Organization[edit]USAID is organize

Organization[edit]

USAID is organized around country development programs managed by resident USAID offices in developing countries ("USAID missions"), supported by USAID's global headquarters in Washington, DC.[10]

Country development programs[edit]

USAID plans its work in each country around an individual country development program managed by a resident mission. Missions work in over fifty countries, consulting with their government and non-governmental organizations to identify programs that will receive USAID's assistance. As part of this process, the missions conduct socioeconomic analysis, design assistance, award contracts and grants, administer assistance (including evaluation and reporting), and manage flows of funds.

As countries develop and need less assistance, USAID shrinks and ultimately closes its resident missions. Since USAID's founding in 1961, it has closed its missions in a number of countries that had achieved a substantial level of prosperity, including South Korea, Turkey, Tunisia, and Costa Rica.

USAID also closes missions when requested by host countries for political reasons. In September 2012, the U.S. closed USAID/Russia at that country's request. Its mission in Moscow had been in operation for two decades.[11] On May 1, 2013, the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, asked USAID to close its mission, which had worked in the country for 49 years.[12] The closure was completed on September 20, 2013.

USAID missions are led by Mission Directors and are staffed both by USAID Foreign Service Officers and by development professionals from the country itself, with the host-country professionals forming the majority of the staff. The length of a Foreign Service Officer's "tour" in most countries is four years, to provide enough time to develop in-depth knowledge about the country. (Shorter tours of one or two years are usual in countries of exceptional hardship or danger.)

The Mission Director is a member of the U.S. Embassy's "Country Team" under the direction of the U.S. Ambassador. As a USAID mission works in an unclassified environment with relative frequent public interaction, most missions were initially located in independent offices in the business districts of capital cities. However, since the passage of the Foreign Affairs Agencies Consolidation Act in 1998 and the bombings of U.S. Embassies in east Africa in the same year, missions have gradually been moved into compounds alongside U.S. Embassy chancery buildings