Friday, August 6, 2010

USAID Invests in 3,000 Sri Lanka IT Jobs


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a "new mindset for a new century" at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She cited in her speech at the Peter G. Peterson Institute :

Aid chases need, investment chases opportunity.
USAID will provide $10 million to train 3,000 high tech workers in Sri Lanka. InformationWeek reported:

Under director Rajiv Shah, USAID will partner with private outsourcers in Sri Lanka to teach workers there advanced IT skills like Enterprise Java (Java EE) programming, as well as skills in business process outsourcing and call center support. USAID will also help the trainees brush up on their English language proficiency.
USAID's Sri Lankan partners will pony up $26 million. American branded firms have gone global in a huge way the last decade. Many are used to government handouts.

How do these movements combine? Who's getting American taxpayer funding in Sri Lanka? Do corporate links tie back to American private equity underwriters or Clinton Global Initiative partners? It's getting harder to get answers to such questions.

Update 1-29-24:  Shah is now head of the Rockefeller Foundation and was recently interviewed on The David Rubenstein show.