Ahead of the holiday break, US lawmakers reached agreement on a final FY2023 spending deal. After months of stalled negotiations, an omnibus appropriations package was far from guaranteed. But concerns about the consequences of a long-term continuing resolution—and the prospect of adding a major tas...

As African and US Leaders meet in the Washington Summit this week, we decided to ask the leader of a key agency, with a long track record on the continent, how it is contributing to more effective and expanded US engagement. We asked Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) CEO Alice Albright a series...

The existing MCC income cutoff is based on the robust principle that the best buys in global development are concentrated in the world’s poorest countries. (Indeed, when the Corporation started, it only worked in low-income countries for that reason). There is a declining marginal utility of a dolla...

MCC’s singular mission of tackling poverty through economic growth and its unique, data-driven approach to investment have long held bipartisan appeal. But MCC may be best known for partnering with lower-income countries that are relatively well-governed.

Few would question that building productive infrastructure has to be at the center of development goals, energy access, food security, and combatting and adapting to climate change. We just saw G7 countries make a bold commitment to infrastructure, launching the Partnership for Global Infrastructure...

The MCC is particular about which countries it supports. Among the requirements, Ukraine passes the agency’s (important and legitimate) hurdle that it only works in the world’s low- and lower-middle-income countries. It also passes a lot of other tests the MCC lays out for support, based on a scorec...

This week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee turns its attention to the resourcing needs of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and US International Development Finance Corporation—two agencies that fill distinct functions within the US development architecture. We’ll be listening for lawmakers’ ...

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has earned a reputation for its strong focus on results, which informs everything from country selection to the robust evaluation of project impacts. One of the bedrocks of MCC’s results orientation is its requirement that its projects achieve high economic...

Nearly six months into the fiscal year, Congress finally delivered an FY22 spending bill last week. But even after stalled negotiations prompted worries that lawmakers would be unable to reach a deal at all, the final measure is something of a disappointment—failing to deliver sufficient resources t...

CGD's Masood Ahmed speaks with Sida's Carin Jämtin and MCC's Alexia Latortue about their takeaways from the 2021 Development Leaders Conference, including the tensions between national and global challenges, how development agency leaders can address them, and what these decisions might mean for age...