{"id":7936,"date":"2012-03-22T11:10:03","date_gmt":"2012-03-22T11:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2012-03-22T11:10:03","modified_gmt":"2012-03-22T11:10:03","slug":"millennium-challenge-corporation-board-meeting-bad-news-for-malawi-senegal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/03\/22\/millennium-challenge-corporation-board-meeting-bad-news-for-malawi-senegal\/","title":{"rendered":"Millennium Challenge Corporation board meeting &#8211; BAD NEWS FOR MALAWI &#038; SENEGAL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> The MCC board meets Thursday. On the agenda: Zambia (new compact), Malawi (whither its compact) and Niger (revised threshold program)\u00a0Not on the agenda, but worth discussion: Senegal and upcoming impact evaluations. And at the risk of sounding like a\u00a0broken record, it would be nice if there were news on the two vacant board seats.<br \/>\nHowever on the Malawi part there are fears that the recent arrest \u00a0of high profile figures will affect the Malawi&#8217;s chances of getting the $ 350 million grant<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><strong>Bad News: Malawi &amp; Senegal<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>MCC signed a $350 million compact with Malawi in April 2011, but put the compact on\u00a0hold\u00a0in July following political violence and related concerns with Malawi\u2019s commitment to good governance. The president of Malawi recently told international donors to \u201cgo to hell.\u201d\u00a0 The MCC compact would have focused on Malawi\u2019s power sector and was expected to have far-reaching benefits for Malawi\u2019s citizens. I\u2019ve heard several MCC staff say the Malawi compact would have been the \u201cbest yet\u201d so they are understandably disappointed at the turn of events (but shouldn\u2019t be motivated by the sunk cost argument or pressure to get money out the door). The board is\u00a0now\u00a0faced with a tough decision: maintain the hold, suspend or terminate the compact. Merely maintaining the hold risks looking like inattention. So my guess is that the real debate is between suspension and termination.\u00a0 The optimist may choose suspension to send a signal to the government while still holding some policy leverage and hope for near-term change. The pessimist may choose outright termination to show that the MCC only works with good performers and can\u2019t spare slim funds or staff time when country performance reverses.<\/div>\n<div>Meanwhile, Senegal is not officially on the agenda, but\u00a0ongoing concerns\u00a0with President Wade\u2019s run for a third term in office, perceptions of corruption and spots of violence merit board attention (recall MCC has a $540 million compact with Senegal). The MCC\u00a0says it is watching\u00a0the election events and I doubt the board will take any action before the second round of elections this weekend, but it should be prepared for possible policy responses and risks to MCC\u2019s reputation.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The MCC board meets Thursday. On the agenda: Zambia (new compact), Malawi (whither its compact) and Niger (revised threshold program)\u00a0Not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[365,1311,364],"class_list":["post-7936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-aid","tag-grant","tag-mcc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}