CID Speaker Series: Does US development policy have a future under Trump?

Date: 

Friday, December 1, 2017, 12:00pm to 1:00pm

Location: 

Perkins Room - R429, Rubenstein 4th floor

Todd MossSpeaker: Todd Moss, Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs.

About the talk: Development policy has become increasingly intertwined with US national security, diplomacy, and economic policy. Yet the new administration has proposed severe budget cuts to USAID, State, and other relevant accounts. Where does development policy fit in the new administration? What will be different? Are there potential new opportunities?

About the speaker:

Todd Moss is senior fellow at the Center for Global Development where his research focuses on US-Africa relations, energy policy, and private investment. Moss is also a nonresident scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and an adjunct professor at Georgetown.

He served as COO/VP at the Center from 2009-2016. Moss is currently working on electrification in Africa, cash transfers in new oil economies, and ideas for upgrading US development finance tools. In the past he led CGD’s work on Nigerian debt, reconstruction in Zimbabwe, the future of the World Bank’s soft loan IDA, and the African Development Bank. Moss served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State 2007-2008 while on leave from CGD.

Previously, he has been a Lecturer at the London School of Economics (LSE) and worked at the World Bank, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and the Overseas Development Council. Moss is the author of numerous articles and books, including African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors (2011) and Oil to Cash: Fighting the Resource Curse with Cash Transfers (2015).

Moss also writes an international thriller series for Penguin’s Putnam Books about a State Department crisis manager including The Golden Hour (2014), Minute Zero (2015), Ghosts of Havana (2016), and The Shadow List (forthcoming 2017).