Like virtually all philanthropists, I started out seeking the “best” projects to fund. I described myself as a mezzanine funder—I hunted for programs with evidence of impact and aimed to expand or replicate them. I never considered supporting or, frankly, even interacting with the public sector.

By serendipity, quite early in my philanthropic career, I partnered with a visionary government leader to establish his country’s first public-sector HIV/AIDS treatment program. The initiative saved the lives of thousands more people than it would have been possible to reach through the non-state sector. This collaboration further enabled me to responsibly exit the funding arrangement after only a few years, having laid the groundwork for the government to assume responsibility for service provision. It ultimately segued into an invitation to extend the partnership to another region of the country.

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Human development priorities are generally multidimensional and intersectoral; yet government is traditionally organized in silos and thus ill-equipped to address cross-sectoral challenges. Ministers implement their sector specific policies and programs and compete fiercely for a larger share of the available budget.  Even within ministries, program directorates ring-fence their authority and battle over resources. The traditional lack of interministerial collaboration around common human development objectives undermines the potential impact and efficiency of government efforts and investments.  To facilitate this kind of collaborative approach to human capital development, the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program increasingly engages clusters of human develop sectors ministers, as well finance and economic planning ministers from the same countries. The benefits of interministerial collaboration in the implementation of government programs is becoming clearer from a growing body of country experience. The Seqota Declaration to address malnutrition in Ethiopia and Criança Feliz Program to improve early childhood development (ECD) in Brazil are two standout examples.

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