We are working with innovators around the globe and across sectors—academia, the private sector, and science and technology fields—to create new solutions to persistent development challenges. As we work to leverage innovations from multiple sources, we can help bring new ideas to market and reduce the need for aid over time.

Goal: We are investing in pioneering scientific, technological and innovative approaches to development challenges to produce new solutions and help countries grow past aid.

Approach:

We are seeking new ideas from inside and outside the Agency to promote innovative solutions to development challenges, through several new initiatives, including Development Innovation Ventures, Grand Challenges for Development and the Higher Education Solutions Network.

• We are partnering with new institutions, academics, experts, entrepreneurs, and the private sector to develop different ways of doing business to increase impact and strengthen results.
• We are leveraging partnerships with federal science agencies and academic institutions to address shared challenges that affect Americans at home and developing countries.
• We are building our own technical expertise and fuelling innovative solutions among staff.

Results:

• With a grant of less than $100,000, USAID is helping to save the lives of new mothers through its support of the development and testing of a safe and simple technique to stop post-partum hemorrhaging, potentially reducing the cost of treatment by 97 percent.
• Another grant of less than $100,000 leveraged nearly an additional $200,000 of outside funding for a program to measure the effectiveness of a monitoring platform using “quick count” photos to reduce election fraud in Afghanistan, a model being replicated in countries worldwide.
• We launched Grand Challenges for Development, a series of competitions that are applications from around the world with ideas to solve major development challenges.
• We recently deployed our first group of Field Investment Officers to regional missions in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, Egypt, Peru and Ukraine, providing our field offices with capital markets expertise and ensuring the local private sector becomes a critical component of USAID programming.