A farmer shows cotton on a farm in Qaha, north of Cairo in September 2011 (Amr Dalsh/Courtesy Reuters).

Agricultural is the third largest productive sector of Egypt’s economy after manufacturing and mining, which includes oil and gas. It represents 14 percent of overall GDP, but directly employs at least a third of Egypt’s labor force, and indirectly employs many more through the processing and transportation of agricultural products. Nonetheless, Egyptian agriculture has long been neglected by politicians. Cotton production has dropped over 75 percent from 1972 to 2009, and the amount of arable land (2.4 percent of Egypt’s territory) has hardly budged in that time. Read more »

I recently hosted Ambassador Don Steinberg, Deputy Administrator of USAID, at an on-the-record CFR meeting to discuss the broad transformation underway at USAID. (You can view above a brief video interview that was filmed after the meeting.) This ambitious reform effort, called USAID Forward, is intended to reposition USAID as an “innovator” in global development, and also to establish a “relentless focus on results.” After years of decline (declining staff, declining expertise, declining reputation), USAID is adding personnel (850 new hires in the past 2 years), bringing experts in-house, gaining clarity around seven core priorities (food security, global health, climate change, sustainable economic growth, democracy promotion, humanitarian assistance, and conflict prevention), and introducing better measurement and evaluation (M&E) systems. Steinberg was optimistic about USAID’s ability to succeed in this transformation, although he spoke candidly about intensifying budget pressures, the imperative of convincing Americans that USAID can be “good stewards,” the rise of new actors in development (US official development assistance last year was roughly $30 billion, but private philanthropies donated some $36 billion to international development), and the ongoing cultural challenges involved in shifting the mission of this large bureaucracy (frankly, it’s hard to push innovation and risk-taking in a structurally risk-averse organization). Read more »

A Buddhist monk waits to pray at a World AIDS Day commemoration in Colombo, Sri Lanka on December 1, 2011 (Dinuka Liyanawatte/Courtesy Reuters).

Since the first cases of AIDS came to public attention in 1981, the virus has claimed over 25 million lives worldwide. Preventing HIV transmission and providing care for the 34 million people living with the virus remains one of the foremost public health challenges of our time. Even in communities with high rates of HIV/AIDS, the virus is still too often a source of deep social stigma, dissuading those infected from seeking help. Although combating the spread of AIDS requires coordination and support from all sectors, key stakeholders have often exacerbated the epidemic. In South Africa, former President Mbeki’s rejection of the basic scientific consensus on AIDS led to an estimated 343,000 otherwise preventable deaths from 1999 to 2007. While religious leaders are unusually well-placed to provide followers with guidance about this preventable disease, they have in many cases contributed to the epidemic by denying the importance of condoms in HIV prevention and contributing to the stigma that AIDS patients already confront. Read more »

A health worker holds up a blood sample at hospital that provides treatment for HIV/AIDS patients in northern Vietnam in November 2010 (Nguyen Huy Kham/Courtesy Reuters).

In a speech on Tuesday at the National Institutes of  Health, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  called for countries to work together to establish “an AIDS-free generation,” meaning virtually no children are born HIV positive, they would have a far lower risk of HIV infection when they become teenagers than they do at present, and where people who become infected with HIV are prevented from developing AIDS and from spreading the virus. These ambitious objectives seemed impossible not long ago, but recent scientific advances make the notion of an AIDS-free generation conceivable. In the speech, Secretary Clinton proposed three main HIV/AIDS interventions, all based on successful clinical trials: voluntary medical circumcision for men, drug treatment for  infected pregnant women to prevent HIV transmission to the infant, and antiretroviral drugs for recently infected patients to reduce the risk that their sexual partners will contract HIV from them. Nevertheless, although the vision of an AIDS-free generation is tremendously exciting, generating sufficient funding for AIDS treatment and prevention remains a daunting task. At present, worldwide AIDS spending is about $16 billion each year. Even if only half of the 34 million infected individuals receive drug treatment by 2015, that would require worldwide AIDS spending to grow to $23 billion. Given the current state of the global economy, the challenges of increasing government contributions loom large. Read more »

Kyrgyz President Roza Otunbayeva casts her ballot during the presidential election at a polling station in the capital Bishkek, October 30, 2011 (Sultan Dosaliev/Courtesy Reuters).

Charles Landow offers a selection of news and scholarly work in this week’s edition of Missing Pieces. Enjoy and have a good weekend.

• Kyrgyzstan’s Election: Former prime minister Almazbek Atabayev won Kyrgyzstan’s presidential election on Sunday. He will take over on December 31 from Roza Otunbayeva, who has served as caretaker president since an uprising toppled the previous regime last year. As Voice of America explains, this will be the first voluntary transfer of power in Central Asia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sunday’s polls were decidedly imperfect, according to the OSCE. But “observers overall assessed the voting positively”–a solid outcome in a country torn apart after last year’s uprising, as this report from the International Crisis Group shows. The Economist explains that Atabayev will need to repair lingering ethnic tensions, as well as combat organized crime and boost the economy. The new president is seen as friendly to Russia; he pledged on Tuesday to close the U.S. air base at Manas, a crucial supply post for the war in Afghanistan, when its lease expires in 2014. Read more »

Yemenis stand next to empty gas cylinders awaiting gas supplies in Sana'a (Ammar Awad/Courtesy Reuters).

As anti-government demonstrations continue unabated in Yemen, there are few signs of resolution to its current impasse. Growing violence, in Sana’a and in the north and southwest provinces, threatens to dissolve into full-fledged civil war. This would not only be (further) destabilizing to the region, but runs the risk of precipitating a full-blown humanitarian crisis. Yemen already struggles with acute problems of food security, water shortages, and unemployment. A collapse of the state would reverberate across the Gulf, and demand further international involvement. Read more »

A Kenyan woman prepares ribbons ahead of World Aids Day at Beacon of Hope centre, a non-government organization formed to address women's problem of HIV/AIDS in Nairobi in 2004 (Anthony Njuguna/Courtesy Reuters).

A study published online today in the Lancet suggests that hormonal methods of contraception, particularly long-lasting injections, are associated with increased risk of acquiring HIV. Not only were women in the study twice as likely to become infected, but male partners of HIV-positive women were also twice as likely to become infected if the woman was using a long-lasting hormonal contraception as opposed to no contraception.

The study, supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Gates Foundation, adds urgency to a long-simmering debate over whether there is a link between hormonal contraception and HIV. Suspicions date back to the 1990s, but no conclusive work has been done. The Lancet study is also not conclusive due to small sample sizes, and because the study was not specifically designed to examine contraception use. But the doubts raised are sufficient that a full-blown, conclusive study should be launched as soon as possible. Read more »

A woman walks past children playing in a village in Kunar province, Afghanistan, September 22, 2011 (Erik de Castro/Courtesy Reuters).

This week, my colleague Gayle Lemmon and I published a new Council on Foreign Relations report, “Maternal Health in Afghanistan.” With all the bad news coming out of that country, it was refreshing for us to write about glimmers of hope on the maternal health front. Yes, the statistics are still grim: one out of eleven Afghan women is likely to die in childbirth during her lifetime; Afghan women are 200 times more likely to die giving birth than by a bomb or bullet. Not surprisingly, Save the Children this year ranked Afghanistan the worst country in the world to be a mother. Yet, there are some positive signs. Over the past decade, the international community has made some important investments to improve maternal care that are now just beginning to pay off. Read more »

A worker displays a handful of rice at a market in Hefei, Anhui province (Jianan Yu/Courtesy Reuters).

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) wrapped up its star-studded annual meeting yesterday. As a forum to connect corporations interested in social investments, NGOs, and government policy makers working on innovative development solutions, there are few conferences to rival CGI. It attracts numerous heads of state visiting New York for the UN General Assembly meetings (Barack Obama addressed the gathering for the third year in a row); CEOs and social entrepreneurs also attend in droves. This year’s session focused on three themes: creating jobs in the 21^st century, promoting sustainable consumption, and scaling up what works to empower women and girls. Read more »