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The U.S. Agency for International Development recently reestablished a group called the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. It was chartered back in 1946, but it hasn’t met in a couple of years. Now it’s back to work. The Federal Drive with Tom Temin talked about it with Nisha Biswal, the Senior Vice President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Chairman of the Advisory Committee.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin
And you’re not just a Chamber of Commerce person who’s interested in foreign aid, you have acted as a federal operator, right in the area of diplomacy and foreign aid. Tell us about yourself a little bit.

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Nisha Biswal
Oh, sure. Well, you know, before I came to the Chamber in 2017, I had a good 20 years in the federal government, both in Congress working on appropriations, and on the authorizing committees in the House, and then at USAID a couple of times, and then at the State Department. So in all of those iterations, I was very much a part of how USAID advances the core interests and foreign policy objectives of the United States. And so it’s an honor to be here in this new capacity as the chair of the ACVFA Committee.

Tom Temin
And tell us more about the committee. What is its charter? What does it provide to USAID?

Nisha Biswal
Well, so ACVFA as you noted earlier, Tom was set up even before we had a USAID as a means of bringing advice and insight into our foreign assistance to the U.S. government. Since the creation of USAID ACVFA has been an advisor to the agency and to the administrator on key areas and priorities as well as management reforms that the agency has undertaken. And every AID administrator kind of reconvenes that reestablishes that committee and so under the leadership of the current AID administrator, Ambassador Samantha Power, we have reconstituted ACVFA. And we have I think one of the most interesting engaging diverse ACVFA committees in our in our history.

Tom Temin
Tell us more about the committee makeup, I believe it’s limited to 30, by the charter by law. So you’ve got to pick carefully, I guess.

Nisha Biswal
Indeed, and we do have 30 members. And I’m proud to say that we have such a broad and diverse cross section of perspectives. We have private sector represented through representatives from companies like Starbucks on sustainability, or Microsoft or PepsiCo, which works so much on cold chain and food agricultural supply chains. We have members of our implementation or NGO community that work on democracy and governance or anti corruption or combating disinformation. We have development implementers, from both the U.S. PVO community, private voluntary organizations, and from our implementing partners overseas. One of the key areas that I think the administrator has been focused on has been on inclusive development and focusing on localization making sure that the voices of our employees, our local partners are elevated. And so we have a number of ACVFA members who represent local perspectives in different regions.

Tom Temin
And just as a detail, I noticed there’s someone from the International Republican Institute and somebody from the National Democratic Institute. So there’s a little bipartisan quality, it sounds like to the committee as well.

Nisha Biswal
Well, Tom AID, USAID has always been supported in a very bipartisan way. And so ACVFA has always had voices on it that represent, you know, the spectrum of political opinion as well as developmental opinion. And I will say on that note, the AID administrator was recently recognized at the U.S. global leadership campaign alongside George Bush, President George Bush and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). And it was a very bipartisan validation of the important work of USAID.

Tom Temin
We’re speaking with Nisha Biswal. She’s senior vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and chairman of USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. And by the way, voluntary, how does that fit in to the idea?

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Nisha Biswal
Well, it’s voluntary in that members of the committee volunteer their time and expertise. There’s no compensation involved. And there’s no coercion involved either. Were all very, very honored to serve.

Tom Temin
And I’m interested in what types of management are recommendations that the committee might have for USAID because USAID operates in a difficult environment. They give billions of foreign aid every year. But it comes through local organizations that might be in countries that otherwise are in pretty rough shape. And so there are difficulties in accountability of funding, ensuring that the agents locally are acting in a way that reflect the values of the agency and the laws of the United States. So it’s a complicated management chain, does the committee get into looking at ways to making sure that everything happens the way it should happen?

Nisha Biswal
We do. So the way that we have set up the committee this time, and we just had, in fact, one public meeting on Dec. 2, where we announced that we’re going to be setting up four working groups. And these working groups will focus on some of these key areas that we want to dive deeper into and provide recommendations to the agency. Those include democracy and anti corruption, particularly looking at misinformation and disinformation. As well as how we provide support to democratic bright spots. We have another working group on climate change and food security and the nexus between the two, particularly as we are facing twin crises of accelerating climate change and the impact on food, and agriculture and food insecurity. I mentioned inclusive development with a focus on localization, equity and inclusion. And then the last working group and one that I’m particularly going to play a key role on is on private sector engagement, as we look at a very daunting set of global challenges. We also know that public sector support USAID support in and of itself is insufficient, and that we have to leverage private sector resources and capabilities. And so the private sector engagement will be an opportunity to see how we maximize and leverage the private sector to advance development objectives.

Tom Temin
Right, that development idea, I guess, is really important, because you don’t want nations say the Africa Summit just took place here in Washington, for example. You don’t want them to be forever colonial dependent, in effect, not in legal structure, but you want development to happen. So that countries self Ignite. Isn’t that really the ultimate goal here?

Nisha Biswal
Absolutely. And so what USAID focuses on are the ways in which we can unleash growth in a way that’s inclusive, that sustainable, that is addressing all of the different aspects of citizen participation in the country’s growth and governance.

Tom Temin
And just on that theme of Africa is kind of a maybe a metaphor for the greater world that USAID engages in, and the State Department for that matter. And you have China investing huge amounts of money in development in Africa. They want the minerals there they want, whatever it is that Africa has to offer. Do you feel that USAID work, State Department work and generally, the United States is up to the challenge of just to put it crudely keeping Africa out of China’s hands?

Nisha Biswal
Yeah, I mean, I think I would put it a little bit differently, which is that the principles that guide our development work, are transparency, you know, we’re very, very strong, that our assistance is done in a transparent way, in an inclusive way, in a way that emphasizes the needs, the priorities of the countries in which we operate, and that we make sure that we’re following the international standards around, whether it’s human rights, whether it’s governance, etc., making sure that we’re looking at marginalized groups at gender imbalances, etc. The extent to which resources are provided by other countries, we hope that these standards that we put in place will help the recipient countries demand the same kinds of standards on other assistance that they receive.

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Tom Temin
All right, and well, let’s hope so. And then just getting down to some of the brass tacks here before we wind up the committees and the subcommittees meet and talk about these different ideas, anti corruption, climate change, inclusive development and private sector engagement. What form then do the recommendations take when you deliver them to the staff at USAID and the political leadership and do they listen to you?

Nisha Biswal
Absolutely. So we’re just starting the work of this particular committee. It was reconstituted earlier this year, and the main focus of our work will be over the next two years. What I expect is that we will both have ongoing influence through the committee meetings with the administrator and with key USAID staff, as well as a body of work and some recommendations that we will be able to put forward in the course of these next two years. And those recommendations I suspect will also be taken on board by the leadership of the agency and will be made available publicly as well.

Tom Temin
And by the way, for people that serve on this, or many of the other dozens of federal advisory committees that are throughout the government, in general, do people need some sort of dispensation from their home organizations to spend time on this? Very often, you find that sometimes these external activities take up as much time as the job where the person works primarily and gets paid from.

Nisha Biswal
I believe that every member of the committee comes in with an understanding of the commitment that they are making of their time and expertise, and particularly as they take on leadership roles, as I am on chairing ACVFA, or the co-chairs of all of our working groups, and that those are conversations that they have had internally, most of the people who are on this play leadership roles in the organizations that they are part of. And I think it’s a win win situation as well, right? Because in playing that leadership role in serving in that capacity, you’re also able to have better insight and understanding of how the agency works. And so it’s, it’s a true privilege to be in that position of service.

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