Prime Minister Julia Gillard and President Barack Obama met on 16 November in Canberra and announced a series of initiatives to expand and deepen cooperation between Australia and the United States, including development cooperation.
Australia and the United States are working together to address global development challenges, including improving reading outcomes for primary school children, empowering women and girls through improved access to mobile phones, and cooperating on development challenges in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Afghanistan.
Statement of Development Cooperation
The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) are to expand their work in partnership to address global development challenges. The following initiatives are to be pursued under the US-Australia strategic partnership on international development, established in 2010.
All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development
AusAID and USAID, in partnership with World Vision US and World Vision Australia, will launch 'All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development' on November 18, in Washington DC. The program will focus global attention on finding ground breaking, scalable innovations that improve early grade reading outcomes for all children in poor countries during the first three years of primary education. The four partners are providing a combined total of more than US$20 million to launch the program. The initiative will begin with two important activities:
- All Children Reading Fund–Through a competitive selection process, the All Children Reading Fund will provide catalytic seed grant funding to successful applicants to undertake their activities. We will support pioneering thinking and implementation which offer sustainable and scalable solutions for early grade reading that can be brought to national scale.
- Mobiles for Reading–This activity will convene experts and educators to support reading attainment through the use of mobile devices. Through Mobiles for Reading and the mEducation Alliance, the partners will speed up the identification and evaluation of new technologies that take advantage of the rapid development of mobile applications, utilizing infrastructure that already exists in many poor countries.
GSMA mWomen Global Development Alliance
USAID and AusAID are to partner with the GSMA (GSM Association) and Visa, Inc. through a Global Development Alliance (GDA) to close the mobile phone gender gap and accelerate women's empowerment and leadership opportunities. The partnership will improve women's access to life-enhancing services including financial inclusion, education and healthcare via the mobile phone. Total funding under the Global Development Alliance is almost US$10 million over three years. The GDA is part of the GSMA mWomen Program, a global public-private partnership between the worldwide mobile industry and the international development community.
Building on their previous commitments of $500,000 each, AusAID and USAID are contributing an additional approximately $7 million to this program. That will be augmented by contributions from Visa and GSMA to reach a total budget of around $10 million over three years. Key activities under this expanded program include:
- technical assistance grants to mobile operators to help them implement mWomen opportunities and products
- a grant mechanism for NGOs to work with mobile operators and design activities that address the barriers to mobile uptake among women, particularly technical literacy and traditional attitudes surrounding women's ownership of mobile phones
- research into women's wants and needs, such as within mobile financial services
- pilot activities for bringing women into the retail stream of the mobile value chain
- focused attention on the mobile user experience of women living on less than $2/day, to maximize life-enhancing benefits from mobile phone use.
Anticipated outcomes include greater women's empowerment, leadership, education, employment and entrepreneurship.
Partnering for Justice in Afghanistan
As Afghan forces begin to take the lead in defending their country, Australia and the United States are committed to working together to promote transparency, accountability, and strong Afghan civil institutions such as the justice system. Australia will assist efforts to strengthen the Afghan justice system by deploying three Australian Civilian Corps justice advisers to the Justice Center in Parwan (JCIP).
Established in partnership between the U.S. and Afghan Governments in 2010, the JCIP enables the transition of U.S. military detainees into the Afghan criminal justice system through fair and transparent trials conducted by the Government of Afghanistan under Afghan law. The Australian Civilian Corps deployment is expected to occur in early 2012. The Australian advisors will be the first non-U.S. advisors to Afghan justice officials at the JCIP.