the mission get around competition is￾sues, USAID needs new procurement mechanisms that are more flexible in negotiating alliances. • USAID needs to change its procure￾ment procedure to accommodate GDA alliances. The Agency needs more flexible and timely procurement mechanisms. Negotiating with the private sector is a dynamic process that requires flexibility, but so many of USAID’s rules and regulations are rigid and slow. • The GDA Secretariat and ANE need to help mission staff understand what exactly a GDA alliance is, as well as understand the relationship between the GDA incentive fund and ANE Bureau’s MIF. Staff do not under￾stand why some projects submitted to the GDA Secretariat were passed on ANE for funding. Also, ANE’s MIF process needs to be more transparent with clearer guidelines. • The GDA Secretariat mandate is too narrow. It needs to be broadened from that of an honest broker to more of a negotiator and dealmaker with a substantial budget to cut deals. If not, the Secretariat will never be an important pillar within USAID. Its mandate should also include promot￾ing alliances to more businesses so they are aware of the opportunities to partner with USAID. • USAID should encourage missions to develop alliances that will achieve a significant impact in terms of how the project improves the quality of life of people and the number of people it affects. • GDA should be one of several USAID business models that are available to missions to select, depending on the country context. In general, GDA alliances are more appropriate for those countries that have a significant and vibrant private sector and substantial foreign direct investment. It is also a model that will become increasingly relevant. • The GDA Secretariat should con￾tinue to exist in some form with increased responsibility for brokering large global alliances, disseminating best practices, and keeping alliance building on USAID’s radar screen. • USAID needs to improve its cur￾rent performance appraisal system to better reward USAID managers for taking risks and building successful alliances of the nature that the GDA Secretariat and ANE are promoting. If managers are expected to search out and develop alliances, then it should be reflected in job descriptions. • USAID/Washington should not provide earmarked funds to missions for alliance building because it stifles the process when new opportunities arise. For example, funds earmarked for the environment limit missions to environmental partnerships when opportunities in education or health might be available. • The GDA Secretariat needs to iden￾tify and resolve the procurement and legal issues that are interfering with alliance building and project imple￾mentation. • USAID should allow missions to value their in-kind contributions in the alliance contribution formula and ratio. Some feel it is not fair that partners are allowed to value in-kind contributions but USAID is not. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 27 per diem and travel expenses, office space, and technology. 9. In nearly all of its alliance projects, USAID/India’s role has been to invest its cash resources in the start-up, demonstration, or pilot phase with the expectation that, as the project goes to scale, other partners will con￾tribute resources in excess of USAID’s initial investment. 10. Although development impact is one of the most important reasons to pursue strategic partnerships, few of the mission’s alliance projects have monitoring and evaluation systems, including baselines, that can capture emerging lessons and best practices as well as the actual impact on lives of the poor. 5. Concern over violating the Agency’s competition rules is causing USAID/ India managers to respond to alliance opportunities in a reactive, rather than proactive, manner. Mission managers do not feel they can aggres￾sively explore and negotiate alliance opportunities due to what they consider are restrictive competition rules. This explained why most of the mission’s alliances originated outside the mission and relied on traditional cooperative agreements or grants to pass funds to implementing partners. 6. The GDA Secretariat is still needed to manage global alliances with a sig￾nificant budget to bring something to the table in negotiating large partner￾ships. Some people thought the GDA Secretariat played a useful role but has outlived its usefulness and should end. Others, probably the majority, thought the GDA Secretariat should live on. 7. Overall, USAID activity managers are not spending significantly more time on alliance projects because they are structured more like traditional cooperative agreements and grants. The exception is QUEST, where the activity manager is involved in negotiating with foundations and the private sector. 8. Most of the alliances exceed the GDA incentive fund requirement of a 1:1 ratio and the ANE’s requirement of a 2:1 leverage ratio. However, the only projects where partners are putting cash into the project are the GBC and ELI. All other partner contribu￾tions are in the forms of staff time, ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 29 Annex 5. Assessment of Alliances in Indonesia This report is part of a worldwide assess￾ment of the GDA business model, an initiative of USAID. The assessment has been coordinated by PPC/DEI on behalf of the Agency, specifically the GDA Sec￾retariat and ANE. PPC/DEI and ANE funded the study. Assessment methods have included review of the background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey of randomly selected holders of USAID.GOV e-mail address￾es, and brief field visits to 10 countries. Because of the interest and support of the ANE Bureau, Indonesia was one of six ANE countries selected, and it pro￾vides an excellent example of the impact of the GDA model from the perspective of both the USAID mission staff and partners involved in the alliances. This report will highlight findings and best This report will highlight findings and best practices from Indonesia’s experiences with GDAs. practices from Indonesia’s experiences with GDAs and provide important lessons learned for future management decisions regarding the GDA program. Fieldwork The two-person team spent December 1–5, 2003, in Jakarta, Indonesia inter￾viewing the USAID mission director, deputy mission director, program officer and representatives from the health, environment, economic growth, educa￾tion and decentralized local government teams. The team was also able to meet with implementing partners and private partners from three active alliances. Of the five alliances listed in the database as being active in Indonesia, the mission was unaware of one (Incentive Fund Coffee Alliance), not engaged in one ANE regional alliance (Livable Com￾munities—Clean Air), and very active with the remaining three (Papua Bird’s Head Alliance, SUCCESS Asia Alli￾ance—Cocoa, and Sustainable Forest Management—Timber/Combating Il￾legal Logging, Certification). We focused on the latter three for purposes of this assessment. 30 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Alliances We found the three alliances we exam￾ined to be well into implementation. Each is quite different from the others and each provides excellent case studies to inform the GDA story. The Timber and Cocoa Alliances both use replicable approaches. The Bird’s Head Alliance is unique, because it focuses on a par￾ticular region with specific needs and challenges and crosses over multiple SO areas. Timber Alliance. The Timber Alliance fits the GDA model and is an example of an alliance where two NGOs ap￾proached USAID with similar ideas. It represents an innovative undertak￾ing, especially with regard to regional, logistical, and political challenges, and demonstrates big possibilities and a replicable approach. The idea for the alliance began in January 2002. The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) became aware of the GDA initiative and responded to the USAID’s APS independently of each other. Because they had similar ideas, USAID suggested that TNC and WWF submit one joint proposal to address common market issues overseas. At first, the partners worried that one would have authority over the other, but USAID spent time managing relations and what the team saw was an example of two strong implementing partners working well together with a good divi￾sion of responsibility. The alliance has an environmental focus and is a direct extension of the mission’s natural resource management SO to preserve the natural forest. Indonesia’s tropical rain forests are being lost at an alarming rate, mainly due to the de￾mand within Asia for timber and pulp. While two-thirds of the logging in the Indonesia is illegal, law enforcement is ineffective and a large percentage of log￾ging is actually carried out or condoned by the military and government. This alliance provides an opportunity to work the problem from a new angle, the demand side, by encouraging major re￾tailers, such as IKEA, Home Depot, and Lowe’s, to exclude illegally cut timber from their supplies and also for USAID to work with Japan and China, impor￾tant markets for exported Indonesian timber. Both implementing partners cited their business-friendly approach as a natural fit for GDA. WWF’s corporate partnerships particularly made GDA a fit for their organization. USAID did not see additional risk because of their previous commitment to addressing illegal logging and because private part￾ners, such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, provided cash and other significant re￾sources. The private companies have al￾ready purchased the first certified wood at a premium price and this alliance has provided additional opportunity for the private companies to be seen as socially responsible. Although the alliance includes multiple funding partners who were involved in some discussions, most of the planning was done by USAID, TNC, and WWF. TNC and WWF were glad USAID did not require them to bring 20 or more partners together or implementation would have been more difficult. With USAID’s input, TNC and WWF did a good job of working out their different responsibilities. For example, TNC is the overall coordinator of the Alliance and receives slightly more funding for extra staff, resources, and handling mon￾itoring and evaluation (M&E). Respon￾sibilities are also split geographically in a complementary pattern of relationships and funding, depending on whom each partner knows. Financial leveraging does not appear to be the greatest benefit of this alliance. Instead, the implementing partners look to the private sector as the key to leadership and changing the way busi￾ness is done. They see leadership and action taken as more important than the financial contribution. USAID sees the new partners in this alliance and access to CEOs, offices of Home Depot and Lowe’s, and buyer association contacts as a significant benefit: “you can’t put a price tag on it…more important than the dollar.” Before this alliance, USAID had no good way of working with China and Japan to address the illegal logging issue. An example of the potential impact of this new market ac￾cess is the enhanced awareness overseas of the impact of illegal logging and public pressure caused by running ads in Japan and Hong Kong. Because USAID encouraged the implementing partners to document leveraging, they were able to approach the corporate partners and pin down a commitment in writing. Although they acknowledged that it was inconvenient and time-consuming, they found it helpful as a way of testing the companies’ commitment and in focus￾ing companies that then had to discuss with senior management. TNC and WWF agreed that this is a direct result of the GDA model that they would not have been able to achieve before. Communication and decisionmaking are working better than the partners had ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 31 expected. The implementing partners have avoided forming a steering com￾mittee and prefer to avoid bringing new partners to the decisionmaking process. Regular communication, meetings, and quarterly reports, as well as active interaction with both USAID/Wash￾ington and the Indonesia mission, add to the successful implementation of this alliance. Cocoa Alliance. The Cocoa Alliance also provides a replicable approach for the GDA business model, but is an example of an alliance that was built on an exist￾ing program and successful pre-existing relationships. The USDA started a food monetization program in 1995 with the World Cocoa Foundation, Masterfood, and Hershey to increase the quantity and quality of smallholder production through combating cocoa pod borer pests and funding farmer field training. The initial idea for the SUCCESS program started in 2000 while ACDI/ VOCA was already working with the industry partners. In early 2002, the cocoa industry approached USAID, because it was aware that USAID had been active in South Sulawesi and saw the opportunity to link with USAID as a continuation of the USDA program as it was about to end. The cocoa indus￾try had representatives in Indonesia to buy cocoa and interact with processing plants. ANE was instrumental in talking to a network of smaller partners, such as Archer Daniels, and closing the loop of partners, both of which represented new partners for USAID. The mission sub￾mitted a proposal to ANE for incentive funds and the SUCCESS Alliance was officially launched in June 2003. The focus of the alliance on improv￾ing the quantity and quality of small￾holder-grown cocoa in Indonesia and increasing incomes of cocoa farmers is a natural match with USAID’s Economic Growth Strategic Objective, particularly as the team is the lead in agriculture, small and medium-sized enterprises, and trade. USAID looks at GDA as a plat￾form for commitment. If the industry partners were involved in the activity pre-USAID, they will be involved after. For the private partners, such as World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), Masterfood, and Hershey, Indonesia is one of their main suppliers of cocoa and the produc￾ers had a growing interest in how cocoa beans were being grown. They were also concerned with long-term supply after the “witches’ broom” infestation wiped out Brazilian production. Although they had several “feel-good” projects in their portfolio, they were unsure of the impact and recognized the need to bring together multiple stakeholders. On the social side, they also had an interest in helping farmers to get their fair share. According to sole implementing part￾ner ACDI/VOCA, risk was minimal because it already had several years of experience in the area, had reached momentum, and multiple stakehold￾ers had an interest in the success of the program. The cocoa industry wanted to do something in development, but it was not set up to do so. The Cocoa Alliance is a regional alliance and each mission has a separate coopera￾tive agreement with ACDI/VOCA. At first, USAID was not sure how much money the private partners could give, but when they informed ACDI/VOCA of the leverage ratio they were looking for, the industry said they could contrib￾ute more because of the high interest in Indonesian cocoa and agreed to match USAID’s contribution 6:1. The majority of the private partners’ contribution is in guaranteed contracts to farmers based on the increased quality of their product and meeting the standards of the indus￾try. This does raise the issue of how to count this toward the required leverag￾ing ratio. The industry match is mainly a “benefit,” not really a “contribution.” All partners agree that decisionmaking is very participatory, communication is effective, and barriers seem to have little impact. In consultation with each of the partners, including the farmers, ACDI/ VOCA mapped out 2004 milestones of what each partner wants to accomplish. When problems arise, partners decide together how to handle them. For example, they are currently discussing how to prevent or channel the proposed government tax on cocoa, which would have an effect on all partners involved. Part of the solution was transferring this alliance to the economic growth team because of their contacts in key minis￾tries. As a result of this alliance, industry is already beginning to see improvements in yields, quality, and increased farmer incomes. The GDA model has also caught interest for other project ideas, such as how manufacturing plants and universities can work together to make cocoa production in South Sulawesi more sustainable. According to the pri￾vate partners, USAID serves as a catalyst and a good story to attract interest from other donors, including U.S. compa￾nies, World Bank, USDA, ARS, and DFID. For the farmers, the willingness 32 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 of the cocoa industry to pay a premium price, as they try to meet increased qual￾ity, is a big incentive. Farmers tend to go back to their old ways after training, but industry is helping not only to identify new varieties of cocoa, but also expand￾ing the program to work with farmer groups to prevent this from happening and also helping them to understand quality standards. Bird’s Head Alliance. The Bird’s Head Alliance is another example of a GDA that built upon previous relationships and existing contracts once the GDA initiative began. It also provides a unique application of the GDA model because of its regional focus, multiple implementing partners, and multiple SOs involved. The initial proposal was based on a broad concept. The goal of the alliance is to establish a well-planned economic boom instead of the “gold rush” chaos often left by large industrial projects in poor countries. The Papua Bird’s Head Alliance project aims to provide support for development and capacity building of institutions of governance and civil society in the Bird’s Head area in light of the forthcoming development of the Tangguh Bay Liq￾uefied Natural Gas Project by British Pe￾troleum (BP). Because of the potential for significant development resources resulting from the BP project, USAID wanted to ensure that the money would be applied in a meaningful way and wanted to help develop local capacity for future donors. USAID’s principle role in the alliance is to help build the capacities of institutions to man￾age environmental resources, generate employment and incomes in agriculture and provide increased access to public services. In April 2002, USAID introduced the idea of GDA at a meeting to discuss BP’s activities and BP decided to co￾write a proposal to apply for GDA funds. The grant was approved in August, and USAID SO team leaders and BP met to discuss which issues they wanted to address and select implement￾ing partners. They decided to modify existing contracts and grants and gave additional funding to implementing partners to begin operating in Bird’s Head. At the time, the mission and BP staff believed that this would be the fastest way to get started. In early 2003, BP organized a workshop to co-design options to move forward to GDA and in February, BP and USAID coordi￾nated a field trip to the region with the implementing partners, which allowed partners to find commonalities and value in joining the alliance, and helped them appreciate the difficulties in get￾ting around the region. The alliance fits with the mission’s new SO goal to bring implementing part￾ners together in a similar place and cuts across multiple focus areas for USAID: natural resources, democracy and lo￾cal governance, health, and economic growth. Each implementing partner has its own strategic objectives with regard to the Bird’s Head region. BP cites financial incentives for joining the alli￾ance, but also sees GDA as its corporate social responsibility and a “cost of doing business.” The alliance also fits with BP’s social strategy, which grew out of lessons learned from oil and gas compa￾nies that made mistakes with regard to human rights. For example, in choosing the site location, BP gave the local vil￾lagers the choice of staying where they were or being relocated. Most of the decisions were made in the early stages of the alliance between USAID and BP before the implementers were on the ground. Each implement￾ing partner works and communicates separately with BP and many do not feel they are true partners because of their limited involvement in planning of the partnership. Some said they would be working in the region with or without the GDA. All partners agree that one of the greatest challenges for this alliance is the lack of a cohesive governing body or coordinating function. Despite the challenges facing this alli￾ance, USAID and its partners were able to outline specific benefits to such an in￾novative approach, particularly the no￾tion of collaboration in a specific region and bringing together resources that otherwise would operate separately. Im￾plementing partners benefit by knowl￾edge of what activities the other partners are involved in, access to technical capacity and resources of the private sector, and a platform with legitimate opportunity to connect and build new communities with local government stakeholders. The private partner, BP, benefits from an opportunity to increase the impact of its resources, added legiti￾macy because of USAID’s involvement, USAID’s expertise with areas unfamiliar to BP—such as local governance—en￾thusiasm from non-GDA members who want to join, cost effectiveness of working with USAID and its contacts, and added insight into USAID’s way of developing relationships. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 33 Findings Origin of Alliance Concepts The ideas and initiative for the three alliances in USAID Indonesia came from different places. The Timber Alli￾ance idea came from the implementing partners that responded to the USAID APS. The Cocoa Alliance built upon an existing program and was initiated by the cocoa industry, which approached USAID. It is not as clear exactly where the idea for the Bird’s Head Alliance initiated. USAID introduced the idea of GDA at a meeting to discuss BP projects and BP had already been work￾ing with several of the implementing partners in the region. The significance of this alliance is that it brought to￾gether multiple resources of partners who had similar ideas and projects and were previously working separately in the region. In the Timber Alliance, TNC and WWF were not new to USAID, but they introduced Home Depot and Lowe’s as new partners. The partners in the Bird’s Head alliance were brought from pre-existing relationships, because of the limited timeframe. The Cocoa Al￾liance brought new partners to USAID, such as Masterfood and Hershey, because they were already working on integrated pest control systems for cocoa with the implementing partner, ACDI/ VOCA. Alliance Planning Process All three alliances were planned jointly with USAID and at least one of the partners. USAID worked with all partners—Masterfood, Hershey, and ACDI/VOCA—in the planning phase of the Cocoa Alliance. The Timber Alliance represents a case where not all partners are involved in the planning and decisionmaking process, but the implementing partners indicated that limiting multiple partner involvement allows the partnership to be effective. Although they do have discussions with the other organizations, TNC, WWF, and USAID share the majority of the planning and responsibility. The Bird’s Head Alliance is an example of USAID and the strategic funding partner, BP, sharing the responsibility of the plan￾ning with limited involvement from the implementing partners as a group. Once USAID and BP decided needs and chose implementing partners, they laid out the framework for who would do what through joint meetings with the partners. When asked about risks, most of the implementing partners in the Bird’s Head Alliance agreed they existed, but thought that risks were manageable and the potential benefits were more impor￾tant. BP responded that it spent signifi￾cant time discussing risks and organized the field trip to provide an opportunity for the partners to talk to each other uninterrupted. There is shared risk in the Cocoa Alliance, although less so for ACDI/VOCA because of its years of experience in the area. The most signifi￾cant risk cited in the Timber Alliance is that illegal logging is very lucrative to important government officials in Indonesia, and is a risk that affects all partners. The mission used the GDA toolkit for the sample MOU for all three alliances, which made the process move faster. It also looked at due diligence issues, but did not comingle funds so things became simple. It either unilaterally funded or put money in an SO and funded the alliance through regular mechanisms. The mission did not receive assistance from USAID/Wash￾ington or the GDA Secretariat during the planning phase of the Bird’s Head Alliance because it was not allowed to have TDYs during the evacuation. As mentioned above, the ANE Bureau was instrumental in identifying and coordi￾nating partners in the Timber Alliance. Alliance Implementation Communication, governance structures, and decisionmaking are all important elements of alliance implementation. According to the USAID alliance man￾agers and partners interviewed, each alli￾ance involves periodic meetings, regular e-mail, and quarterly reports to USAID that are then distributed to all partners. E-mail and text messaging are par￾ticularly important in the Bird’s Head Alliance, where distance and remoteness of the region make telephone communi￾cation difficult. Partners in the Timber Alliance acknowledged active interac￾tion with both USAID/Washington and enthusiasm from the mission level as reasons for easy communication. All partners in the Bird’s Head Alliance agreed that the lack of a governing body and coordinating function to bring the group together was an obstacle to successful implementation. BP added that the decisionmaking process is as good as it is going to be considering the region’s remote location. The Cocoa Al￾liance does not currently have a specific, standalone governing structure, but has plans to build a steering committee. In 34 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 contrast, the implementing partners in the Timber Alliance avoided forming a steering committee, because they prefer to keep the partnership fluid and do not want to bring new partners to the decisionmaking process. Innovation The farmer training schools in the Cocoa Alliance are an example of a new approach for the cocoa industry. Also, the regional approach permits the shar￾ing of best practices and even staff across country programs (i.e., transferring ACDI/VOCA’s M&E system to West Africa). The publishing of a natural resource atlas in Indonesia is a product of the Bird’s Head Alliance. USAID was already working on data collection for the project. The data USAID was look￾ing for was a unique resource in which BP had independently already invested $2 million. BP was happy to share the data that USAID could not afford, because it otherwise would have sat in storage. The alliance enabled BP to take its project a step further and turn it into something with more impact. The integrated planning at a regional level is also an innovative approach that allows each partner to know what others are doing in the region and to see where the projects overlap. Best Practices USAID mission personnel, who are very enthusiastic about the new GDA model, appear to be keys to the success of alliances. Although it does require more staff time, one or two key cham￾pions, such as Anne Patterson, who is very involved in each alliance and keeps in close contact with partners, is crucial to the success and continuation of the GDA program. The Timber Alliance provides a best practice example in M&E, which the implementing partners refer to as “Les￾sons Learning.” Following a suggestion by the potential partner, DFID, to build in a bigger M&E component from the beginning, USAID responded by expanding the budget and the imple￾menting partners contracted a research institute to handle M&E for the alli￾ance. The M&E system is set up so they can trace how everything is happen￾ing and where each partner’s funds are going. For example, each partner can know how much of its contribution is going toward timber tracking and the specific amount of wood saved. The idea of giving each partner a clear idea of what their money is doing can be used as a best practice for alliances in other countries. Lessons Learned • Alliance building is time consuming, complicated, and labor intensive, and there is a need to acknowledge the significant staff time and resources necessary. This is particularly true in the Bird’s Head Alliance, which involves three of the four technical offices in developing the program, and requires the time of each to re￾view. The scarcity of skilled staff was also mentioned. The issue of taking USAID out of the coordinating role was raised, but then is it still a GDA? • Missions need to think about how to go about designing new GDAs in the future because of the issue of how best to engage implementing part￾ners. • Several GDA attempts failed because of the question of how much time to invest in private partnerships. USAID staff cited difficulty in figuring out who has the authority to make deci￾sions because they did not know the private institutional structure (i.e., BP London vs. BP Indonesia). The alliance manager for the Bird’s Head Alliance discovered at one point that two different people they thought were a part of a team within BP were on separate tracks and unaware of the other’s involvement with USAID. • Finding ways to reward initiative and innovation needs more thought. USAID needs to find a way of work￾ing with and rewarding NGOs who bring resource partners to USAID. • Partners are concerned that the short-term nature of contracts will endanger developmental impact of the project (i.e., Bird’s Head). • A coordinating mechanism for plan￾ning is key. The Bird’s Head Alliance shows the need for a governing struc￾ture and strategy and implementing coordinator, and the importance of regular communication among not just a few, but all of the partners. It takes time to build history and rela￾tionships of trust in alliances. • Do not expect to have partners who all have capability in every way. In the Timber Alliance, WWF and TNC were the only ones with the capability to act as implementing partners for the alliance, and USAID encouraged ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 35 them to work together. However, there is a need to address the ques￾tion of what to do in the future when multiple NGOs have capability. • Preparing specific MOUs that clearly identify roles and responsibilities is very important for good implementa￾tion. • Top down operation of the GDA from Washington inhibits creativity from local private and non-traditional partners. • Partners and some mission staff need more clarity on the GDA process and definition. • There is a need to avoid adminis￾trative barriers, such as rewriting proposals, and focus more on the real opportunities. • Donors can play a catalytic role in helping to design partnership incen￾tives for overcoming transaction costs. • NGOs need to see that they will actu￾ally get more credit by acknowledging the role of partners in their imple￾mentation reports, rather than trying to claim too much success themselves. • For other countries with governance problems, GDA could be a powerful way of leveraging USAID’s decreasing influence as the influence of the busi￾ness sector increases. Recommendations As part of the interview process, USAID Indonesia Managers were asked what recommendations they would make to USAID decisionmakers in Wash￾ington, such as the Administrator, or the assistant administrator of the ANE Bureau. The following recommenda￾tions are taken from the interviews with USAID mission staff and partners in the alliances. From USAID staff • GDA is a good model, but it is not “one size fits all;” there is a need to think about where the model will work best. • Funds should be given to the mis￾sions and let them do their own strategies; central Agency money used for GDA means less money for the mission and reduces flexibility and creativity. • The mission needs to be more involved from the beginning: GDA/ Washington needs to be aware that missions exist and are the “lifeblood.” • Washington no longer needs to convert missions to the new GDA business model because they already recognize its importance; Washington should take the following view: “Let’s get together and figure out what ap￾proach works best.” • The GDA model should be inte￾grated into the way the mission does business; it will receive better sup￾port if it is a part of mission strategy instead of a “you must do this” ap￾proach. • Support decentralization of the GDA Secretariat. • The secretariat is not necessary if it does not provide resources, but liaison is helpful as conduit of infor￾mation to the field. It needs to be im￾partial and active as a service function for the Agency. • Washington is sending mixed signals and needs to clarify how the GDA process will work. From partners • USAID should look at longer term projects and private and implement￾ing partners partners with long-term interest: “If BP can stay, why can’t the contract be longer?” • There should be more coordination among partners and better gover￾nance. • Building in incentive and opportu￾nity to play a role can be a way for people in host countries to play a role in expanding the program. • There is a need to bring together key people in the local area (multi-stake￾holders, government, churches, etc.) and see what they want and involve them in planning (Bird’s Head part￾ner recommendation). • Memoranda of understanding with USAID and local government would be useful. • Need a management unit (a separate contractor) between all partners that does not control the money, but coor￾dinates and provides the big picture. There is no need for a new secretariat, but for a staff person contributed by BP or USAID. • The GDA model is adequate, but there needs to be a clearer idea up￾front about how USAID works and 36 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 frontloading learning (i.e., develop￾ing a newsletter, disseminating best practices). • It is better to have one coordinat￾ing company with local components because it would be more effective in getting the group together, have greater ability to be more transparent, and decrease lag time (recommenda￾tion from Bird’s Head partner). • USAID involvement should continue beyond the contract, that is, as a board member. • USAID needs to increase understand￾ing of procurement constraints dur￾ing the development of the proposal. • There is a need to focus more on the host government as a full-fledged partner, making financial and in-kind contributions. • It is important to have one or two key points of contact at USAID for each alliance. • Go through existing contacts to set up new ones for guidance. • USAID needs more developed for￾matting guidelines and clear deadlines and definition of terms (i.e. “leverag￾ing”). • USAID needs to make clearer to more organizations how to become involved and work the GDA process. • It would help to develop a model that would allow partners to spend money in other countries without being tied to Indonesia or affecting cur￾rent contracts, and to figure out ways other countries can contribute to an alliance to share the budget burden. Conclusions The Indonesia mission has been in￾volved in public/private partnerships since before the GDA initiative began. The mission supports the concept of GDA and has built upon good projects and ideas, which have primarily used existing resources. Mission staff, par￾ticularly senior management, definitely see the potential benefits of successful GDAs and big ideas and new visions have resulted from the mission’s experi￾ence so far. A huge challenge has been tackled in the Bird’s Head Alliance. Business approaches in the cocoa and timber alliances show replicable poten￾tial. “Specific” private-sector commit￾ments have been obtained and signifi￾cant leverage resourcing has resulted. The existence of GDAs has also gener￾ated new interest in USAID programs and objectives. The GDA experience in Indonesia demonstrates that it is hard to imple￾ment alliances from afar. The Indonesia mission has experienced challenges with evacuations and other disruptions, dif￾ficulty traveling to and communicating with remote locations (Bird’s Head), and staff-intensive start-up periods. While mission management is very sup￾portive of GDA, not everybody is ready to adopt GDA. There is a misconcep￾tion among some mission staff that if a partnership does not use GDA funds, it is not a GDA. We repeatedly heard from mission staff questions such as, “Does it need to be a GDA?” and “Are GDAs any different than mission programs?” The perception of the senior manage￾ment is that many in Washington think the mission does not get it, but they do. They also think that GDA/Washington needs to improve communication with the mission. The specific example given to the team in the interview was that the mission rejected 99 percent of APS re￾sponses because they had no substance, were uncoordinated, and did not reflect country knowledge. They were sent to the mission after the fact and resulted in a time-consuming and wasteful process for the mission because the mission was not involved in the earlier stages. Because the GDA programs in Indo￾nesia are not at the core of the new strategy, and seen by many as a higher risk than other projects in the portfolio, this is a reason to take a look at whether or not they will continue the program without the incentive funds of the Agency. Yet, USAID/Indonesia is clearly “on-board.” If there is no ANE incen￾tive fund this year, USAID/Indonesia is looking to commit resources from the mission and will continue public-private partnerships with or without GDA. Recommendations for the Mission The following are recommendations the team made to USAID/Indonesia and suggestions for things that need more thought. • The Bird’s Head alliance is a complex set of activities that take place in distant places. It appears to the team that a mechanism (and possibly even a contracted-for person) needs to be put into place in order to coordinate, facilitate, and integrate the many implementers into a more strategic whole. • The mission has many possible pub￾lic-private partnerships under con- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 37 sideration. Conducting an internal workshop on this business model and deciding how engaged the mis￾sion wants to be with GDA alliances would appear to be very beneficial to the mission, the ANE Bureau, and the Agency’s learning process as it re￾views its definition of GDA alliances. • The mission is engaged in the devel￾opment of an exciting and ambitious new strategic development plan. This plan incorporates alliances as a part of its operating model. Yet, there is some concern in the mission that, by the time the strategy is approved, the pressure to obligate funds will make it very hard to even consider alliances as an option. If the mission can ad￾dress this issue earlier in its planning process, it may help to mitigate the procurement time bind. • The mission’s implementers are also wondering what the mission’s inten￾tions are regarding the way in which it will obtain services. Particularly if alliances are being contemplated, the implementing community would appreciate some indication of the mission’s thinking. • If the mission plans to include the use of alliances in its new education initiative, then some Agency best practices in these kinds of alliances would probably be useful to the program manger for this component of the strategy. The team has learned that most alliances are in other sec￾tors, but there are some possibilities that the GDA Secretariat can share if the mission wishes to utilize that resource. • The team found that the enthusiasm and energy that went into the design and start of the mission’s alliances are hard to maintain. This is only natural as mission staff turn over and take on new challenges. Mission management leadership will be needed to find cre￾ative ways to maintain the momen￾tum of these very impressive alliances to keep the enthusiasm high as the activities move into the implementa￾tion thicket. • The three alliances that the team reviewed all implied a healthy level of Indonesian beneficiary involvement. However, there was considerable evidence that much of the perception of involvement is not totally born out by the facts. The mission may want to think through whether the ben￾eficiary partners are really partners in the alliances or actually are recipients of technical assistance. • The team strongly recommends that the mission give itself a collective pat on the back. All the three alliances are innovative and exciting ways to advance the mission’s development agenda. The team greatly appreci￾ated the opportunity to observe these partnerships in action. Interviews Mission Staff Bill Frej, Mission Director (USAID: 16 years, private sector: 10 years. Bfrej@usaid.gov) Jon Lindborg, Deputy Mission Director (USAID: 16 years, private sector: 8 years. Jlindborg@usaid.gov) Richard Hough, Program Officer (USAID: 16 years, private sector: 3 years. Rhough@usaid.gov) Anne Patterson, Rural Environmen￾tal Management, Office Director (USAID: 9 years as direct hire, 2 years as AAAS, private sector: 0 years. Apatterson@usaid.gov) Wouter Sahanaya, CTO, GDA Cocoa Program (USAID: 26 years, private sector: 7 years. Wsahanaya@usaid.gov) Bruno Cornelio, Economic Growth, Office Director (USAID: 16 years, private sector: 15 years. Bcornelio@usaid.gov) Tom Stephens, RCO (Tstephens@usaid. gov) Jon Wegge, Advisor, Office of De￾centralized Local Government (Jwegge@usaid.gov) Theresa Tuaño, Education Officer (Ttuano@usaid.gov) Jonathan Ross, Public Health Advisor, HIV/AIDS & Infectious Diseases Team (Jross@usaid.gov) Firman Aji, Economic Growth, Program Manager (USAID: 22 years, private sector: 3 years. Faji@usaid.gov) Jessica Tulodo, DLG (USAID: 7 years, private sector: 1 yr. Jtulodo@usaid.gov) 38 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Molly Gingerich, Director, Office of Health, Population and Nutrition (USAID: 20 years as direct-hire, 3 years as PSC, private sector: 10 years. Mgingerich@usaid.gov) Partners Birds Head Alliance Karla Boreri, Consultant to BP Indone￾sia, British Petroleum (boreri@bp.com) Tim Brown, Chief of Party, Natu￾ral Resources Management Program (brownth@nrm.or.id) Tom Cormier, Deputy Country Di￾rector, National Democratic Institute (tcormier@cbn.net.id) Coastal Resources Management Project Building Institutions for Good Gover￾nance (BIGG) Performance Oriented Regional Man￾agement (PERFORM) Civil Society Strengthening Program (CSSP) Timber Alliance Hessy Basari, Asia-Pacific Grants Spe￾cialist, TNC (sbasari@cbn.net.id) Rod Taylor, Asia Pacific Forest Coordi￾nator, WWF (rodtaylor@wallacea.wwf. or.id) Nigel Sizer, Director, AP Forests Pro￾gram, TNC (nsizer@tnc.org) Moray McLeish, GDA Manager, TNC (mmcleish@cbn.net.id) Yudi Iskandarsyah, Deputy GDA Man￾ager, TNC (yiskandarsyah@cbn.net.id) Yuliati Soebeno, Executive Assistant, TNC (ysoebeno@tnc.org) Cocoa Alliance Robert Rosengren, Team Leader, SUCCESS Alliance (robertdr@indosat. net.id) Bill Guyton, President, World Cocoa Foundation (Bill.guyton@worldcocoa. org) ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 39 Partner Data Sheets: Indonesia Papua Bird’s Head Alliance (Biodiversity) USAID Sector: Environment, Democracy and Local Governance, Health, Natural Resource Management Value of Alliance in US Dollars: Bureau Contribution $3,000,000 Total Partner Cash $6,000,000 Name and Position of Persons In￾terviewed (primary contact for this information): Anne Patterson, Office Director, Rural Environment Management, USAID-Indonesia (Primary) Jessica Tulodo, Democracy and Local Governance, USAID-Indonesia British Petroleum (BP) Natural Resources Management Project Coastal Resources Management Project Building Institutions for Good Governance (BIGG) Performance Oriented Regional Management (PERFORM) National Democratic Institute (NDI) Civil Society Strengthening Program (CSSP) Location and Date of Interviews: NRM’s Offices, Jakarta, Indonesia, on December 2 & 4, 2003 Papua Bird’s Head Alliance (Biodiversity) Name of Partner Type of Organization Type of Resource Contributed Value of Resource British Petroleum Private Business $6,000,000 Natural Resources Management Program Implementing Partner Coastal Resources Management Project Implementing Partner Building Institutions for Good Governance (BIGG) Implementing Partner Performance Oriented Regional Management (PER￾FORM) Implementing Partner National Democratic Institute (NDI) Implementing Partner Civil Society Strengthening Program (CSSP) Implementing Partner Cocoa Alliance ACDI/VOCA, ACRI NGO Conservation International (CI) NGO IKEA Private Business International City/County Management Association NGO Research Triangle Institute (RTI) Private Business The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Foundation/Philanthropist United Kingdom Department for International Devel￾opment (DFID) Bilateral Donor World Wildlife Fund (WWF) NGO Total Partner Contribution $6,000,000 40 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Partner Data Sheets: Indonesia (cont) SUCCESS Asia Alliance (Cocoa)— ANE Regional USAID Sector: Agriculture, Economic Growth Value of Alliance in US Dollars: Bureau Contribution $3,000,000 Total Partner Cash $38,000,000 Name and Position of Persons In￾terviewed (primary contact for this information): Anne Patterson, Office Director, Rural Environment Management, USAID/Indonesia (Primary) Robert Rosengren,Team Leader, Success Alliance Bill Guyton, President, World Cocoa Foundation Location and Date of Interviews: NRM’s Offices, Jakarta, Indonesia, on December 4, 2003 WCF Offices, Washington, DC, on December 19, 2003 SUCCES Asia Alliance (Cocoa)—ANE Regional Name of Partner Type of Organization Type of Resource Contributed Value of Resource World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) Trade Association Masterfood Private Business Archer Daniels Midland Private Business Cadbury’s Private Business ACDI/VOCA Implementing Partner PhilippinesDepartment of Agriculture (DA) Federal/National Gov Agency Cocoa Foundation of the Philippines, Inc. Private Business Dutch Government Federal/National Gov Agency Partner Data Sheets: Indonesia Sustainable Forest Management (Combating Illegal Logging, Certification) USAID Sector: Agriculture, Economic Growth Value of Alliance in US Dollars: ANE Bureau Contribution $3,000,000 GDA Contribution: $3,000,000 Total Partner Cash $14,050,000 (cash & in-kind) Name and Position of Persons In￾terviewed (primary contact for this information): Anne Patterson, Office Director, Rural Environment Management, USAID/Indonesia (Primary Hessy Basari, Asia-Pacific Grants Specialist, TNC Rod Taylor, Asia Pacific Forest Coordinator, WWF Nigel Sizer, Director, AP Forests Program, TNC Moray McLeish, GDA Manager, TNC Yudi Iskandarsyah, Deputy GDA Manager, TNC Location and Date of Interviews: TNC’s Offices, Jakarta, Indonesia, on December 3, 2003 ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 41 Sustainable Forest Management (Combating Illegal Logging, Certification) Name of Partner Type of Organization Type of Resource Contributed Value of Resource World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Implementing Partner NGO The Nature Conservancy Implementing Partner Foundation/Philanthropist World Resources Institute NGO Tropical Forest Trust NGO Newbridge Capital Private Business Caterpillar International Private Business McKinsey and Company Private Business Indonesian Wood Panel Association Trade Association ProForest NGO Goldman Sachs Private Business Global Forest and Trade Network NGO Edelman Worldwide Private Business ABN AMRO and other banks Private Business British Petroleum Private Business Association of Indonesia Forest Concession Holders Trade Association American Forest and Paper Association Trade Association The Forests Dialogue Higher Education IKEA Private Business ESRI and ERDAS Private Business Indonesia Forest Product Companies— Sumalindo, Intracawood Private Business Total Partner Contribution $14,050,000 ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 43 Annex 6. Assessment of Alliances in Jordan Introduction This report is part of a worldwide as￾sessment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model, part of a USAID initiative. The Center for De￾velopment Information and Evaluation (CDIE) coordinated the assessment on behalf of the Agency—specifically, the GDA Secretariat and the ANE Bureau. CDIE and ANE funded the study. The assessment methodology included a review of background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey, and field visits to 10 countries. Due to the interest and support of the ANE Bureau, Jordan was one of six ANE countries selected. Although Jordan was initially identified as a country with little ‘official’ GDA alliance activity, this assessment found that the mission has active and routine experience with private-public partner￾ships. Jordan Fieldwork The two-person assessment team spent December 2–4, 2003 in Jordan inter￾viewing the mission director, the direc￾tor and deputy of the program office, the regional legal advisor, a contracts officer, office directors for economic growth, water, resources and environ￾ment, and GDO, as well as alliance managers. Partners from INJAZ, AMIR project, Citibank, and the Jordan Edu￾cation Initiative were also interviewed. A full list of interviews is included below. The Partnerships INJAZ INJAZ, meaning “achievement” in Arabic, is a Jordanian NGO that trains high school and college students in entrepreneurial skills. Begun by Save the Children and modeled after the Junior Achievement program in the United States, INJAZ is a Jordanian NGO that manages an extracurricular program that uses 500 volunteers to serve as role models and teach courses including life planning skills, company opera￾tions, basic economics, basic marketing, leadership, success skills, and busi￾ness ethics. Compared to the average INJAZ is a Jordanian NGO that manages an extracur￾ricular program that uses 500 volunteers to serve as role models and teach courses. 44 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 Jordanian student, graduates of INJAZ are expected to find employment faster, contribute more on-the-job, demon￾strate greater entrepreneurial skills, and receive higher compensation packages. USAID has contributed $4.9 million to the project, while private-sector cash and in-kind donations are estimated at $950,000. Currently, INJAZ reaches about 13,000 students per semester, up from fewer than 300 during the program’s first year in 1999. They expect to have 3,000 teachers trained by the end of the year. INJAZ owes much of its success to the enthusiastic support from the Jorda￾nian private sector, which contributes funds and volunteers to sustain the program. INJAZ’s sponsors and sources of volunteers include 60 of Jordan’s largest companies. In addition, 22 schools are matched with private-sector companies that provide resources and support for them. The organization is actively focusing on the private sector to attain sustainability. The executive director is working to build an active board of directors, each of whom will donate personally to the organization. Furthermore, INJAZ continues to identify company sponsors for schools and foundations to contribute to their endowment. INJAZ has already made a substan￾tial impact on the education scene in Jordan. The Ministry of Education was initially unwilling to endorse INJAZ, but has recently incorporated the program into its national education re￾quirements. Moreover, INJAZ has been so successful that it is being used as the model for an upcoming ANE Regional USAID/Junior Achievement alliance initiative. While the mission appreciates the compliment, it has incurred some costs: • There was some thought that the current director of the INJAZ would manage the regional initiative and the mission was concerned about this un￾dercutting their project. It was nego￾tiated that the mission project would remain independent and the regional project would not be implemented in Jordan. • It should also be noted that the mis￾sion originally reviewed this idea and turned it down. Then the mission had to review it when it was submit￾ted for MEPI funding and again turned it down. The GDA Secretariat said “yes” and that is what led to the final negotiation. • Even though the project isn’t being implemented in Jordan, it will be based in Amman. The contracting action was delegated to the mission contracting officer from Washington on September 19 with no prior notice and a deadline of September 31. All of these required substantial time and effort. Nevertheless, the mis￾sion considers the regional initiative a positive progression of what INJAZ has begun. ICT-Case-King Abdullah Through its Achievement Market￾Friendly Initiatives and Results Program (AMIR), USAID did a feasibility study for the King Abdullah Fund and the Case Foundation partnership to imple￾ment information technology knowl￾edge stations in underserved regions of Jordan. Knowledge stations provide 10–50 computers and the training for people in the area to learn how to use them. The University of Jordan is using them to teach courses and there are plans that the newly established centers would also provide e-services employ￾ment opportunities for rural women who, because of local tradition, do not work outside the home. To date, 75 knowledge stations have been established, with a goal of 100 by the end of the year. USAID contrib￾uted approximately $150,000 through AMIR for a feasibility study to produce a sustainability plan and additional grant options for the knowledge sta￾tions. The Case Foundation has prom￾ised $250,000, with additional funding from the King Abdullah Fund and other organizations. The original idea for the initiative came about through the friendship between King Abdullah and Steve Case, who shared the vision of improved informa￾tion technology access and training in Jordan. The Case Foundation came to the mission for an assessment to help make this sustainable in the long run. AMIR’s role in the project was facili￾tated by another personal connection between the Case Foundation and Che￾monics, the company that administers the AMIR contract. The assessment team understands that this pre-GDA-like alliance appears to have provided fertile ground for a new Jordan Education Initiative. The initiative began when King Abdullah attended the World Economic Forum in Davos where the information tech- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 45 nology Telecomm Board of Governors (specifically 19 CEO members) agreed to help Jordan. Cisco took the lead in asking the Government of Jordan to design a program, which resulted in a project charter document that is the framework for partnership with infor￾mation technology companies. The project manager in the Ministry of Information and Communication Tech￾nology had already worked with AMIR on the information and communica￾tions technology assessment mentioned earlier. That made him particularly well versed in the issues of technology and education and thus able to play the key role in developing the project charter document. Functionally, the project charter docu￾ment includes modules that companies can support. According to Emil Cubeisy (interviewed December 4, 2003), several examples from amongst the 12 partners are as follows: • Cisco Systems has provided $3 million in in-kind contributions to develop an e-math curriculum. It has worked with a Jordanian company to refine the program for Jordan, includ￾ing an Arabic translation. • IBM has invested $350,000 imple￾menting “KidSmart,” a program to computerize kindergartens. • Intel has contributed $300,000 to train 2,300 teachers in 20 discovery schools, pilot schools that “serve as a test bed of how information and communications technology can enable new pedagogy and facilitate learning, creativity, and innovation,” according to the project charter document. • Fastlink, a Jordanian cell phone company, contributed $1 million for a science curriculum. However, another example shows some of the difficulties of the initiative: • One company’s rules only allowed it to provide matching grants. Because this particular program is designed to generate private-sector participation, the government was not able to take advantage of the matching grant be￾cause it had no mechanism to match the funds. USAID’s role in the education initiative has been limited, but according to the director of the GDO office, the mission has provided $1 million for “connectiv￾ity.” The project manager from the min￾istry was clear that this was a program for private-sector contribution—not public. At the same time, he seemed to want to make a good impression for possible future funding. The Government of Jordan is invest￾ing $380 million in education reform, working toward a sustainable model. USAID’s current link is to this broader strategy, which currently includes nine donors. There are linkages between the Jordan Education Initiative and the education reform program so it is likely that USAID will continue to play the role needed. As-Samra Wastewater Treatment Plant USAID is working with Jordan’s Minis￾try of Water and Irrigation (MWI) and a private-sector consortium to rebuild the As-Samra wastewater treatment plant using the build-operate-transfer (BOT) model. USAID provided a $78.1 million grant, the MWI contribution is $13.9 million, and the balance of $22 million comes from the private-sec￾tor consortium composed of Ondeo, Ondeo Degremont, Inc., and the Morganti Group. The project will be principally funded through the Arab Bank group. The replacement of the overloaded As-Samra wastewater treatment plant has been a national environmental priority for years. The As-Samra plant was not prepared for the rapid popula￾tion growth Amman has experienced in recent decades. The new plant will provide proper treatment of wastewa￾ter for about 1.9 million people in the Greater Amman area. The improved plant will also ensure the safety of the water’s re-use for irrigation, promoting the health and well-being of thousands of Jordanians. The BOT type of contract has been around for some time but this is the first use in Jordan, the team was told by the mission technical officer. Functionally, the private-sector consortium invests $22 million; they are hired to build and operate the plant for a specified number of years, at which time the ownership is transferred to them. There will be a project management unit in the ministry to manage the BOT contract. USAID’s technical of￾ficer plans to make weekly visits to the construction site, indicating his expecta￾tions about shared responsibility. The technical officer stated that the risk involved is “the potential for default that 46 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 reflects on all parties.” Part of the long planning process was developing a plan for a follow-on if there is a default. The substantial equity involvement from all parties, together with the lengthy and careful planning process, are expected to assure that this will work. The level of risk-sharing among the stakeholders has been an issue. The lending bank was particularly worried and wanted some kind of risk insurance, initially from USAID. USAID refused to jointly address their letter of commit￾ment with the MWI to the bank. In the end, the bank appealed directly to the ministry, who, in turn agreed to provide the bank with a separate guarantee. Although the magnitude of the project has required substantial time, money, and negotiations, the As-Samra BOT project has proven to be a major accom￾plishment in enhancing private-sector participation in infrastructure devel￾opment. It is the first public-private infrastructure partnership in Jordan and the first USAID-financed infrastructure project under a partnership between a host country and the private sector anywhere in the world. Furthermore, it is the first time the BOT approach has been used in Jordan. While it is not a true GDA “alliance,” it is an innova￾tive method for attracting private-sector participation to the region. Findings The Idea In Jordan, the King leads the way in making connections with the private sector and the mission. This three-way relationship typically operates through • public sector leadership, initiated by the King and followed up by minis￾tries • private-sector participation, both for￾profit and not-for-profit • USAID support as needed There are several instances of very small USAID investments, mostly in studies, that played important roles at key points in programs such as information and communications technology and the Jordan Education Initiative. USAID’s investment of several hundred thousand dollars for the education business plan and for the strategy plan for informa￾tion and communications technology “leveraged” substantially more, but this argument seems fairly presumptuous. The emphasis on leveraging large sums of money sounds like USAID identified the idea independently, and convinced the other actors to invest the big money. While partnerships exist all over the place in Jordan, most are in the pre￾GDA alliance stage. The partners come to the mission because of its large resources and because of the reputation it has successfully built up. The mis￾sion has vehicles, such as AMIR, which give it some flexibility to respond to requests—certainly on the scale of stud￾ies—and the mission plays a facilitat￾ing role. However, while many of the partnerships, such as AMIR-Case-King Abdullah and INJAZ, could potentially be alliances, they lack the specific ele￾ments of a true GDA-alliance. Joint Planning and Shared Risk and Responsibility In the Economic Growth SO team, there is regular and frequent commu￾nication with all partners. The office exemplifies a typical business environ￾ment, where things move quickly and constant cell phone communication is a necessity. The office took a lead in many of the private-sector relationships. For example, the information and commu￾nications technology education activity started in this office due to its strong information technology emphasis and moved to the GDO office as that office expanded to include education. Still, at this point USAID has only funded a feasibility study, which does not meet the joint planning and shared risk and responsibility requirements of GDA alliance building. Similarly, INJAZ, also managed by this office, has the potential for a greater degree of private-sector participation. Recently, INJAZ part￾nered with Intel, where in return for a monetary donation, INJAZ “Arabized” information technology curriculum for use in classrooms. This type of partner￾ship may pave the way for greater joint planning and shared responsibility. The largest ‘leveraged’ resources were observed in the As-Samra project from the water office. However, because it is a BOT activity, and because all of the private partners will eventually own the water treatment plant, there is little difference between As-Samra and a traditional USAID private-sector invest￾ment project. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 47 Alliance Implementation All partnership activities are part of the mission’s new strategic plan. The mis￾sion forges partnerships when they make sense for the strategy—not in order to respond to the GDA initiative. Indeed, most of the partnerships observed pre￾date the GDA initiative. No outside technical assistance was provided. GDA training did not play a significant role in partnership activity in Jordan either. The staffs in the economic growth office and the water office had relevant experience working with the private sector, which made it easy for them to be responsive. The AMIR contract continues to serve the mission well. It is large, flexible, and has experienced staff. The staff expressed interest in future partnering opportuni￾ties that the GDA Secretariat might be aware of. The director specifically said that they have a window of another 18 months in which to take advantage of these opportunities before the project ends. For a mission with money, the GDA incentive fund does not appear to be a motivation. One mission staff member stated that, “I’ll build an alliance if you tell me I have so much money. But I’m busy and not going to waste my time competing for money I may not get.” Obstacles Jordan is reportedly quite successful in attracting multinational private-sector participation. However, public-private partnering in the Jordanian for-profit private sector is still a new idea. For example, the mission has a wholesale funding facility with four microfinance institutions that are guaranteed by funds administered by Citibank. Citibank’s role was sufficiently innovative that they included it in their annual report. When asked why they would fund small charitable projects but not the micro￾finance facility, the general manager of Citigroup/Jordan said she hadn’t thought of it before but that the money she had was too small to make a differ￾ence anyway. In another proposed project, a private company saw “partnering” as a way to enhance its profit. The mission was in the early stages of involvement with the company that volunteered to donate land for a public building such as a hospital. The mission discovered that the land would be the centerpiece for a housing development project and that the company was overly motivated by profit. The type of partnering in INJAZ, which relies on volunteerism and corporate social responsibility, is a new concept in Jordan, making it that much more dif￾ficult to recruit new partners. Few com￾panies have developed social responsibil￾ity programs, so it may take awhile for the idea to catch on. Another obstacle in attracting private￾sector investment in Jordan is regional political instability, according to the executive director of INJAZ. This is especially true for international private investors, who prefer lower-risk oppor￾tunities. This also created problems for the information and communications technology partnership, where effec￾tive communication with all partners was hindered by the Iraq War and the distances involved. The greatest obstacle for As-Samra in￾volved the intensive time commitment. Much of the mission’s four-year time investment was spent on the contrac￾tual and legal negotiations it took to reach agreement among the partners. This is understandable considering the resources involved and the innovative nature of the project. Innovations The most notable innovations are the opportunities created in Jordan by the use of new information technologies. As exciting as this is, the mission could play an important partner role by highlight￾ing and supporting the importance of monitoring and evaluation. Along with spectacular opportunities comes the possibility for spectacular failures. The mission’s involvement in education reform would offer a likely avenue to partner around evaluation for education. Lessons and Recommen￾dations from Interviews in Jordan • It takes longer to recreate something designed in Washington than to work it through on the ground. The regional Junior Achievement activ￾ity was modeled on the mission’s project but created elsewhere with insufficient mission input. One staff member recommended that pro￾grams be designed by utilizing field resources and experience. It should be noted that this picture is somewhat different for a staff and resource-rich mission like Jordan than it might be for smaller missions. 48 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 • People lose interest when they are told to rename something they are already doing as a “GDA” and, in turn, are required to submit extra paperwork. • Personality and individual com￾mitment to partnerships are of key importance. • Up front time is significantly in￾creased with partnering activities. • What the mission called “hard MOUs” facilitate stronger commit￾ments from partners. Although these MOUs require more preparation and planning time, they result in legally binding commitments that leave little room for misinterpretation. The mis￾sion has found that it saves time in the long run. • When mission staff are invited to a workshop they can’t attend, they would like to see the materials or les￾sons that came out of the workshop. • The contracts officer and the CTO should either both be in the mission or both be in Washington. • GDA is not a new way of doing busi￾ness in Jordan. • The value is in non-traditional part￾ners; bringing in people who haven’t been in the game before. This is also what makes it challenging and fun. • Public-private partnerships are very personnel intensive. • One size does not fit all. It requires expertise to get a model to work well in the specific circumstances. This comment was about the BOT model but may have interesting implications for INJAZ as well. Conclusions The team went to Jordan with the expectation that it was a mission with a low level of alliance building activity. What the team found was a mission very active in public-private partnering, open to possibilities, and as flexible as situations allow but focused on a mid￾to long-term strategy. Though the team was not able to identify one clear exam￾ple of a GDA alliance, the mission offers valuable experience with public-private partnerships and numerous potential GDA alliances to strengthen the future development of the GDA initiative. Interviews December 12, 2003 Jim N. Barnhart, Director, Economic Opportunities Office (Years with USAID: 3.5, years with pri￾vate sector: 15. jbarnhart@usaid.gov) Sean Jones, Deputy Director, Office of Economic Opportunities (Years with USAID: 3, years with pri￾vate sector: 6. sjones@usaid.gov) Jamal Al-Jabiri, Project Management Specialist—Private Sector (Years with USAID: 7, years with pri￾vate sector: 10. jal-jabiri@usaid.gov) Brooke A. Isham, Director, Office of Program Management (Years with USAID: 10, years with pri￾vate sector: 0. bisham@usaid.gov) Debra Mosel, Deputy Director, Office of Program Management (Years with USAID: 7, years with pri￾vate sector: 9. dmosel@usaid.gov) David Barth, Regional Legal Advisor (dbarth@usaid.gov) Anne Aarnes, Mission Director (Years with USAID: 34, years with pri￾vate sector: 0. aaarnes@usaid.gov) Peter Malnak, Director, Office of Social Development and Governance (Years with USAID: 11, years with pri￾vate sector: 4. pmalnak@usaid.gov) Maha Alshaer, Project Management Specialist/Education (Years with USAID: 1, years with pri￾vate sector: 10. Mal-shaer@usaid.gov) December 3, 2003 Jim Franckiewicz, Director, Office of Water Resources & Environment (Years with USAID: 16, years with private sector: 10) Roy Ventura, Senior Engineer, Office of Water Resources and Environment (Years with USAID: 1 ½, years with private sector: 37. rventura@usaid.gov) Rima Kayyal Al-Mounayer, Acquisition Specialist, Regional Contracting Office (rkayyal@usaid.gov) Soraya Salti, Executive Director, INJAZ (ssalti@injaz.org.jo) December 4, 2003 Stephen Wade, Program Director, AMIR (swade@amir-jordan.org) ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 49 Rebecca Sherwood, Program Ad￾ministrator/Grants Manager, AMIR (rsherwood@amir-jordan.org) Razan Fasheh, e-Initiative Specialist, AMIR (rfasheh@amir-jordan.org) Suhair Al-Ali, General Manager, Citi￾group, N.A.—Jordan (Suhair.alali@citigroup.com) ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 51 Annex 7. Assessment of Alliances in Morocco This report is part of a worldwide as￾sessment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model, part of a USAID initiative. The Center for De￾velopment Information and Evaluation (CDIE) coordinated the assessment on behalf of the Agency—specifically the GDA Secretariat and the Asia/Near East (ANE) Bureau. CDIE and ANE funded the study. The assessment methods included a review of background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey, and field visits to ten countries. Due to the interest and sup￾port of the ANE Bureau, Morocco was one of six ANE countries selected. Morocco Fieldwork The two-person assessment team spent December 8–12, 2003 in Morocco concentrating on two programs: Schol￾arship for Success and Cities Alliance. They interviewed the mission director, the program officer, the education team leader and alliance manager, and the ur￾ban development advisor in the democ￾racy/governance office of the mission. They also interviewed a health officer about centrally funded health activities. The team was only assessing two poten￾tial alliances, which enabled them not only to meet with the president and vice president of the Committee to Support Scholarships for Rural Girls (CSSF), which manages the Scholarship for Success program, but also visit a girls’ dormitory in Mochrane. The team also spent a day in Tetouan to investigate the Cities Alliance project, meeting with the Urban Forum of Morocco (FUM) staff, representatives of the private sector who had participated in the City Develop￾ment Strategy, a visiting Cities Alliance team, and the local governor. The team Due to the interest and support of the ANE Bureau, Morocco was one of six ANE countries selected. 52 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 conducted interviews using the field interview guides that were used by all 10 field teams of the worldwide assessment. Alliances Scholarship for Success— Morocco Girl’s Education The GDA Secretariat awarded a $200,000 grant to the Committee to Support Scholarships for Rural Girls (CSSF) to send rural girls to middle school. CSSF, a Moroccan NGO, also received a $240,000 grant from the State Department’s MEPI fund in 2003, with an additional $300,000 proposed for 2004. Contributions from the private sector are currently estimated at $100,000, although the original esti￾mate was higher. The initial idea for the creation of the CSSF came from the National Con￾ference on Girls’ Education in the late–1990s that was facilitated by the centrally funded Girls Education Activ￾ity (GEA). Retaining girls in primary schools in Morocco has been difficult, particularly in rural areas, due to the lack of middle school opportunities. CSSF is addressing this middle school bottleneck with an innovative approach. The organization partners with small, local associations to support and run dormitories, allowing rural girls to at￾tend middle school. Most of the girls who receive scholar￾ships are the first females in their family, and in their entire village, to attend middle school. In rural areas of the country, families are large and middle school-aged girls are usually expected to stay home to help their mothers around the house and care for younger siblings. Moreover, in many rural parts of the country, middle schools that enroll girls do not exist. When the assessment team visited one of the dormitories (foyer), the girls were thrilled and appreciative to have this rare educational opportunity. They all had high aspirations: one girl hoped to become a doctor and another aimed to work as a pilot. They all in￾tended to continue their studies as long as possible. Professional Moroccan educators have donated their time to create and lead CSSF as officers of the board with the help of three full-time employees. Most of these volunteers have outside careers either for ministries or NGOs. The planning is carried out by CSSF in close contact with local associations—the as￾sociations are made up of local volun￾teers who agree to sponsor foyers. CSSF intends to support these associations for three years while they achieve financial independence. This is proving to be a challenge, but two associations have already achieved financial viability. The program has already attracted numerous private-sector donations to support the scholarships. Among these donors is Femme du Maroc, a national women’s magazine, which sponsors a yearly fashion show called Caftan. Since 2000, the fashion show has publicized and raised money for the scholarships. The increased publicity has brought new donors on board; however, some donors have failed to follow through on their oral pledges. The team talked to representatives of two of the private donors that have been substantially involved, Motorola Maroc and Cercle Diplomatique. The Mo￾torola office manager said “it is all about public relations,” indicating its primary but not only motivation. Both she and the Director of Motorola Maroc talked about how important girls’ education is to Morocco. They are increasing their commitment to sponsoring an entire dormitory of 20 plus girls for the next three years (the length of time girls are in middle school). In addition, they sponsor an annual trip to Rabat for the two girls in each dormitory who receive the best grades. Cercle Diplomatique functions as an NGO made up of dip￾lomat’s spouses who live in Rabat. They have been the largest private donors to CSSF. There is clearly a philanthropic interest strengthened by one of their core goals to support girls’ education in Morocco. While the team was in Morocco, new MEPI funding being discussed that would provide scholarships for an additional 100 girls. The mission is proposing that a portion of those funds supports CSSF administrative costs. The challenges in fundraising and leverag￾ing private resources make it unclear whether the organization has the capac￾ity to keep up with the pace of growth. Both the management and development of the program are time-intensive activi￾ties, and as the Scholarship for Success program grows, CSSF must have the tools and resources to grow with it. It is unclear whether they will be able to grow their fundraising to a partnering and leveraging approach that will be sufficient to sustain their operating expenses after U.S. Government fund￾ing ends. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 53 The mission will continue to monitor progress and success—indeed an impact assessment is planned for this summer. As additional MEPI funds are added (or other USAID funds), the U.S. Govern￾ment will bear increased responsibility for not overwhelming a fledgling organi￾zation just finding its wings. Cities Alliance Cities Alliance, created in 1999, is a large, well-funded NGO that grew out of the United Nations Millennium Summit to address urban slums and poverty. Partners include UN Habitat, the World Bank (which does not cur￾rently have its own money invested), ten bilateral donors (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), as well as the four leading global associations of local authorities (International Union of Local Authorities, Metropolis, World Federation of United Cities, and World Association of United Cities and Au￾thorities). The organization focuses its efforts on city development strategies (CDS), which reflect a shared vision for the city’s future, and citywide and nationwide slum upgrading. In addition to public sector participation, the vision includes private-sector investment to sustain these efforts. USAID supported the urban develop￾ment strategy in the metropolitan area of Tetouan in Northern Morocco with a $50,000 grant to the FUM. The grant funded a feasibility study and the local project coordinator. FUM’s implement￾ing partners are Cities Alliance, which has donated $245,000 in cash, and local governments, which contributed an estimated $150,000. In recent years, the Government of Mo￾rocco has been investing in Tetouan as a test case for local decentralization and municipal capacity building. Cities Al￾liance was aware of these improvements and became interested in incorporating its CDS process in Tetouan and three nearby cities. USAID and FUM had previously worked together and also felt the timing was right to embark on an urban development strategy in Tetouan. The main goals of the strategy are to strengthen local authorities and reduce poverty in the area through the mecha￾nism of the CDS process developed by Cities Alliance. FUM is responsible for the administration of the strategy and has hired a local resident coordinator, who is the principal communicator between FUM, Cities Alliance, and the local community. At this point, Cities Alliance is focused on working with local authorities, not the private sector. The development of the CDS was concentrated in one week in October when outside experts and lo￾cal experts met intensively and produced a draft strategy, which is not yet ready. The views of the local private sector, in￾cluding leaders from local development banks, the chamber of commerce, and the tourism association, were heard at a one-and-one-half day forum. The evi￾dence suggests that perhaps 80 percent of the effort expended so far has been getting the donors and the Moroccan national, regional, and local public sec￾tor and urban NGOs to work together. Morocco Mission Director James Bednar considers the CDS innovative and extremely promising for Morocco. By empowering local authorities and municipalities, the strategy gives local stakeholders the ability to decide what happens in their communities, which, in turn, produces more sustainable outcomes. This project possesses many elements on which to build a GDA alliance. This is a key time to increase participation and investment in the strategy to develop an alliance with potential for substantial development impact in the governance sector. This small mission could use assistance in the identification of part￾nerships. ANE or the secretariat could provide assistance to identify a multi￾national corporation or local subsidiary to partner in Tetouan as a model that might successfully leverage local private￾sector resources. Centrally Funded Health Alliances The team also briefly investigated cen￾trally funded health alliances that have been implemented in the mission. The mission health officer who had overseen the centrally funded projects had left because of last summer’s staff cutbacks, so the team spoke with the remain￾ing health officer who was less familiar with the programs. In the conversation, it appeared that these alliances have been fully integrated into the mission program. Global Health and predeces￾sor health offices have a long history of centrally funded projects being imple￾mented in the mission. Apparently they 54 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 have worked out any major kinks in management or communication. Findings Origin of the Alliance Concept Neither of these cases grew out of the GDA initiative but both benefit from the GDA business model. Although CSSF predated funding from the GDA incentive fund, the award has allowed the organization to professionalize, both strengthening its effectiveness and improving the likelihood that the orga￾nization will be able to build stronger and better relationships with the private sector over time. The mission clearly sees the potential for public-private alli￾ances for the Cities Alliance. With sup￾port, the potential could be realized, but probably not before five or ten years. Joint-Planning, Shared Responsibility, and Risk Joint planning and sharing of responsi￾bility and risks set GDA alliances apart from the other development tools that the Agency uses. The team did not feel that either project in Morocco had fully realized these principles at this time. CSSF bears responsibility for the Schol￾arship for Success alliance. CSSF does have an annual general assembly that includes all stakeholders in decision￾making, but the ongoing responsibility rests with them. The mission has good open communication with CSSF but less contact with the other donors that are less actively involved in day-to-day management. CSSF would say that their primary partnership is with the local associations that support and manage the foyers. The for-profit private-sector “donors,” as CSSF calls them, are involved in planning if they sponsor an entire foyer but this mostly entails receiving progress reports. CSSF is hoping to persuade more private-sector companies to spon￾sor entire dormitories and become more involved in the decisionmaking process. When asked about risks, the CSSF board members said that risks were not important because they were going to ensure that Scholarship for Success succeeded. Although the real risks are born by CSSF and the local associations, USAID has reputational risk involved, due to the fact that it has been highly publicized by the mission and by the Agency. The mission’s current role in Cities Al￾liance is quite limited, but the sense of ownership was indicated by the fact that it was the mission’s alliance manager that organized the visiting Cities Alli￾ance team. USAID is a key actor in the process because of its support for FUM. Even though the size of its participation is fairly small, it came at a key stage in the process and the commitment clearly continues. There are not many mission resources currently being invested but the mission director indicated intent to put more resources behind the Tetouan Cities Alliance. The Cities Alliance is, however, an example of a coordinated, long-term development effort that is hard to sustain in the context of shifting Agency priorities and reorganizations. For the local private sector, although it was surveyed for its opinions and had a one-and-one-half day forum to express its views, the process of finalizing and following up on the CDS is being car￾ried out by the technical committee, which does not include private-sector representatives. Therefore, it is unclear whether its input had any effect on the development of the strategy. The GDA team met with some of those participat￾ing and concluded that the communica￾tion at this point is fairly one directional and would not meet the criteria for real joint planning, although the team rec￾ognizes it is important that their views were at least represented at the start of the project. In both the Cities Alliance and Schol￾arship for Success, USAID shares risk because of its high level of commitment but in neither is it different from other important USAID activities. The Schol￾arship for Success is an excellent project and the Tetouan Cities Alliance is, at this point, an alliance in progress—what the full team calls a “pre-alliance.” Alliance Implementation The corporate citizenship concept is new to Morocco. In Tetouan, the private sector was consulted early in the devel￾opment of strategies, but it will be years before those relationships mature and the opportunities for alliances gel. All the experts we talked to—the mission director, the Cities Alliance expert, and the mission manager—agreed that it was too soon in the process to see private￾sector participation. Until the planning is further along, it is not fully clear what the partnerships and/or investments should or best could be. The partners do seem optimistic for the future. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 55 CSSF also struggles with the newness of the corporate citizenship concept. Part of the job of this NGO has become educating the local private sector and affiliates of multinationals in corporate citizenship. This is a large and time-con￾suming responsibility for a small NGO with volunteer board members who carry out the fundraising responsibili￾ties. The mission director suggested that GDA could do corporate citizenship education in Morocco to support the local efforts. The incentive fund played an essential bridging role for the mission’s efforts in education. Its previous activities had ended and the incentive fund allowed it to remain involved in the sector. This is something it can build on as it builds the new education partnership. The mission has not received any TA. With the education partnership on the horizon, this is a key time for support. Contributions and Leveraging Considering its size and scope, CSSF has done an excellent job of accessing private-sector resources, in addition to public-sector support. There have been certain obstacles in guaranteeing these pledges. Indeed, not all the private- or public-sector contributions have been received. The committee believed that Coca-Cola had pledged $30,000 for each of the three years a girl is in middle school for a total of $90,000. Coca-Cola contributed $30,000, but only as a one￾time gift. Further appeals to Coca-Cola have been made but additional money has not been forthcoming. Coca-Cola Maroc has submitted a proposal to Coca-Cola Africa’s CSR program. In another example, the committee had an agreement from the minister of education to provide partial high school scholarships for the girls who completed middle school. Meanwhile, a new education minister was appointed who had other priorities—resulting in less regularity in the provision of these scholarship resources. The committee says that the lesson from both of these experiences is to secure written agree￾ments when pledges are made. The CSSF leadership spoke eloquently about the difficulties in leveraging private-sector resources. Theirs is a vol￾unteer effort that is in addition to their own professional responsibilities. They spoke of the out-of-pocket expenses re￾quired to entertain and/or travel to meet with potential donors. Functionally, they are educating the Moroccan private sector on corporate social responsibil￾ity on top of their work with CSSF and their own professional responsibilities. Furthermore, because it is such a charm￾ing activity, the level of resources it can raise are being swamped by U.S. Gov￾ernment resources. While this is good for reaching more girls, it throws off the GDA leverage ratio that has been so highly publicized. Moreover, accessing these resources has been a time consum￾ing process that will be hard to continue in the context of this expansion. For Cities Alliance, the $50,000 grant for studies and initial hiring of a local coordinator has allowed the mission to be involved in what looks to be an important effort in Morocco with great potential for public-private partnership. The mission would not want to fall into the rhetorical trap of saying that the funding of the study “leverages” the mil￾lions that are likely to follow. It would detract from the early nature of partner￾ship that the team observed. Attracting private-sector investment is also proving to be a challenge. When the assessment team met with four private￾sector representatives and asked about investment in Tetouan, they all agreed that it was too risky. At this point, they share their views but not the risks. In addition, the alliance manager was not very focused on for-profit private-sector investment. His emphasis was on the participation of the private individuals who live in the slums and the impor￾tance of supporting local authorities to represent their needs. Indeed, this activ￾ity comes out of the mission’s democ￾racy and governance office. In neither case is there a partnership with a private-sector entity at this time (since the team does not consider the Cities Alliance to be private sector). CSSF is making progress in leveraging resources but considers the private sec￾tor to be donors rather than partners. In Tetouan, things are at too early a stage and partnership could develop with careful nurturing. Innovation The innovative concept from the GDA business model means that the private partner contributes new knowledge or technology to the partnership. Cities Alliance is bringing a level of innovation in its approach to the involvement of local authorities and local communities in city development. This is part of what makes this a “pre-alliance.” 56 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 The girls’ dormitories are a creative way to address the constraints to girls’ access to middle school. Unfortunately, it does not address the root problem or the lack of resources for rural middle schools for both girls and boys. Conclusions Morocco is a small mission that received deep staff cuts last summer. The mission has been creative in pursuing activities with public-private partnering as well as accessing and stretching resources. It has built relationships with important initiatives in Morocco, such as Cities Alliance, with minimal resource invest￾ment. Tetouan particularly could benefit from bureau or secretariat support in building on the potential for public-pri￾vate partnering. Indications are that this could happen without that support, but it does not appear to be the first prior￾ity of the partners now and the mission is constrained in pursuing it actively because of its limited size and resources. The mission was initiating a new educa￾tion initiative with a strong public￾private partnership element while the assessment team was in country. Sig￾nificant effort will need to be expended to identify partners, solicit pledges, and solidify those pledges through writ￾ten agreements. Experience elsewhere indicates that headquarters will need to review and approve any written agree￾ments—a lengthy process. The mission expressed a hope that other regional experience with the same information technology firms, such as in Jordan, will help speed the Moroccan requests. As well, Moroccan corporate citizenship education from someone with expertise and comparative experience from other countries that would focus on Moroc￾can business could be quite helpful for this initiative. All of the success of the Scholarship for Success program threatens to over￾whelm its capacity. The program will likely grow and reach more girls, but as it expands will have to work hard to maintain its relationships with private partners, such as Cercle Diplomatique and Motorola. One of the major lessons coming out of Morocco is that alliance-building will be a long-term process in situations where resources are scarce and the culture has not traditionally embraced public-pri￾vate partnerships. For both programs, it will require substantial time and effort to promote and realize the cultural shift to corporate social responsibility. Lessons and Recommendations from Interviews in Morocco • Include all partners from the begin￾ning and get it in writing. • This is one way to do more with less—or as much. In a mission with few monetary and personnel resourc￾es, partnering allows resources to be stretched farther. • Getting private-sector support is time consuming and expensive for an NGO and requires a different skill set than the skills needed to achieve its objectives. Good educators are not necessarily good fundraisers or, even less likely, good alliance builders.. • Support is needed for corporate social responsibility education. There is great potential for private-sector in￾vestment, but it will require a shift in corporate culture. Support should be available to educate local companies on the benefits of investing in pro￾grams that benefit society as a whole. • Being mentored by someone with private-sector experience is important to those who have had less of this experience. Learning how to work with the private sector is better taught through mentoring than training. • Get private-sector pledges of sup￾port in writing. In initiatives such as Scholarship for Success, written pledges ensure that agreements be￾tween partners are clear and account￾able. • Money is money. Does it matter so much if it comes from the public or private sector as long as it comes? Particularly in smaller missions where funds are scarce, people are not as concerned about tracking the specific types of donations. • Private-sector alliances could push local governments to think differ￾ently about the way they serve their citizens. • Local involvement is very important. The Cities Alliance will not be sus￾tainable in the long-run without local private-sector investment. Similarly, the success of Scholarship for Success depends on the local associations that manage the girls’ dormitories. • MEPI is an example of a U.S. Gov￾ernment approach that is not GDA minded. It is prescriptive and direc￾tive. GDA needs a lot of flexibility to meet the partners halfway. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 57 Interviews December 5, 2003 Jamila Arif, Office Manager, Motorola Maroc December 8, 2003 Abderahim Bouazza, Program Officer (Years with USAID: 14, years with pri￾vate sector: 0. abouazza@usaid.gov) Monique Bidaoui-Nooren, Chief, Office of Education (Years with USAID: 27, years with pri￾vate sector: 0. mobidaoui@usaid.gov) Dominique Zemrag, Attache de Formation (Years with USAID: 15, years with pri￾vate sector: 6. dzemrag@usaid.gov) Taoufik Bakkali, Project Management Specialist, Health (tbakkali@hotmail.com) James Bednar, Mission Director (Years with USAID: 27, years with pri￾vate sector: 0. jbednar@usaid.gov) Tahar Berrada, Architect and Urban Development Advisor (Years with USAID: 16, years with pri￾vate sector: 5–6. tberrada@usaid.gov) December 9, 2003 Zineb Alaoui Soce, CSSF President & Conseiller du Ministre de la Communication (zineb@mincom.gov.ma) Aicha Khidani, CSSF & Observa￾toire National des Droits de l’Enfant (aichakhidani@hotmail.com) Majda Zakar, CSSF Director (cssf@mtds.com) Lahcen Haddad, CSSF Treasurer & DOL, Girls Education Project (lhaddad@msi-inc.com) M. Tabyaoui, Director, Machrane Foyer Larbi Rharbi, Secretaire Gen￾eral du Forum Urbain—Maroc (Rharbi2@womadoo.net.ma) M. Belkhayat, Project Manager Forum Urbain—Maroc Omar Bakkali, Directeur Succursale de Tetouan (www.cpm.com) Dr. Mohammed Eddouasse, Director Generale Temasa Tetouan Maille William Cobbett, Senior Urban Upgrading Adviser, Cities Alliance (cobbett@citiesalliance.org) Francoise Aubry-Kendall, Resource Management Specialist, Cities Alliance (faubrykendall@worldbank.org) V. Rama Krishnan, Financial Man￾agement Consultant, Cities Alliance (vramakrishnan@worldbank.org) ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 59 Annex 8. Assessment of Alliances in the Philippines This report is part of a worldwide as￾sessment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model, part of a USAID initiative. The Center for Development Information and Evalua￾tion (CDIE) coordinated the assessment on behalf of the Agency—specifically the GDA Secretariat and the Bureau for Asia and the Near East (ANE). CDIE and ANE funded the study. The worldwide assessment methods included a review of background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey, and field visits to ten countries. Due to the interest and support of the ANE Bureau, the Philippines was one of six ANE countries selected. The findings and conclusions from the six ANE countries are summarized in the Mid￾term Assessment of Global Development Alliances in Asia and the Near East, Feb￾ruary 2004. This report presents the work that was done in the Philip￾pines November 17–21, 2003. O’Brien and Associates International was contracted by USAID Development Information Services to conduct part of the GDA midterm assessment in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India. This report presents the work that was done in the Philippines November 17–21, 2003, and is organized in the following manner: • scope of work • methodology used to collect and analyze data • key findings • conclusions Scope of Work To advance the objectives of USAID’s GDA initiative, the Agency established the GDA Secretariat, which is a tempo￾rary unit reporting to the USAID Ad￾ministrator. In anticipation of eventual demobilization of the GDA Secretariat, the Agency proposed that a midterm as￾sessment of the GDA initiative be done to inform and shape policy and organi￾zational decisions on how public-private alliances will be implemented. 60 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 O’Brien and Associates International was asked to focus on Objective No. 2 of the assessment, which is to determine the effectiveness of the GDA business model as a development tool and iden￾tify the lessons USAID learned about applying the GDA business model in the field and its potential contribution to development results. Specifically, O’Brien and Associates was asked to travel to Manila, Philippines to interview key USAID/Philippines managers and partners to answer the following questions: 1. What progress is being made in the alliances funded to date from the ANE Bureau Alliance Incen￾tive Fund? Are they proving to have been good investments? Should ANE continue the Mission Incentive Fund? Should ANE provide more technical assistance? Any other ideas for what a committed regional bureau should do to push this aggressively along? 2. What other alliances have been fund￾ed from the mission’s own budgets? How are they progressing? Are they proving to be good investments? Do they differ in any important respects from those funded from the bureau incentive fund? 3. What can be said about the effective￾ness of the bureau incentive fund in promoting the use of public-private alliances in the region? Considering both the process and criteria used, what features of the fund’s opera￾tion have proven to be important in achieving its objectives? 4. What other organizational factors have been important in determin￾ing how effectively missions have used alliances in their development program? These should include both bureau actions as well as those taken at the mission level. Have the avail￾ability of TA and/or training, the expertise and/or experience of avail￾able mission staff (e.g., prior experi￾ence in partnering with the private sector under earlier bureau or Agency initiatives), and support by embassy or other U.S. Government agencies made a difference? Methodology The methodology used in this as￾sessment involved the collection and analysis of both primary and secondary data related to six alliance projects that have either GDA or ANE incentive funding. These include the Alliance for Mindanao Off-Grid Rural Electrifica￾tion (AMORE), the Sustainable Cocoa Extension Services for Smallholders Al￾liance for South East Asia (SUCCESS), the Information Technology Mentors Alliance (ITMA), Transforming the Marine Aquarium Trade in the Philip￾pines (TMAT), Cleaner Fuels to Reduce Vehicle Emissions (Clean Fuels), and the Monsanto Corn Alliance project. Primary data were collected via face-to￾face interviews using an interview guide developed by the evaluation team prior to field visits. In the Philippines, inter￾views were conducted with the USAID deputy director, chiefs of the environ￾mental and economic development and governance offices, contracts officer, and the various alliance managers. Key alli￾ance partners were also interviewed. Secondary data were gathered from the review of key project documents, such as concept papers, proposals, articles, and correspondence. Findings Origin of Alliances Concepts One of the questions on the interview guide asks where the idea or concept of the alliance originated. In the Philip￾pines, the ideas for the alliances origi￾nated from different sources, including USAID/Philippines, the GDA Secre￾tariat, and partner organizations. In several alliance projects, the idea of forming alliances with the private sec￾tor came about at the same time as the GDA and ANE incentive funds became available. This encouraged USAID/Phil￾ippines to move forward with alliances, such as AMORE and Clean Fuels. At least one alliance, ITMA, was driven from the GDA Secretariat based on a global arrangement between the secre￾tariat and the World Information Tech￾nology and Services Alliance (WITSA). According to the ITMA activity man￾ager, USAID/Philippines was contacted by the secretariat and asked if it wanted to participate in the alliance. Although the mission was interested in pursuing this opportunity, a preliminary assess￾ment by WITSA discovered that the information technology associations in the Philippines were weak and frag￾mented. As a result, the ITMA strategy changed and is now funding a survey to determine supply and demand issues around information technology training and education. The results will be given to universities to design curricula to better prepare students for information technology careers. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 61 According to ACDI/VOCA’s Philip￾pines manager, SUCCESS Philippines owes its beginnings to ACDI/VOCA and its work on cocoa farms in Indo￾nesia. Upon the inception of the GDA incentive fund, ACDI/VOCA prepared and submitted a proposal to strengthen its work with cocoa in Indonesia and expand it to the Philippines. However, the first steps taken to put SUCCESS in place in the Philippines were taken when Mary Melnyk of USAID’s ANE Bureau visited the country in the spring of 2002 to begin consultations with Cocoa Phil and the Department of Agriculture. In a similar way, the Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) submitted a proposal to the GDA Secretariat for projects in Indonesia and Philippines, which was funded and gave birth to the TMAT project. In general, USAID/Philippines does not distinguish between a GDA alliance and other partnership projects. According to Frank Donovan, “we don’t want to get caught up in the terminology…what is important is the quality of the partner￾ship and impact it is having.” Fit with Strategy and Mainstreaming Partnerships All USAID/Philippines’ alliance proj￾ects are clearly linked to the mission’s strategy and strategic objectives. During the interviews, the alliance managers were able to articulate how the alliance fit with strategy and supported the mission’s results. Although the alliances fit strategy, many of them have been retrofitted. In other words, as alliances were developed they were placed under a specific strategic objective. The challenge for USAID/ Philippines will be to have the actual strategy and objectives drive the sorts of alliances the mission pursues and develops. The mission’s approach to mainstream￾ing the partnerships is interesting. According to Frank Donovan, “all SO teams must build alliances into their programs and have budgets for alli￾ance building…this is our message to SO teams: if you want your budget approved you have to include partner￾ships.” USAID has recently added a new strate￾gic objective focused on education. The mission believes that many companies are interested in supporting education for business reasons and that there will be a substantial amount of interest and resources available to address education issues. In this way, the mission identified opportunity, adjusted its strategy, and will use it to drive new alliances. From the corporate side, Mirant was able to articulate most clearly how an alliance fit its country strategy. Accord￾ing to Mirant-Philippines President Ed Bautista, the alliance fits its country business strategy in several important ways. First, the company made a bind￾ing public commitment to provide electricity to 1,500 poor and isolated villages (barangay), some of which can￾not be connected to the existing electric￾ity grid. Furthermore, Mirant sees its work with USAID on renewable energy and off-grid communities as building good will with the government and public in general, which in turn, should help it win future government contracts. Finally, although less tangible, Mirant is building relationships with local govern￾ment and learning to work in areas that could be beneficial to the company as it expands in the future. Coordination and Communication All of the alliance projects meet regular￾ly to discuss issues and make decisions. However, communication and coordi￾nation varies from alliance to alliance. In AMORE, the communication seems relatively transparent between USAID, Mirant, Winrock, and to some extent, the Department of Energy. However, it wasn’t always like that. Bobby Calingo, Director of the Mirant Foundation, complained that in the early days of the alliance Mirant was excluded from key communications and decisions because USAID viewed the company’s role as a source of financing and not as an equal partner. In time, however, this was ad￾dressed and now Mirant is satisfied with its role in planning and decisionmaking. Communication in the Clean Fuels alliance, however, takes place primarily between USAID and the partners, but not between the partners. USAID activ￾ity managers commented that the com￾munication is not always as frequent and efficient as it could be because the partners are themselves competitors. Several partners that were interviewed commented that they view USAID as the convener and gatekeeper of informa￾tion. In TMAT, MAC operates with a coop￾erative agreement from USAID/Wash￾ington (GDA Secretariat). Although it consults with the collector associations 62 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 and buyers, MAC pretty much runs the show. And in the SUCCESS alliance, Cocoa Foundation of the Philippines (Cocoa Phil) participates in meetings with ACDI/VOCA and USAID, but its membership does not. According to USAID/Philippines man￾agers, working in alliances takes more staff time than traditional contracts and cooperative agreements. The most time consuming element seems to be the communication and coordination neces￾sary to make sure partners are involved in important decisions and other opera￾tional issues. Nevertheless, these same managers believe the increased effort is producing results. They point to the AMORE alliance, where Mirant is so pleased with the partnerships it wants to expand the project to the northern part of the country. Incentive Funds and Technical Assistance USAID/Philippines senior managers believe GDA and ANE incentive funds were very helpful in jumpstarting alli￾ances because they provided the extra motivation to experiment with new partnerships. Frank Donovan com￾mented that “although we were moving towards alliances, the funds provided incentive to move faster and the amount of publicity the GDA did was helpful in getting the word out about how USAID wants to work.” The level of awareness and use of the GDA toolkit was mixed. Some of the activity managers at USAID/Philippines have used the GDA toolkit to conduct due diligence and craft MOUs. Other managers knew about the toolkit but have not used it, while still others did not know that the toolkit existed. The mission received assistance from several sources when developing the al￾liances. As noted previously, Mary Mel￾nyk helped the mission identify partners for SUCCESS. Likewise, Barbara Best of USAID/W/EGAT undertook a TDY to the Philippines that included a visit to a MAC site, which the mission found extremely helpful in reviewing and strengthening the TMAT proposal. Debbie McGlauflin, a consultant work￾ing with the ANE Bureau, reviewed and made helpful comments on the Clean Fuels alliance concept via telephone calls with the project’s manager. USAID/Philippines is very appreciative of the support it received from the ANE Bureau. According the Jerry Bisson, “The ANE Bureau has been great in encouraging and supporting alliance building in our program. The GDA ini￾tiative and expectations laid by the ANE Bureau have allowed USAID program staff ‘the cover’ to take certain risks in forming alliances that they would or￾dinarily not have taken. It set the stage that made it acceptable to take risks and sometimes fail.” Contributions and Leverage The leverage of additional resources is an important characteristic of a GDA￾type alliance. According to USAID/ Philippines, the mission shoots for a 2:1 leverage ratio, which in some cases it meets and in other cases it comes up short. In some alliances, USAID funds leverage cash and other direct resources while in others it leverages mostly in￾kind resources, such as pre-existing staff salaries and office space. In AMORE, the total USAID budget is $7.9 million. According to Jerry Bisson, $6.4 million will be spent on commu￾nity development and the establishment of renewable energy systems with the balance of funds going towards policy reforms and planning in renewable energy. USAID’s major partner, Mirant Philippines, agreed to fund renewable￾energy-powered electrical systems for 160 communities. Ed Bautista said that Mirant budgeted $3.2 million, which is based on an estimate of $20,000 per community. However, some people close to the project believe that, at the current expenditure rate, the Mirant contribution to fund renewable energy in the 160 communities will end up closer to $2 million. In any case, both Mirant and USAID/Philippines are pleased with the project and excited about the possibility to expand it to other areas. USAID’s contribution to the SUCCESS project in the Philippines is $738,762, which leverages $291,066 of in-kind resources from partners. Cocoa Phil and the Department of Agriculture are contributing $109,321 and $181,744, respectively. In-kind resources include staff salaries, government office space, training costs, and shipment and trans￾port of seedlings. The leverage ratio for SUCCESS is about 0.4:1. In TMAT, USAID/Philippines is exceeding a 1:1 leverage ratio. The mis￾sion’s contribution of $821,000 is being matched by approximately $978,000 of direct and in-kind resources from MAC, the Philippines Tropical Fish Export- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 63 ers Association (PTFEA), and U.S. Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC). MAC’s contribution comes as staff salaries and travel expenses. PTFEA is contributing its staff time, travel, and collection equipment valued at $40,000. PIJAC is also contributing staff time and travel that it estimates to be worth $25,000. While it is too early to determine the exact contributions that partners will make in the Clean Fuels project, USAID/Philippines estimates that its contribution of $2.66 million will lever￾age $5.3 million of resources from its private-sector partners that will come in some combination of cash, in-kind, and actual conversion costs to clean fuel technologies. If the partners remain in the alliance and follow through with their proposed contributions, the mis￾sion will achieve its goal of a 2:1 lever￾age ratio. The Monsanto Corn Alliance also meets a 2:1 leverage ratio threshold. USAID is providing a grant to Monsanto for $42,000 to examine ways to increase corn yields of small farmers and, at the same time, create linkages with financial and marketing suppliers. Monsanto is contributing $99,500 of its own resources towards this imitative. In ITMA, USAID does not have a com￾mitment from the information technol￾ogy associations in the Philippines. To date, WITSA has spent approximately $12,000 of USAID funds on an initial trip by Allen Miller and Lizzie Range to meet with and assess the capability of different information technology as￾sociations, which they found to be fairly fragmented. WITSA decided to focus efforts on strengthening the capacity of the Information Technology Association of the Philippines (ITAP) through an initial survey to identify the needs of the information technology industry in the Philippines, assess the skills of the stu￾dents moving into the workforce, and work with the educational institutions to bridge the gap. Although WITSA budgeted $75,000 for ITMA activities in the Philippines, it is not clear what this will leverage from the information technology associations. Innovation and New Approaches Access to innovation and new ap￾proaches is another characteristic of a GDA alliance. USAID/Philippines managers point to the AMORE alliance and renewable energy infrastructure as innovation. However, Bobby Calingo of Mirant believes that the company is not contributing innovative technol￾ogy because many NGOs are providing similar renewable energy infrastructure, such as solar and wind power. Rather, Mirant President Ed Bautista says that it’s the company’s good reputation and credibility that is adding value to the AMORE alliance. In the cases of TMAT and SUCCESS, no new innovations were identified. In the Clean Fuels alliance, CME repre￾sents an innovation that has the poten￾tial to drastically lower toxic emissions when mixed with diesel fuel. A stronger case can be made that the alliances are resulting in new approaches for USAID/Philippines. The AMORE alliance represents the first time USAID has worked hand-in-hand with a large multinational corporation on a develop￾ment issue. The Clean Fuels alliance brings together competitors to collabo￾rate on strategies to reduce air pollution. And the SUCCESS and TMAT alli￾ances aim to link suppliers with buyers in sustainable ways that are driven by market demand. Financing Mechanisms USAID/Philippines has used a com￾bination of cooperative agreements, grants, and MOUs in its alliances. For example, AMORE involves a coopera￾tive agreement between USAID/Philip￾pines and Winrock International, which is USAID’s implementing contractor. In addition, the mission signed an MOU with Mirant stipulating its role, respon￾sibilities, and financial contributions to the alliance. TMAT and SUCCESS look more tradi￾tional. Both projects involve cooperative agreements between USAID/Philip￾pines and the implementers: Marine Aquarium Council and ACDI/VOCA. The TMAT funding is provided by the GDA Secretariat incentive fund while the ANE incentive fund (MIF) provides funding to the mission for SUCCESS. In the SUCCESS alliance, ACDI/VOCA actually subcontracts to Cocoa Phil to do implementation. Apparently, USAID selected this kind of subcontracting ar￾rangement because Cocoa Phil does not have experience managing funds from USAID. Interestingly, the Monsanto Corn Alliance’s financing mechanism consists of a $42,000 grant from the ANE MIF budget to Monsanto Philippines, which will provide an additional $99,500 64 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 to implement its Bt corn seed usage program. Obstacles In every interview, the interviewees were asked what obstacles they experienced that prevented smooth implementation of the alliance project. Overall, USAID/ Philippines’ managers and alliance part￾ners mentioned very few obstacles. This is probably due to the fact that most al￾liances are in the early stages of planning or implementation. Jerry Bisson noted that the partner￾ship with Mirant “illustrates some of the challenges in building partnerships with a private-sector partner. Change is difficult and the partnership essentially required the Mirant Foundation to change both its program and approach. There was considerable resistance within Mirant and it was Ed Bautista (President of Mirant Philippines) who made the partnership happen. Ed was well aware of the importance of investing in com￾munity development and community ownership in order to sustain develop￾ment efforts. In fact, he repeatedly stresses this as the major benefit of the partnership and wants USAID to part￾ner with Mirant in providing electricity to communities in northern Luzon.” In particular, SUCCESS faces the obstacle of attracting resources from in￾ternational partners, such as the World Cocoa Foundation and Masterfoods. Maggie Meyers of ACDI/VOCA de￾scribes the problem in terms of produc￾tion. The Philippines currently does not produce enough cocoa to meet internal demand. Not until production levels increase significantly to satisfy both domestic and international markets will international partners be interested in investing in SUCCESS as they have in Indonesia. Other obstacles that were discussed in￾clude the high degree of bureaucracy in the government, USAID, and large mul￾tinationals, especially those in the Clean Fuels alliance, as well as security issues in Mindanao, the certification process used in TMAT, fragmented information technology associations, and the lack of policy relating to clean fuels. According to several USAID activity managers, the proof will be in how well partners live up to commitments made in some of the MOUs since these are not legally binding instruments. Development Impact and Evaluation According to the GDA business model, strategic partnerships should result in greater development impact than if the partners operated independently. There￾fore, clear articulation of the anticipated impact that alliances are intended to have should be stated in the project’s goal, objectives, and indicators, and explained in its monitoring and evalua￾tion framework. Review of project documents and in￾terviews with USAID activity managers and partners revealed that the projects have some plan to conduct evaluations. In several cases, the evaluations seem to be focused more on output level indica￾tors, which will not say much about impact. Other projects plan to focus more on effect (behaviors, attitudes) and impact level indicators. Few of the alliance projects had conducted baseline surveys or thought much about mea￾surement and attribution issues. Nevertheless, a couple of the senior managers commented that “we need to be prepared to evaluate our alliances and answer cost-benefit questions. For ex￾ample could we have had better impact by pursuing different approaches instead of alliances?” These managers also noted, “Some of the alliance projects do not have baselines or strong evaluation plans.” Lessons Interviewees were asked what lessons they had gleaned so far from the alli￾ances. Below are a variety of quotes that represent the sorts of lessons alliance partners are learning. • Alliance projects tend to get started quicker with more tangible and vis￾ible results sooner due to pressure from the private sector to show some￾thing to its executive staff and board. • It takes a lot of time and effort to build trust in these alliances and get all the partners on the same page. Once trust is established, these kinds of alliances tend to speed up and move smoothly. • We use the MOU mechanism a lot. It is more appropriate in most alliances than other mechanisms. • Private-sector partners can and should be pushed to make larger contributions. • Having a champion in the mission like Jerry Bisson to encourage and support alliance building is key to success. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 65 • We learned that the private sector is interested in development and has development concerns. Also, the government influences the private sector so it is important to have the government on board and supporting the project. • The private sector often sees USAID as providing access to key govern￾ment officials and lending credibility to its development or corporate social responsibility programs. • USAID and its implementing partners (contractors) benefit from working with companies like Mirant because it forces them to think in business terms about investments and returns on those investments. • Alliances where MOUs are involved will actually take less management time in the long run since USAID does not have to monitor the use of its funds. This is unlike cooperative agreements and grants. • An effective communication and public relations strategy is important to companies. This is best if a credible third-party NGO rather than USAID or the company conducts it. This is a weakness in the AMORE project where Mirant is not totally satisfied with the communication strategy. • The AMORE partnership required the Mirant Foundation to shift from funding electrification via line exten￾sions and diesel-powered generators to include support for renewable energy-powered systems, which was a major shift that required extensive negotiations. Any training on alliance building should include emphasis on how to constructively promote change and ownership of new direc￾tions within alliance partners. Recommendations USAID senior managers were asked what recommendations they would make to USAID decisionmakers in Washington, such as the Agency’s Administrator or ANE. A short sum￾mary of those recommendations appears below. • Partnerships that involve the private sector are the wave of the future and should be one of USAID’s main busi￾ness models, especially in missions where the private sector is active and mission budgets are smaller. • USAID should keep some sort of GDA Secretariat structure in place to manage global alliances and provide guidance and share best practices in alliance building with missions. • Missions need help to be able to as￾sess interest and private-sector flows to then determine what sort of alli￾ances have the most potential. • USAID staff need further training in developing, negotiating, and nurtur￾ing alliances with the private sector. Also, USAID should train its project officers in basic business skills and how businesses operate so they can better understand the private sector. This will help USAID negotiate bet￾ter alliances in the long run. • USAID should increase the number of staff that can work on alliances, and make existing mechanisms to contract short-term staff more flexible. • GDA and ANE competitive incentive funds should be kept and expanded to encourage missions to take risks and develop creative alliances. • USAID should develop mechanisms to amend contracts so GDA and ANE incentive funds can be added to existing contracts in a flexible man￾ner. Conclusions 1. USAID/Philippines is making sig￾nificant progress in mainstreaming its alliance work with the private sector. In FY 2005, all SO teams will be required to build alliance work into their strategy and budget. 2. USAID/Philippines does not adhere to a strict definition of what an alli￾ance is or is not. Rather, the mission is promoting work with the private sector where it makes sense and can increase the impact the mission has on development in the Philippines. In fact, USAID/Philippines is work￾ing with any number of private-sector entities on development issues that have not been classified as GDA-type alliances. 3. USAID/Philippines’ alliance work would benefit from encouraging its managers to stretch its current and future alliances to incorporate more of the GDA criteria. GDA criteria include increasing private-sector investments and leverage ratios, in￾novative approaches and new tech￾nologies, and increased participation in planning and decisionmaking from the early conceptual stages. 66 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 4. Several GDA—or MIF-funded al￾liances—look more like traditional projects where USAID has a contrac￾tual relationship with an organization that is required to meet or match certain requirements. For example, SUCCESS involves a cooperative agreement with ACDI/VOCA, which, in turn, subcontracts to Cocoa Phil to deliver training and other ex￾tension services to farmers. In TMAT, USAID has a cooperative agreement with MAC, which works directly with collectors and exporters. Neither MAC nor its members are making substantial investments in the project. 5. Although one of the most important reasons to pursue strategic partner￾ships is increased development impact, few of the alliance projects have conducted baseline surveys or thought much about measuring impact. One of the challenges facing USAID/Philippines is to begin to build a strong monitoring and evalu￾ation system into alliance projects in the early stages of design to capture alliance-building lessons, measure impact, and answer cost-benefit ques￾tions. 6. The AMORE project is USAID/ Philippines’ flagship private-sector alliance that has been responsible for getting the mission involved in alli￾ances, especially in the environmental sector. Successful implementation of AMORE has generated confidence among managers and created a will￾ingness to try building more alliances. 7. GDA and ANE incentive funds and support have been instrumental in promoting alliances in USAID/Phil￾ippines. Although partnerships with the private sector would have oc￾curred without GDA Secretariat and ANE support, they would not have happened as quickly and their scope would have been much more modest. 8. Although many of USAID/Philip￾pines’ alliances may not meet the criteria set out by the GDA guide￾lines, the mission is gaining more and more experience working with the private sector that is building more confidence and creative approaches. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 67 This report is part of a worldwide as￾sessment of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) business model, part of a USAID initiative. The Center for Development Information and Evalua￾tion (CDIE) coordinated the assessment on behalf of the Agency—specifically the GDA Secretariat and the Bureau for Asia and the Near East (ANE). CDIE and ANE funded the study. The worldwide assessment methods included a review of background documents and materials, interviews in Washington, a web-based survey, and field visits to 10 countries. Due to the interest and support of the ANE Bureau, Sri Lanka was one of six ANE countries selected. The findings and conclusions from the six ANE countries are summarized in the Midterm Assess￾ment of Global Development Alliances in Asia and the Near East, February 2004. Annex 9. Assessment of Alliances in Sri Lanka O’Brien and Associates International was contracted by USAID’s Develop￾ment Information Services to conduct a part of the Global Development Alliance (GDA) midterm evaluation, specifically in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India. This report presents the findings of the work done in Sri Lanka December 3–5, 2003, and is organized into the following components: • scope of work • methodology used to collect and analyze data • key findings • conclusions Scope of Work To advance the objectives of USAID’s GDA initiative, the Agency established the GDA Secretariat, which is a tempo￾rary unit reporting to the USAID Ad￾ministrator. In anticipation of eventual demobilization of the GDA Secretariat, the Agency proposed that a midterm assessment of the GDA initiative be conducted to inform and shape policy and organizational decisions around the This report presents the findings of the work done in Sri Lanka December 3–5, 2003. 68 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 implementation of public-private alli￾ances within USAID. O’Brien and Associates International was asked to focus on Objective No. 2 of the assessment, which is to determine the effectiveness of the GDA business model as a development tool and iden￾tify the lessons USAID learned about applying the GDA business model in the field and its potential contribution to development results. Specifically, O’Brien and Associates was asked to travel to Colombo, Sri Lanka to interview key USAID/Sri Lanka managers and partners in order to an￾swer the following questions: 1. What progress is being made in the alliances funded to date from the ANE Bureau Alliance Incen￾tive Fund? Are they proving to have been good investments? Should ANE continue the mission incentive fund? Should ANE provide more technical assistance? Any other ideas for what a committed regional bureau should do to push this aggressively along? 2. What other alliances have been fund￾ed from the mission’s own budgets? How are they progressing? Are they proving to be good investments? Do they differ in any important respects from those funded from the bureau incentive fund? 3. What can be said about the effective￾ness of the bureau incentive fund in promoting the use of public-private alliances in the region? Considering both the process and criteria used, what features of the fund’s opera￾tion have proven to be important in achieving its objectives? 4. What other organizational factors have been important in determin￾ing how effectively missions have used alliances in their development program? These should include both bureau actions as well as those taken at the mission level. Have the avail￾ability of TA and/or training, the ex￾pertise and/or experience of available mission staff (e.g., prior experience in partnering with private sector under earlier bureau or Agency initiatives), and support by embassy or other U.S. Government agencies made a differ￾ence? Methodology The team in Sri Lanka researched three alliances: Sri Lanka Ecotourism (Eco￾tourism), Air Pollution Reduction in Land Transport Sector (APR), and the Incentive Information and Technology Mentors Alliance (ITMA). This assessment’s methodology consist￾ed of interviews with USAID/Sri Lanka managers, alliance partners, and the review of a variety of a key project docu￾ments, such as concept papers, propos￾als, articles, and correspondence. Within USAID/Sri Lanka, interviews were con￾ducted with USAID/Sri Lanka’s direc￾tor, the director of the US-AEP, and two special projects officers. Interviews were conducted according to pre-established interview guides in order to ensure that pertinent areas were adequately probed and that interviews retained consistency for viable comparison within and across missions. Key partners interviewed included the deputy director of planning from the ministry of transportation, the deputy chief medical officer from the ministry of health, and several managers from Nathan and J.E. Austin Associates, who are working on The Competitiveness Initiative (TCI). Interviews were also conducted with the executive director of WITSA and a colleague who were in Colombo for a strategic planning workshop. Findings Origin Of Alliance Concepts Alliances in Sri Lanka originated primarily from two sources: TCI and US-AEP. Both the Ecotourism and, to a certain extent, ITMA alliances grew out of TCI’s “clusters” while the APR evolved out of US-AEP work. USAID/Sri Lanka and the TCI tourism cluster had been exploring ecotourism opportunities for quite some time. In 2001, the mission decided to fund a tour to Costa Rica to study ecotourism. The tour motivated the group to begin planning an ecotourism project at about the same time that the ANE incentive fund was announced. According to Dr. Ananda Mallawatantri, the ANE incen￾tive fund came at the right time because it provided funding to allow USAID/Sri Lanka to make a contribution and help move the project forward. ITMA in Sri Lanka developed from two sources. On a global level, the GDA Secretariat approached WITSA in Washington, D.C. and proposed the idea of a multicountry alliance to pro￾mote the use of information and com￾munications technology. Allen Miller, WITSA’s Executive Director, liked the idea because it provided additional re- ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 69 sources to WITSA to fulfill its mandate of forming and strengthening informa￾tion and communications technology associations in developing countries. Meanwhile in Sri Lanka, TCI’s informa￾tion technology sector, which was one of the more successful clusters, was looking for appropriate roles to expand its work. WITSA approached TCI’s information technology sector to see if it wanted to form a WITSA-affiliated association. The members eagerly agreed since they saw this as an opportunity to create an organization that could speak in one voice for the sector in terms of policy and advocacy. This is something that the Government of Sri Lanka, in particular, had indicated it wanted—a single policy voice representing the sector. WITSA is currently supporting Sri Lanka’s new information technology association (SLICTA) in developing a strategic plan that will guide SLICTA into emerging as a cohesive and self-sustaining entity. USAID/Sri Lanka’s APR has its roots in US-AEP. Ananda noted that the mis￾sion has been working since 1992 with the private sector on partnerships aimed at protecting the environment through promoting and selling clean and effi￾cient technologies from U.S. companies. After attending a workshop conducted by the California Clean Air Project, several of the US-AEP partners decided to form a group called the Air Resource Management Center (Air Mac) with the goal of reducing air pollution in Colom￾bo. At about the time that Air Mac was formed, the ANE incentive funds were advertised. Ananda said that it made perfect sense to apply for the incentive funds to support Air Mac’s mandate to develop fuel standards, omit lead from fuels, and fund special air quality studies. Coordination and Communication In APR, Air Mac meets regularly to dis￾cuss issues. The group became so large that it was difficult to manage, so the members decided to form and work in subgroups that would reconvene in the large group once a month. The mem￾bers reported that they communicate via e-mail and telephone on an “as needed” basis. Since Air Mac includes a diverse group of stakeholders representing environ￾mental organizations as well as the private sector, serious disagreements over issues can arise from time to time. Indeed, the World Bank, an initial do￾nor and supporter, dropped out of the alliance because it had differences with the government on how to implement the project. However, while interviewees acknowledged these differences of opin￾ion and interests, they view the process of working through disagreements as fundamentally important in learning to work together—a process that will prove beneficial in the long run. Ecotourism and ITMA, however, rely heavily on the TCI sector coordinators to communicate with members and call meetings. In time, the Ecolodge’s board of directors should assume the primary role of coordination in that alliance. Involvement of USAID in the Alliances USAID/Sri Lanka’s involvement in the APR is quite high and committed. However, its involvement in ITMA and Ecotourism is much more limited. TCI coordinators take more of the respon￾sibility for coordinating activities and working with the partners to make deci￾sions. In fact, TCI managers explained that they saw the principal role of USAID/Sri Lanka as providing funding rather than guidance and support in the day-to-day activities. Incentive Funds and Technical Assistance USAID/Sri Lanka has received $1,115,000 from the ANE incentive fund (MIF). Of this, $215,000 has been allocated to the APR while $900,000 will go towards the Ecotourism project. According to Director Carol Becker, “USAID/Sri Lanka was already on the trajectory of doing public-private-sec￾tor alliances. The GDA initiative—and especially the incentive funds—provided necessary funds and a little push. The incentive funds provided the mechanism to allow USAID to sit at the table with other donors and partners to negotiate alliances. It also encouraged our sectors to coordinate on projects.” The mission reported that it did not receive any assistance in designing or implementing the alliance projects from either the GDA Secretariat or ANE. Both Becker and Mallawatantri believe that USAID/Sri Lanka would benefit from more technical assistance and support in designing and backstopping alliance projects and indicated such 70 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 assistance would be welcome. (A techni￾cal assistance trip to Sri Lanka took place in January 2004.) Mike DeSiti, special projects officer, at￾tended the GDA workshop in Bangkok. Although not active in alliance build￾ing, DeSiti was one of a few mission staff available to attend the workshop. According to him, “the workshop was timely, relevant, and useful. It provided participants with important informa￾tion about public-private-sector alliances as well as exposure to resource experts. It also sent the message that missions should think beyond the GDA concept and revisit opportunities to build strate￾gic partnerships with the private sector in on-going projects.” Unfortunately, DeSiti has been unable to share information and tools from the workshop with other mission staff due to his heavy workload. Becker plans to conduct some sort of GDA awareness activity in January to coincide with the visit of Cohen and McGlauflin. Contributions and Leverage The leverage of additional resources is an important characteristic of a GDA type alliance. In the APR, three orga￾nizations are currently contributing cash resources to the project. USAID is contributing about $100,000 per year that comes from both the incentive fund and the mission’s budget. The World Bank has contributed $500,000 for three clean air-related studies while Ger￾man aid agency GTZ is investing nearly $2 million for an emissions testing and training center model. The Ecotourism project relies on $900,000 of ANE incentive funds that leverages $1.8 million in cash from hotel investors and a rough estimate of $215,000 of in-kind contributions from public-sector organizations. The hotels are investing in the construction and operation of an ecolodge that they believe will be profitable and render im￾portant best practices that can be used in other properties. To date, WITSA has spent about half of its $92,500 USAID budget for ITMA activities in Sri Lanka, as well as its own in-kind contributions such as staff time and some travel. Allen Miller was quick to point out that WITSA does not fund SLICTA. Miller sees WITSA’s role as providing guidance to SLICTA in the process of incorporating, planning, and becoming a member of WITSA and a player in the international information technology scene. Innovation and New Approaches A characteristic of a GDA alliance is ac￾cess to innovation and new approaches. The APR, like its US-AEP predecessor, is benefiting from the clean air technol￾ogies that private-sector partners bring to the table. Likewise, the ecolodge will incorporate state-of-the-art technolo￾gies and best practices as they relate to ecotourism. However, at this point it is not clear what innovations or new ap￾proaches ITMA is contributing. Financing Mechanisms USAID/Sri Lanka is currently manag￾ing its alliance resources itself without a third party contractor or implement￾ing partner. In the APR, the mission is using a mix of ANE Bureau incentive funds ($215,000) and AP funds (about another $200,000–$250,000). In the Ecotourism project, the mission is trying to decide whether to manage and allocate the funding itself or use an implementing partner (contractor). The concern is that using a contractor could consume a significant portion of the budget, leaving as little as $400,000 to $500,000 as USAID’s contribution. ITMA is clearly relying on WITSA as the implementing partner while funding is allocated and managed primarily from the GDA Secretariat. Obstacles All respondents were asked to describe any obstacles they faced that prevented smooth implementation of alliance projects. Ecotourism and ITMA are still in the early stages of implementation, so it was hard for USAID/Sri Lanka managers and partners to comment on specific obstacles. Miller of WITSA did question whether SLICTA would be able to move the from the strategic planning phase to actual sustained implementation. The primary obstacle in the APR is the complexity of the alliance and getting the partners to resolve conflict and other issues. However, partners that were interviewed believe that the time and effort put in the planning and decision￾making will pay off in terms of smooth implementation later on because there would be increased buy-in from key stakeholders as a result of working to￾gether in the planning phase. In general, Becker stated that the most significant obstacle to alliance-building ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 71 for USAID/Sri Lanka is the lack of managers. She acknowledged that it takes a lot of time to participate in the alliance process while mission managers are already stretched too thin. Becker went on to explain that USAID/Sri Lanka has gone from a mission targeted for closure to one with a $24 million budget, with too few human resources available to program the money. Another major difficulty noted by Becker and her staff is that Sri Lanka is a difficult environment in which to develop alliances that involve multina￾tional companies as partners. According to Becker, most large businesses are re￾luctant to invest in Sri Lanka due to the history of conflict and political violence. Until there is more political stability, multinational companies will not be willing to invest in the country. Development Impact and Evaluation According to the GDA business model, strategic partnerships should result in greater development impact than if the partners operated independently. There￾fore, clear articulation of the anticipated impact that alliances are intended to have should be stated in the project’s goal, objectives, and indicators, and explained in its monitoring and evalua￾tion framework. None of the alliance projects in USAID/ Sri Lanka have clearly outlined monitor￾ing and evaluation plans. As a result, the development impact of the alliance projects is not well articulated in terms of indicators and baseline measures. In fact, Mallawatantri acknowledges that a weakness in all the alliance projects is evaluation and monitoring. He indicat￾ed that capacity building and/or train￾ing in evaluation is needed and would be welcome. While Ecotourism and the APR list indicators that they might use to collect data and measure impact, ITMA seems to be relying primarily on anecdotal information to measure success. Al￾though the ITMA partners feel that it is an important partnership for Sri Lanka’s information technology industry that will have significant impact from both a process and an outcome perspective, they have difficulty articulating what exactly the impact will be. A number of key assumptions are being made: that investment in information technology associations will lead to better policies and increased visibility for Sri Lanka in￾formation technology and that this will lead to more business for the country and improves the economy and income for businesses and their owners. It is unclear what evidence, literature, and experience is forming the basis for these assumptions. Lessons Interviewees were asked what lessons they had gleaned so far from the experi￾ence of establishing and maintaining alliances. A variety of paraphrases and quotes that represent the sorts of lessons alliance partners are learning are as fol￾lows: • Management of alliances takes more time than management of contracts. You get more invested in the partner￾ship and want to put in the necessary time to make it a success. • If you use an implementing partner to do implementation, I am con￾cerned USAID will lose the closeness to and spirit of the alliance. • In a large alliance like APR, a mix of different influential partners can lobby for government policy change more effectively. • Working in alliances builds relation￾ships with partners that would not otherwise develop. Study tours and other joint visits help build these relationships and make partners more committed and coordinated. • The government is learning to use the stakeholder approach and work in alliances. It takes patience to listen and vet all the opinions but this will pay off in implementation. The APR alliance is becoming a model for how the government can work with key stakeholders. • The GDA concept has introduced a new way of thinking and lets mis￾sions know, especially smaller ones, that business as usual will not work in the future. USAID needs to find ways to combine its limited resources with those of other donors, govern￾ment, and the private sector to have a significant development impact. • The private-sector partners, although competitors, are willing to collaborate on the Ecotourism project because it is a way to glean best practices that can make each company more com￾petitive internationally. • Large alliances, like APR and Eco￾tourism, require effective and fre￾quent communication to be suc- 72 PPC EVALUATION WORKING PAPER NO. 17 cessful, both internally among the alliance members and externally to government and mambers NGOs. • Building alliances requires a new way of thinking and requires new skills that many USAID managers lack at the present time. It is a paradigm shift for USAID. Recommendations In interviews, USAID/Sri Lanka senior managers were asked what recommen￾dations they would make to USAID decisionmakers in Washington such as the Agency’s Administrator or ANE. A short summary of those recommenda￾tions is as follows: • GDA is a good business model for USAID, especially in those coun￾tries where missions need to leverage funds and where the private sector is making substantial investments in the country. However, it should not be the only business model. • USAID still needs the GDA Secre￾tariat. However, the secretariat needs to do a better job of supporting small missions that do not have adequate staff and resources to incorporate the GDA business model into their activities. • Missions need more access to techni￾cal assistance from people such as Debbie McGlauflin. “We need to clone twenty of Debbie McGlauflin so more missions could benefit from her help.” • USAID should place a GDA consul￾tant in the region to support mis￾sions, especially smaller missions, in developing GDA concepts and partnerships. • USAID staff need more training and orientation on alliance building. Staff need skills to negotiate with busi￾nesses—to speak their language and look at things from the perspective of a businessman. USAID staff would also benefit from training on how to identify financial tools to help pri￾vate-sector partners access resources such as loans. • USAID/Washington should provide more information about how to iden￾tify companies interested in investing in a specific country and what they might be interested in doing. “One example is the foundation guide used in the foundation/NGO world— something in this model for missions would be so helpful—they simply do not have the time or staffing to con￾duct this sort of research themselves.” • USAID should develop web-based GDA alliance-building learning mechanisms so missions can share les￾sons, successes, and ideas. “We need more examples of what other mis￾sions are doing and what is working.” This could be a role for the GDA Secretariat. • USAID needs to clarify to what extent Congress is expecting missions to involve U.S. companies in the alliances so any business benefit goes to them instead of other international companies. “It is much clearer in the US-AEP where the expectation is to use U.S. companies and U.S. technologies to solve environmental problems.” Conclusions 1. The social and political situation in Sri Lanka has not been conducive to building alliances with the private sector, especially with large multina￾tional companies. The civil war has discouraged foreign investment in manufacturing and other service in￾dustries. If peace holds and the social and political environment stabilizes, foreign investment should increase as well as opportunities to build alli￾ances with both national and interna￾tional businesses. 2. USAID/Sri Lanka has been working in partnership with the private sector for a long time through TCI and US￾AEP. In fact, all three of the mission’s alliance projects originated from TCI and US-AEP initiatives. However, these partnerships did not include the kind of focus on leveraging resources and sharing risk and responsibili￾ties that the GDA business model advocates. As these and other alliance projects evolve, the mission needs to build into alliance projects more of the GDA criteria, such as greater stretches on contributions, risk shar￾ing, and joint planning. 3. The ANE incentive funds were timely and helped the mission “buy a seat” at the table in the APR and Ecotour￾ism projects. These projects, however, were already in the process of being developed and would have occurred without GDA and ANE Bureau funding or influence. 4. Other than incentive funds, USAID/ Sri Lanka has received little support from the GDA Secretariat and ANE in building and nurturing alliances. ASSESSMENT OF USAID’S GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ALLIANCES IN THE BUREAU FOR ASIA AND THE NEAR EAST 73 The mission would like more techni￾cal assistance, exchanges of lessons and experiences from other missions, and more incentive funds to strength￾en its alliance portfolio. 5. Due largely to the good relations be￾tween the Government of Sri Lanka and the United States and the pros￾pects of a peace settlement, USAID/ Sri Lanka has shifted from a mission targeted for closure to one with a budget approaching $24 million and very few human resources to program and manage the funds. Although the potential exists to increase the number of alliances, the lack of staff dedicated to alliances will continue to be an obstacle. 6. The amount of resources that USAID/Sri Lanka is able to lever￾age varies from alliance to alliance. For example, in the Ecotourism project, USAID’s contribution of $900,000 is leveraging $1.8 million in cash and land resources from hotel investors and another $215,000 of in-kind contributions from universi￾ties, NGOs, and the government. However, it is not clear yet how much is being leveraged in the APR alliance. The mission is contribut￾ing $215,000 while the World Bank and GTZ are contributing $500,000 and $2 million, respectively. David Peiris Motors and the Sri Lanka Bus Owners are supposed to finance the conversion to clean fuels but this contribution has not been valued nor implemented. And finally, the ITMA alliance is in the early stages of strate￾gic planning with little contribution from SLICTA. 7. It takes significant time and effort from USAID managers to develop and nurture complex alliances, such as APR. The up-front investment in time and effort pays off in the long run with the alliance members that buy into the projects’ goals and work together to solve problems and make key decisions. 8. According to the GDA business model, development impact is one of the most important reasons to pursue strategic partnerships. Nevertheless, none of the alliance projects have monitoring and evaluation systems. One of the challenges facing USAID/ Sri Lanka is to figure out a way to capture important lessons, experi￾ences, and the development impact its alliance projects are having. U.S. Agency for International Development The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent federal agency that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State. For more than 40 years, USAID has been the principal U.S. agency to extend assistance to countries recover￾ing from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms. USAID supports long-term and equitable economic growth and advances U.S. foreign policy objectives by supporting • economic growth, agriculture, and trade • global health • democracy, conflict prevention, and humanitarian assistance The Agency’s strength is its field offices located in four regions of the world: • Sub-Saharan Africa • Asia and the Near East • Latin America and the Caribbean • Europe and Eurasia U.S. Agency for International Development 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20523 Telephone: 202-712-0000 Fax: 202-216-3524 www.usaid.gov