Administrator and Deputy Administrator Speeches

Through rigorous data analysis, we have identified three countries in sub-Saharan Africa – Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia – as ripe for the kind of agricultural transformation that can lift hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty and help expand the food supply across the region and beyond. So, through an initiative we are calling Feed the Future Accelerator, we are doubling down on our investments in these three countries. We believe these countries have the potential to become regional breadbaskets helping to feed the world.

I do want to recognize – and Emily and I just talked about the tragedy of the historic floods that have really besieged really small communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, very specifically Jablanica and Konjic. I know that Ambassador Murphy and Emily are already working with affected communities to support recovery efforts and even visited and met with the affected people. That means the world, I’m sure, to them, that someone has their back. But, our thoughts, of course, go out to those communities.

So today, I’m announcing that the United States will contribute more than $572 million dollars to humanitarian efforts in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. This new funding brings total U.S. humanitarian assistance to more than $1.2 billion in the region this fiscal year. These resources will help our partners provide badly needed basics like food, water, shelter, and health care. 

The United States looks forward to collaborating with Gavi, our G7 partners, the African Union, and Africa CDC to advance more of these sustainable improvements to African health systems – which will improve community wellbeing, build more resilience and redundancy in the global vaccine supply chain, help prepare for the health challenges of the future, and support local economic growth in the process.

I want to commend our collective efforts to make PGI an initiative built to last. The standing Secretariat sets PGI up for longevity and success, and we expect that PGI will remain an on-going G7 priority across multiple presidencies.

President Biden is laser-focused on labor rights at home and indeed has shown tremendous initiative and leadership on promoting global labor rights. And so, it was very important in having this visit for us to sit down and dig into just those issues. And, one of the arguments that I made today with the government, and it's an argument again that U.S. officials are making all around the world, is that labor rights and workers abilities – a worker's ability and workers' abilities to advocate for themselves without fear of persecution, is absolutely critical to growing the economy in a manner that expands livelihoods and prosperity for all Cambodians.