Since its creation in 2004, MCC has been advancing and accelerating the conversation on aid effectiveness. Through rigorous oversight and monitoring, MCC countries are held accountable to high standards of both governance and project implementation throughout their MCC partnership. As a result, MCC’s country-led model produces investments that are sustainable and effectively spend aid dollars. By coupling this model with an evidence-based approach to country and project selection, MCC helps to foster democracy and open markets, generating a strong return on U.S. investment and new economic opportunities for American businesses.
Effective development assistance is built on four shared principles, as laid out by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation:
- Country ownership of development priorities;
- Focus on results;
- Inclusive partnerships for development;
- Transparency and accountability between partners and among stakeholders.
Country Ownership
Development investments are more effective and sustainable when they reflect a countries own priorities and strengthen a governments accountability to its citizens. At MCC, country ownership is embodied in the agency’s country partnerships. MCC’s partner country governments take the lead in setting priorities for MCC investments and implementing MCC-funded programs, in close consultation with their citizens and civil society. This keeps governments accountable to their citizens and stakeholders.Focus on Results
MCC is a results-driven agency committed to delivering systemic impact from its investments. Across its entire investment portfolio, MCC’s results are collected, measured and reported throughout and beyond the project lifecycle—from policy reforms countries make to become eligible for MCC funding, to interim outputs and outcomes as programs mature, to post-program impacts on poverty reduction and economic growth. This framework defines MCC’s approach to results, and it includes a focus on sustainable development outcomes and a commitment to utilizing the tools needed to effectively assess performance.A focus on results also means accepting that projects may sometimes fall short. MCC’s commitment to transparency and accountability means making all results public—both positive and negative—and learning from them to improve performance in the future.
Inclusive Partnerships for Development
MCC looks for opportunities to build partnerships with organizations that share our goal of achieving poverty reduction through economic growth. Through partnerships we can leverage our shared goals and unique strengths to increase the scale, impact, and sustainability of our operations and our investments. MCC aims to create an environment conducive for collaboration among national and local governments, the private sector, civil society, and non-governmental organizations because we know partnerships increase our shared impact.Transparency and Accountability
MCC has been at the forefront of promoting transparency in international development. Transparency is at the heart of accountability, and at MCC, we make every effort to inform the public about our work by making our data public and accessible on MCC.gov.MCC publishes all of our own evaluation data at a publicly available data catalog that contains anonymized metadata and microdata from rigorous independent evaluations. The release of this data is intended to facilitate and encourage broader use of the data, above and beyond the scope of the independent evaluations that produced this data.
Transparency and mutual accountability also play an important role within MCC’s investments in the reforms and projects implemented by partner countries. MCC encourages partner country governments and businesses to adopt transparent practices that increase accountability to citizens, civic organizations, and other development partners.