The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Rajiv Shah, announced he will leave the agency early next year, said the New York Times. Shah served briefly as an agriculture undersecretary before becoming USAID administrator in 2010. He was a lead proponent of the Obama administration’s Feed the Future initiative that relies on public-private partnerships who collaborate with local groups on projects to improve food security in targeted countries.
The Times said Shah wanted to change the U.S. approach to foreign aid – “Rather than pouring billions of public dollars into programs to fight poverty, the agency used loan guarantees to get local banks and businesses to finance big projects, gave money directly to foreign development groups instead of to American contractors and helped push for changes in the way the United States ran its program for international food aid.