Bolivia

USAID supports more equitable access to education and technologies for disenfranchised students.

Overview

Bolivia continues to face significant development challenges including social exclusion, income inequality, lack of opportunities, and conflict.

• 60% of the country’s population lives in poverty and 37.7% live in extreme poverty. Rural poverty is  77.3%.
• Of every 1,000 live births, 54 infants die. Life expectancy in Bolivia, at 64.4 years, is well below the region’s average.
• There is continued migration to urban areas. Currently 64% of Bolivians live in cities. This has created enormous service delivery challenges.
• Despite improved school attendance, illiteracy remains high, especially among women (19.3%). On average, children in rural areas attend school for just over four years.

Programs

USAID is helping Bolivians address their development challenges through programs that support and complement the Government of Bolivia’s National Development Plan. In Fiscal Year 2008, USAID provided $69 million in grant funding to Bolivia for the following programs:

Governing Justly & Democratically

(In closeout process):

USAID supported Bolivian efforts to strengthen democratic institutions and processes consistent with the Organization of American States’ Inter American Democratic Charter.   USAID collaborated with key democratic institutions including the Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch, the Congress, regional and municipal governments, and civil society organizations.

Economic Growth

USAID helps create opportunities for small- and medium-sized Bolivian businesses and small farmers, increasing their incomes through high-value, market-driven, and value-added production. USAID seeks to expand financial services to underserved areas; improve agricultural technology and market access; and increase the productivity of small Bolivian businesses.

• Since 2001, USAID has helped more than 50,000 poor farm families to increase their incomes on average by 50 percent.
• Since 2003, USAID helped create over $43 million in value-added exports, generate some 3,000 permanent, full-time jobs (many of these for women), and incorporate over 350 small enterprises into export chains.

Environment

Using innovative public-private partnerships, USAID seeks to improve forestry management; conserve targeted parks and protected areas; and reduce urban and industrial pollution through improved environmental management.

• USAID helped Bolivia to become the world’s leader in forest certification, with more than 2.2 million hectares of forest voluntarily certified.

Investing In People

USAID helps to improve the provision of health services for Bolivia’s peri-urban and rural poor. USAID supports community-based programs that strengthen the capacity of individuals, families and communities to     improve health; expand delivery of quality, high-impact services; and   improve the institutional capacity of healthcare providers.

• With USAID support, PROSALUD and CIES, two private not-for-profit health networks, provide some 800,000 medical consultations annually, in eight of the country’s nine departments.  These entities are two of Bolivia’s most important health care providers.
• USAID has helped improve more than 12,000 houses to prevent exposure to insects bearing the debilitating and often deadly Chagas disease.

Integrated Alternative Development

USAID helps consolidate diversified economic development in coca-growing and associated areas by increasing the market–driven competitiveness of rural enterprises, strengthening local democratic institutions and processes, and improving basic public services and social conditions.

• From October 2006 to September 2007, sales of alternative development products increased by $18.8 million.
• Net family income of beneficiaries increased by more than $400 in the last four years.
• From 2004 to February 2008 the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, with USAID support, delivered almost 11,000 land titles and incorporated approximately 92% of the Cochabamba Tropics region into the land titling process.