USAID

What is the Global Development Alliance (GDA)?

The Global Development Alliance (GDA) is USAID’s response to the new reality of development assistance that recognizes that flows between the developed world and the developing world have changed. GDA brings together the public and private sectors to have greater impact by combining the interests and capabilities unique to each.

In the 1970s, 70 percent of the resource flows from the United States to the developing world came from official development assistance and 30 percent was from the private sector. Today, 85 percent of resource flows from the United States to the developing world are private and 15 percent are public. These changes in flows reflect the emergence of the private for-profit sector and the non-governmental sector as significant participants in the development process.

The Global Development Alliance approach responds to this changed environment, and extends USAID’s reach and effectiveness in meeting development objectives by combining its strengths with the resources and capabilities of other prominent actors. GDA serves as a catalyst to mobilize resources, ideas, efforts and resources of governments, businesses and civil society by forging public-private alliances to stimulate new investment and practices. USAID announces alliances it is particularly interested in stimulating through calls for proposals or annual Program Statements.

What is an alliance?

An alliance is an agreement between two or more parties to jointly define a development problem and jointly contribute to its solution. Alliance members share resources, risks and rewards in pursuit of a development objective that is not likely top be achieved without the alliance. An alliance achieves its development objectives by bringing new actors to the development challenge or significantly expands an alliance with existing partners, using new and innovative instruments or approaches, and leveraging significant resources.

Alliances incorporate a breadth of USAID and partner resources to arrive at solutions made possible through pooled efforts. The resources brought together are as diverse as the alliances themselves, including technology and intellectual property rights, market creation, best practices, policy influence, in-country networks, and expertise in development programs, ranging from international trade to biodiversity protection.

Can alliances include non-U.S. partners?


Yes. A partial list of the kinds of partners which can make up an alliance are: foundations, international and host country non-governmental organizations (NGOs), individual multinational and host country private businesses, including banks and other financial institutions, host country governments, business and trade associations, bi-lateral and multi-lateral donor organizations, and international universities.

What is the application process?

Each year since 2003, the GDA Secretariat in Washington has released an Annual Program Statement (APS), an open solicitation method that serves to draw forth groups interested in alliances, including those with which USAID does not normally do business. The APS covers all Agency programmatic areas and can be utilized by any bureau or mission as a competitive means of considering alliance applications. The APS allows potential applicants to submit under this announcement either to the GDA Secretariat or directly to the mission or bureau. Some Missions also release calls for proposals on specific topics-for example, USAID/Afghanistan put out a call for public-private alliance proposals related to capacity building support to educational institutions.

USAID is particularly interested in alliance opportunities where its resources are leveraged at a two-to-one or greater ratio. At least some portion of the leverage must be in cash, and 25 percent of value of expected USAID resources must be from private contribution.

For further information, visit the GDA site: http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/global_partnerships/gda/