Rajiv Shah, Under Secretary USDA, participates in a news conference with Agriculture Secretary Tom... 
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President Obama is turning to Rajiv Shah, a medical doctor who served on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation before joining the Department of Agriculture, to head up the US Agency for International Development.
Mr. Shah's appointment Tuesday, which is subject to Senate confirmation, comes after a 10-month vacancy at the helm of the agency. That vacancy belied comments by Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who have spoken of the growing importance of development in US foreign policy and national security. Both have said they wish to expand the role of the agency, which administers $20 billion in annual assistance.
That figure is set to more than double during the next half-decade as development efforts grow in areas of strategic importance to the US.
But many development experts, while relieved that USAID is finally getting a new chief, caution that Shah must first put the US foreign aid and development house in order. Only then could the agency think of "elevating" its role in US foreign policy.
"USAID is a damaged agency that must take on institutional strengthening as a first order of business," says Thomas Carothers, director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace in Washington.
He notes that USAID lost its policy division when the agency was integrated into the State Department in 2006. "So we have a development agency responsible for billions of dollars a year in foreign aid with no policy division," Mr. Carothers says.
As a result, USAID "needs strong leadership to reassert its role and define its purpose."
USAID's purpose had become increasingly "diffuse" as "the Pentagon and more than 20 other federal agencies increasingly engaged in development activities," said Raymond Offenheiser, president of the international organization Oxfam, in a statement.
Given the growing nexus between foreign aid and national security in the post-9/11 era, some development experts have called for the USAID chief to be elevated to cabinet status or to a seat on the National Security Council.
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