Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Chief Executive Officer Daniel W. Yohannes delivered remarks on Tuesday, February 22 at an MCC- sponsored conference entitled, Lessons Learned from MCC’s First Compacts, which focused on partner country results.
Seven years after the creation of MCC, the agency’s first five-year investments are reaching completion. MCC completed compacts with Honduras and Cape Verde at the end of last year and is on track to complete five more this year in Armenia, Benin, Nicaragua, Georgia, and Vanuatu. In this context, the agency is taking stock of preliminary results, looking ahead to the results to come, and examining the ways that its development model has worked and areas where it can be improved.
The daylong session began with a panel on country ownership, where stakeholders participated in a discussion about the successes and challenges of country-led assistance with partner nations. The panel was moderated by Greg Adams, Director of Aid Effectiveness at Oxfam America, and included Ghanaian Ambassador Daniel Ohene Agyekum, who delivered his insights into how the MCC model is working in Ghana.
The conference also featured a progress report from Mr. Yohannes. In his speech, Mr. Yohannes gave an update on the status of MCC compacts, as well as future goals for the agency. He also discussed preliminary results from the Honduras and Cape Verde compacts, and looked ahead to the independent impact evaluations that will verify income gains in these countries as a result of MCC’s partnerships. Following his remarks, Mr. Yohannes and MCC senior staff participated in a Q & A session with the audience.
The conference included a panel on lessons learned in MCC’s approach to results, based on experiences in the Cape Verde and Honduras Compacts. MCC staff offered an in-depth look at compact results for these countries, and candidly discussed both the successes and challenges of implementing a rigorous approach to results and working with country partners to reach compact targets.
The conference also featured the first paper in a new series, MCC Principles into Practice. This series offers a frank look at what it takes to make operational MCC’s core principles of good governance, country ownership, focus on results and transparency. The experiences captured in this series will inform MCC’s ongoing efforts to refine and strengthen its own model. This series also will allow others to benefit from and build on MCC’s lessons, particularly as the new U.S. Global Development Policy emphasizes many of the principles at the core of MCC’s model. The first paper in the series, Focus on Results, can be found on the MCC website: http://www.mcc.gov/pages/results/principlesintopractice
Mr. Yohannes’ remarks from the conference are available here.