Rosalynn Carter’s Invitation to Me to Work for President Carter on the Global Development Initiative

Rosalynn Carter, the past first lady of the United States, who passed away on November 19, 2023, invited me to work with President Carter. After the Berlin Wall came down, Rosalynn Carter and I served on the International Commission on Peace and Food (ICPF), formed in 1989, chaired by Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, The peace dividend from reduced defense expenditures would be spent on addressing problems of development, particularly food insecurity. Mrs. Carter, Queen Noor of Jordan, and I, among others, were ICPF members. When ICPF met in Moscow, Mrs. Carter asked if I would be interested in working on President Carter’s projects. I was taking leave from the World Bank to work for the University of Florida as a professor, and I jumped at this unusual opportunity.

One of the central pieces of Carter’s post-presidential work was helping newly democratizing countries. with their elections overseen by Carter, to develop adjustment programs. The idea of financial support for reforms through coordinated donor funding came to be known as the Global Development Initiative (GDI). The Carter Center appointed me as the founding director of GDI. I worked on GDI over a period of three years.

Adjustment programs with broad domestic political support would then be funded by the World Bank, IMF, and other donors. Guyana and Ethiopia, then emerging from political and economic crises, were our focus.

In my initial discussions, colleagues in the World Bank and IMF were skeptical about President Carter’s role. High-level interventions in adjustment programs would bring visibility with potential for high exposure and elevated risk of failure. Yet, they were willing to try it.

For a donor consultation in Guyana, in January 1994, donors invited President Carter. He and Mrs. Carter accepted. Arriving in Guyana, donors asked if they could meet with President Carter to learn about the reasons for his interest in this project. He and I met with the donors together in a private meeting the day before formal donor consultations.

The first question donors asked was, “What makes you interested in this project?”

Much to our collective astonishment, based on my notes, Carter explained, “my country has done much harm to developing countries by propping up dictatorships and crushing democracies—as in Cuba, Chile, and Guyana. While I was president, I made human rights a major part of my foreign policy agenda, introducing reforms in the way the CIA operated. But the one-term presidency was not long enough time to propagate these innovative approaches. So, I decided to continue with this agenda in my post presidency.”

Donors were stunned to hear Carter’s story but were convinced that he was serious about the project. We had a far-ranging discussion about the de-nationalization of the sugar industry, which IMF and the World Bank preferred. Carter acknowledged that Jagan was a socialist at heart but an honest man and needed a chance to rule after the country had been crushed with corruption[1]. Having studied blind copies of my correspondence with President Jagan prior to the donors’ meeting, Carter had become deeply knowledgeable about the reform issues. Donors were convinced that he understood the country and its reform challenges.

The meeting was successful; donors pledged $300 million in additional aid, and the research work of graduate students proved useful in garnering donor support, including from the World Bank and IDA. GDI continued its assistance to the government, acting as an honest broker between the government and donors.

Carter was ahead of his times. He recognized that high indebtedness was a big issue for Guyana. Neither the US Treasury nor IMF nor the World Bank supported debt forgiveness and approached me to express their concerns about Carter stepping away from the Clinton administration position. IMF and the World Bank later launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative in 1996 to ensure that no poor country faces an unmanageable debt burden.

* Uma Lele is President, International Association of Agricultural Economists, formerly Senior Advisor in the World Bank.

[1] As early as mid-1962, JFK informed the British prime minister that the notion of an independent state led by Jagan “disturbs us seriously,” adding: “We must be entirely frank in saying that we simply cannot afford to see another Castro-type regime established in this Hemisphere. …we should set as our objective an independent British Guiana under some other leader.” See National Security Archives. 2020. “CIA Covert Operations: The 1964 Overthrow of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana.” April 6, Washington, DC.  https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2020-04-06/cia-covert-operations-overthrow-cheddi-jagan-british-guiana-1964. See, also: https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHP/1961/Month%2010/Day%2025/JFKWHP-1961-10-25-A

KEYWORDS   adjustment, CIA, debt, democratic elections, development