How Companies Can Collaborate with USAID Under the Biden Administration

We’ve seen firsthand how, together, USAID and the private sector can combine resources, networks, technical expertise, and technologies to kickstart innovation, unlock new markets, crowd-in additional private- and public-sector financing, and accelerate progress on shared challenges threatening companies and communities alike. 

Meanwhile, for their part, forward-looking companies recognize that effective and contextually relevant partnerships are essential to tackling complex challenges in the communities where they source and sell, helping them address and achieve company targets aligned to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

With a 12% increase in USAID’s budget under the Biden administration, we see four key areas primed for cross-sector partnerships over the coming years: global health, climate change, internet access and digital skills, and transforming the global food system.

Below, across each of these critical areas, we’ll explore specific partnership avenues, as well as recent examples of how USAID, companies, and other cross-sector actors have collaborated to scale impact.

Interested in how to actually get these partnerships off the ground? Check out the end of this paper for practical partnership resources, guides, and next steps.

From the global pandemic to Ebola outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea to the interruption of communicable and non-communicable disease treatment during the COVID crisis, global health will be at the center of the Biden administration’s agenda.

For example, on February 19, at the G7 summit, President Biden announced that the United States would provide $2 billion to the COVID-19 Global Access Facility (COVAX), an innovative financing mechanism to deliver safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income economies. At the same summit, President Biden also called on the global community to provide similar financial support for vaccine distribution, and he reiterated the United States’ commitment to advancing global health security. 

The private sector plays a critical role in realizing global health goals: Over the past year, we’ve seen companies channel tremendous levels of R&D into vaccine development; modify work policies to comply with public health needs; and reinvent their supply chains, manufacturing, and product lines to meet urgent global health needs. Looking forward, companies in the health sector and beyond will continue to be valuable partners to advance global health access and outcomes.

Possible avenues for cross-sector collaboration for global health may include:

• Digital Health Innovation: Working together to develop and pilot new digital health technologies to expand patient access to quality care in emerging markets.
• Data and Tech for Improved Health Delivery: Aggregating health data and harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) for better tracking and treatment of disease.
• Health Financing: Collaborating to design, pilot, and co-invest in blended finance and results-based financing solutions to improve health service coverage.
• Health Supply Chain Strengthening: Coordinating to deliver essential health products more efficiently to patients and providers worldwide.
• Vaccine Access and Distribution: Partnering to innovate, test, and scale vaccine supply chains—including manufacturing and last-mile distribution—to address the pressing challenge of vaccine access in emerging markets.
• Market Access: Partnering to improve patients’ access to health-related products and services in emerging markets. 
• Health Systems Strengthening: Collaborating to improve countries’ health systems—including health-related institutions, human capital, and resources—to strengthen healthcare delivery. 

President Biden wasted little time signaling the importance of addressing climate change during his term in office. Within hours of his Inauguration, President Biden issued an executive order for the U.S. to rejoin the Paris Agreement, and, in late April, he further announced a new target for the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50-52%, based on 2005 levels, by 2030. Biden further positioned “climate considerations as an essential element of U.S. foreign policy and national security.”

Meeting domestic and global climate goals will require substantial investment, innovation, and collaboration across sectors, industries, and borders.

Possible avenues for cross-sector collaboration on climate change may include:

• Climate-Smart Agriculture: Co-investing to support smallholder farmers to adopt climate-smart agricultural practices and technologies that build resilience—by boosting productivity and enabling them to adapt to changing conditions in the short term—and mitigate carbon emissions, thereby lessening climate change impacts over time.  
• Climate Resilient Communities: Engaging target communities to define needs, co-design solutions, and take collective action on climate change adaptation projects in highly vulnerable areas, including reinforcing/safeguarding critical infrastructure, harnessing private sector innovation and R&D, or promoting climate-resilient agriculture.
• Company Climate Commitments: Collaborating across sectors on initiatives that help companies—such as Microsoft, PepsiCo, Amazon, and others—accelerate progress toward ambitious net-zero commitments. Contributing initiatives could focus on, for example, renewable energy, reforestation, and regenerative agriculture, packaging, and transport solutions, and climate tech innovation.
• Climate Finance: Co-designing and co-funding blended investment funds to support sustainable ecosystem management for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
• Tech Innovation for Better Climate Data and Predictions: Partnering to develop, pilot, and deploy tech innovations to map and monitor ecosystem change and predict climate-linked natural disasters and sea-level rise.
• Pre-Competitive Data Sharing: Collaborating with USAID or other neutral third parties to facilitate pre-competitive data sharing to support climate modeling, collaboratively map landscape or watershed changes, and unlock new solutions.
• Circular Economy Transition: Taking collaborative action to advance the circular economy, thereby reducing emissions from the production of goods and building system resilience to external shocks.
• Technological Innovation for the Energy Sector: Co-developing, piloting, and leap-frogging critical technologies, such as battery energy storage systems, that promote and scale emissions reductions in the energy sector. 

Globally, approximately 45% of people still lack broadband access. The pandemic underscored the impacts of this digital divide: without reliable and affordable access to the internet, children and adults miss out on critical opportunities to learn, work, and compete in the 21st century. 

Around the world, access to the internet and basic digital skills will be essential catalysts for progress—spanning sectors ranging from health to education to workforce development and economic growth and diversification. And, conversely, without access to the internet, there will be severe limits on social and economic change. In today’s economy, this is an essential building block for progress.

It’s a critical area for companies as well: Businesses thrive where customers and suppliers are equipped to engage in the digital economy, and participation in today’s global workforce increasingly demands digital skills.

Possible avenues for cross-sector collaboration for equitable access to the internet and digital skills may include:

• Last Mile Capacity: Collaboratively assessing barriers to last-mile internet access to shape targeted, local solutions and identify opportunities for co-investment. (Together, explore additional regulatory and enabling environment constraints for expansion in target markets.)
• Broadband Infrastructure Development: Co-investing in infrastructure development and/or in local telcos and internet service providers to expand internet access in emerging markets, particularly in rural areas and among marginalized populations. 
• Women’s Digital Access: Partnering to create and/or scale solutions that improve women’s access to and use of digital technology, to facilitate women’s economic empowerment.
• Global Digital Divide Strategy Development: Developing global strategies and new cross-sector coalitions to identify and overcome obstacles to expanded internet access.
• Digital Literacy for Small Businesses: Partnering to create programs and services that increase basic digital literacy for small- and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets, to help entrepreneurs better take advantage of the digital economy.
• Digital Skills for the Emerging Workforce: Partnering to create initiatives that help universities expand and upgrade their offerings in computer science, data science, and other specific technology areas; and/or train teachers to integrate technology into numeracy, literacy, and soft skills development.

Since COVID-19 began, the United Nations has sounded the alarm on the looming humanitarian disaster that is hunger, food insecurity, and child malnutrition. Before COVID-19 struck, eliminating hunger was already on the shortlist of foreign aid and development priorities. Despite the global community stepping up last year to provide record donations, UN experts expect 2021 to be worse.

Meanwhile, around the world, companies, the public sector, and other organizations are increasingly warning that our current food system is unsustainable. From plastics in the ocean to soil degradation to tens of billions of pounds of food waste each year: Cross-sector collaboration will be essential to shaping a food system that can sustainably feed 10 billion people.

Possible avenues for cross-sector collaboration for sustainable agriculture and the global food system may include:

• Market Systems Development: Partnering to strengthen and diversify local market ecosystems and value chains, enhance local resilience, and bring nutritious, locally produced foods to market at affordable prices. 
• Expanded Opportunity for Smallholder Farmers: In overlapping company supply chains, collaborating—across sectors and with pre-competitive partners—to improve smallholders’ access to appropriate finance, quality farm inputs and equipment, training and technical assistance, and livable incomes.
• Women’s Empowerment in Agricultural Supply Chains: Partnering to test and scale solutions to improve women’s access to land, agricultural inputs, training, opportunities, and finance across global agricultural supply chains.
• Regenerative Agriculture: Partnering to help companies meet regenerative agriculture goals, through farmer-centric approaches. Partners can help connect farmers to technical assistance; provide agronomy tools and training to improve yield and profit; support data collection and crop rotation; facilitate access to finance, and explore avenues to map and secure land rights. 
• Digital Innovation for Smallholder Farmers: Partnering to co-create, pilot, and advance digital innovations that improve smallholder farmers’ access to technical assistance, market information, and buyers; or that facilitate improved supply chain management in emerging markets.
• Sustainable Fisheries and Seafood Supply Chains: Collaborating to design, pilot, and scale solutions for sustainable fisheries management and seafood supply chain traceability and sustainability.
• Food Waste Reduction: Partnering, together with financial institutions, to develop blended finance structures to increase investment in food loss and waste reduction strategies.
• Healthy Consumer Choices: Collaborating to design healthier consumer products and to co-design and jointly implement programs that nudge consumer choice toward more nutritious, nature-friendly diets. 

The world faces enormous challenges that will demand commitment, determination, innovation, and ambitious cross-sector collaboration. The good news: We’ve heard from, and worked with, an ever-growing number of private- and public-sector partners who are ready and eager to collaborate to tackle today’s greatest development and global business challenges.

In the Biden era, we see significant opportunities for companies and USAID to collaborate for impact. However, opportunity means little without action. For companies looking for clear next steps—and the tools to get there—we’ve assembled a list of helpful partnership resources, pulling from our experience designing and implementing over 300 cross-sector partnerships. Below, you’ll find accessible guidance on how to identify high-impact opportunities, design successful cross-sector partnerships, and manage and scale collaboration with success. 

We look forward to supporting both companies and USAID on the road ahead, as we work together to solve shared challenges and forge new opportunities.