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Bangladesh
The Development Challenge: Bangladesh has progressed significantly in the past decade. It has achieved self-sufficiency in rice production, lowered infant and child mortality rates, virtually eradicated polio, increased girls' enrollment in schools; and annual GDP growth has averaged about 5% for ten years. With progress in many areas, Bangladesh is no longer the hopeless case that it seemed to be 30 years ago. Yet Bangladesh, one of the world's most densely populated and underdeveloped countries, is still considered highly corrupt, and its people remain among the most malnourished and impoverished in the world.
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Nearly half of Bangladesh's 133 million people live below the national poverty level of $1 per day. The Government of Bangladesh (GOB) has increased its investments in education, health, food security, and other social services, thus helping reduce poverty by 1% per year, and plans to reduce the incidence of poverty by 50% by 2015. However, poverty reduction on this scale will require achieving annual growth rates of at least 7%. Whereas economic reforms introduced by the GOB have been promising, further progress will require bolder structural reforms that are certain to disrupt the uneasy status quo of cronyism and patronage politics that determines social benefits and power relations. Without a firm commitment to improve governance and rule of law, the growth of the private sector and foreign investment will continue to be seriously constrained, and there will be little hope of achieving these poverty reduction goals. Bangladesh has a window of opportunity on several fronts--to keep HIV/AIDS prevalence at low levels; to continue to make needed investments in health and education; to safeguard press freedom and a vital, non-politicized civil society; to strengthen its democracy in ways that will make government more accountable and transparent; to protect its remaining natural resources; and to diversify and improve the quality of exports, including the potential export of natural gas. USAID is poised to assist Bangladesh to take advantage of this opportunity to improve the country's future prospects and raise the living standards of its people.
U.S. national interests in Bangladesh are threefold: democracy and human rights, economic prosperity, and national security. Bangladesh is one of the world's few moderate, democratic Islamic nations. If its fragile democratic institutions or growing market economy do not advance, the consequences for its neighbors and for U.S. interests could be quite serious. USAID's program of assistance in Bangladesh is particularly attuned to the priorities expressed in the joint USAID-State Department Strategic Plan 2004-09. In particular, the program for Bangladesh supports the joint objective of promoting democracy and economic freedom in the Muslim world, reducing the threat of famine, and advancing sustainable development goals. U.S. strategic interests include improving health, education, economic development, and the environment for the Bangladeshi population, and minimizing the costs of natural disasters.
The USAID Program: The USAID program consists of seven objectives which concentrate on reducing fertility and improving family health, increasing the growth of agribusiness and small business, improving management of open water and tropical forest resources, improving the performance of key institutions in the energy sector, improving food security for vulnerable groups, promoting democracy and governance, and improving the quality of Bangladesh's basic education system.
Other Program Elements: In addition to resources requested in the Program Data Sheets, USAID's food security and disaster preparedness program relies on several activities not managed in-country. University Linkages promote collaboration between U.S. universities (Virginia Tech, University of Houston) and the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) to strengthen BUET's capacity to address Bangladesh's vulnerability to seismic hazards and local capabilities in energy economics and related policy issues. The Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP II) activity focuses on the safe and effective development and commercialization of selected biotechnology crops in Bangladesh. The Program for Bio-Safety helps Bangladesh create the infrastructure, policies and capacity needed to use biotechnology safely. Climate Forecast Applications in Bangladesh (CFAB) involves a consortium of partners generating flood forecast information. The Program for Enhancement of Emergency Response (PEER) Phase-2 (2003-2008) aims at improved earthquake response readiness through emergency response training, institutional strengthening, networking and coordination. Bangladesh also participates in the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance Project to test concepts and measures of hunger and food security in order to develop a protocol for use in impact evaluations. The Child Survival Program (CSP) contributes to the reduction of maternal and child mortality and morbidity, and improves the health status of women and children through the development of sustainable municipal health services in two targeted areas. CSP develops the management capacity of municipality managers, improves the skills of municipal health service providers, and strengthens the municipality's community based health promotion approach. The Center for Rehabilitation of Torture Survivors provides medical and psychiatric support to more than 100 former prisoners, who were victims of torture and underwent physical and mental trauma.
Over the past two years, USAID has been actively engaging new audiences, cultivating key relationships, and developing creative ways to expose Bangladeshis to the benefits of USAID's development activities. Our approach to outreach has been to deliberately seek out contacts with people who have the ability to influence a broad spectrum of society. We have exposed local imams (religious clerics) to the values of social and economic development, and they are now discussing such issues as human trafficking with their followers. We have taken journalists to see our development projects, which has helped to get USAID activities featured more consistently and accurately in the local press. We helped provide university law students with information about their rights under the Bangladeshi constitution, and they are now voluntarily visiting high schools to share this information. USAID has joined efforts led by the U.S. Embassy to Bangladesh to put on an annual event, "America Week," aimed at taking the message of U.S. contributions to Bangladesh to the populace in secondary cities around the country. These efforts have relied upon the creative use of existing resources, but with increased emphasis on Muslim outreach, we expect to attract additional resources to support our various outreach activities.
Other Donors: Donor coordination is excellent in Bangladesh, and USAID plays a leading role in several sectors, including health, private sector development, energy and democracy. The largest donors to Bangladesh are the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States and Canada. USAID coordinates with multilateral banks in agriculture, water resources, and energy. Other multilateral cooperation includes the United Nations Children's Fund and the United Nations Population Fund for health, population, education and children's rights; the International Labor Organization for child labor issues; the World Food Programme for food security; United Nations Development Programme on environment, poverty reduction, human capacity, democracy, and disaster; and the World Health Organization on health issues.
USAID coordinates with the following bilateral donors: Japan (rural development, agriculture, health, disaster assistance); the European Commission (rural development, forestry, governance, democracy, human rights, health, food security, poverty reduction); United Kingdom (agriculture, fisheries, natural resources, rural development, disaster management, water and sanitation, energy, enterprise development, education, democracy, health); Germany (health, energy, economic reform, private sector development, education); Switzerland (education, agriculture, forestry, enterprise development, water and sanitation, rural development, transportation, humanitarian assistance); the Netherlands (health, education, energy); Australia (food security, education, environment, enterprise development, microfinance, health); Norway (education, enterprise development, energy, democracy, human rights); Canada (health, education, microfinance, governance); Denmark (water and sanitation, agriculture, transportation, poverty reduction, private sector support); and Sweden (education, health, democracy, governance, enterprise development, human rights). The United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands recently declared Bangladesh a priority country and have accordingly increased future commitments.
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