Development Assistance and Governance Initiative Media Mentions

The damage of [President Obama's canceled Southeast Asia trip] is not irreparable. At the end of the day, these are just meetings. I think the question is more one of credibility – that credibility, trust and confidence in the U.S. ability to engage on a sustained basis. That’s a difficult thing to try to recover once that sense of the guarantee that the U.S. will always be there starts to erode.

One can never tell when one bump will be the bump that will really knock you off-kilter. In the grand scheme of things, I think [President Obama's canceled Southeast Asia trip] is a small bump, but it is nevertheless a bump.

The whole objective of the pivot was to try to say that the U.S. views Asia as a really important partner and will continue to devote high-level political attention, but what’s been happening is that there are other demands on [President Obama's] time. From the perception of Asia it raises the question, ‘Maybe they want to, but can they in practice?'

Aid agencies tend to jump in to help countries, duplicating efforts and complicating matters for governments that have limited capacity to deal with so many organizations.

Unless growth goes through the roof, it is not possible to maintain the trend rate of poverty reduction with so many fewer individuals ready to cross the line.

Within as little as three years, almost all adults in Kenya were banked; they were using [mobile money.] This is in a country where around two-thirds of people live below $2 a day and typically don’t have access to formal financial services.