Development Capital: USAID and the Rise of Development Contractors

Abstract

Development assistance from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is conceptualized as flowing through an assemblage that includes heterogeneous subjects and objects and that has coevolved with USAID's contracting regime. Key assemblage elements are contractors (firms, nongovernmental organizations, individuals), contracts, and procurements, and key flows include capital, knowledge, and people. The focus of this article is the rise over the past forty years of a lucrative development contracting industry in the United States, through a relational examination of USAID contractors and other key elements in the assemblage. This article traces the contemporary U.S. development assistance contracting assemblage and its geographies. This entails identifying and mapping the assemblage's component elements, its networks and flows, with the overall aim being to take steps toward building a critical geographical understanding of development capital.

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