NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Addressing today’s development challenges requires a massive mobilization of capital and resources that the current setup of development finance is ill-equipped to provide.

Civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations are quick to deliver that message, urging donors and funders to put up more. But the view is also shared by at least one senior official in the U.S. government in charge of foreign aid and development.

“If we step back and we assess, do we really today have the right tools, the right resources and the right skills in the right places to deliver on the $100 trillion* price tag that the development challenges of today pose?” said Elizabeth Littlefield, chief executive of theOverseas Private Investment Corp., an independent U.S. government agency for foreign economic development.

Littlefield was speaking on a panel last week at the Center for Global Development, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., that convened the heads of four different development finance institutions. The top development finance officials from Germany, Norway, the U.S. and United Kingdom addressed the challenges and opportunities that their organizations face in using government funds to mobilize private capital in developing economies.