Niger Selected By The Board Of The Millennium Challenge Corporation As Eligible For A Compact

The Millennium Challenge Corporation hosted its quarterly town hall meeting on the 20th December 2012. At this meeting, the Board selected Niger for the first time as a country eligible for a Compact program with MCC. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004 is a U.S. foreign aid agency that is fighting against global poverty. MCC has two forms of grants: Compacts which are large 5 year grants awarded to countries that meet the criteria and Threshold which are small grants for countries close to meeting the criteria.

Niger scored 12 green MCC performance indicators and has maintained green the Governance indicators for the last 2 years.

The MCC Board recognized the country’s efforts in good governance, the engagement and commitment of the Government of Niger in the fight against corruption, the respect of political rights, civil liberties, freedom of information and the adoption of policy reforms to strengthen economic freedom. The Board was particularly impressed and congratulated the authorities of Niger for their engagement in environmental protection.

The MCC report on Niger concludes:

Niger is one of the poorest countries in the world but has relatively strong policy performance, as indicated by two consecutive years passing the MCC indicators. Scorecards for Niger can be found athttp://www.mcc.gov/scorecards. In 2011, Niger was the first country to demonstrate that with sufficient political will, countries can restore their MCC eligibility. Niger’s constitutional reform, clean and competitive elections, and peaceful transfer of power to civilian government prompted MCC to reinstate Niger’s threshold eligibility last year. Since that time, Niger has pursued reforms related to democratic and economic governance and contributed to efforts to promote stability in the region. Niger has been a strong MCC partner in its threshold program, operating a dedicated program and policy analysis unit through both elected governments and even during its period of suspension. Niger is currently finalizing its constraints to growth analysis, an exercise that forms the basis of MCC’s compact development process, and this will now shift from a threshold program assessment tool to part of the compact development process. Capacity constraints may impact the timeline for the compact development process.

Special Thanks

Many thanks to James T. Thomson, Niger RPCV ’64 and FON member, who has worked on many development projects all over Africa. Jamie led the charge in drafting a letter to the MCC for the FON board, urging the MCC to approve the compact grant. His efforts will have positive impact for years to come.

Additional Media Coverage

The Patriotic Vanguard:
http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article6850

African Manager:
http://www.africanmanager.com/site_eng/detail_article.php?art_id=19476