Only two years ago, Aizel Quisano was one of thousands of young people in the Mindanao region of the Philippines who were both out of school and unemployed. A future in her hometown of Lamitan City looked bleak. She was desperate for work and even considered leaving her family to seek employment in Cavite, a city 850 miles to the north, near Manila. But now, those days are behind her. New life skills and a new job at an organic farm in Lamitan City are enriching both her life and her community.

Last week, the Administration released its full FY18 budget request, which includes a 32 percent cut to the International Affairs Budget and signals the potential elimination of U.S. assistance to 37 nations. China, on the other hand, recently held a summit to launch a multibillion dollar global infrastructure and development initiative spanning 65 countries that account for 60 percent of the world’s population. One Belt One Road is President Xi Xinping’s ambitious effort to re-assert China’s global economic leadership. China seeks to revive the historic “Silk Road” trading route— spanning from the Netherlands to Indonesia— which helped facilitate international trade for centuries.

America’s leadership in institutions like World Bank and IMF is critical to influencing the agenda on global economic growth and development— which, in turn, shapes opportunities for American businesses to invest around the world. At next week’s World Bank/IMF Spring Meeting, businesses and NGOs will join finance ministers and development leaders from around the world to address today’s global challenges and opportunities. What will America’s voice be, given recent proposed budget cuts?

Empowering women and girls has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to deliver development results. Studies show that if women had the same access to economic resources as men, agricultural productivity could increase by 20 to 30 percent and help lift 100 million additional people out of poverty. Moreover, child mortality can be cut by nearly 10 percent by providing one additional year of education for women of childbearing age.

Today, more people have access to mobile phones than to electricity or clean water— and it’s making a difference in the fight against global poverty. In 2000, only 4 percent of people living in low- and middle-income countries had access to mobile phones. In 2015, that number rose to a whopping 94 percent. Here’s how technology is demonstrating a real, measurable impact.

In a world of abundant food, how is it possible that 45 percent of childhood deaths are still linked to malnutrition? You might be surprised to learn that part of the solution, according to Bill Gates, is chickens, which last year he called the best solution to global poverty. As Gates points out, chickens present a major opportunity to increase household incomes and nutrition through greater meat and egg production. That is why Feed the Future, America’s initiative to combat global hunger and poverty, has teamed up with scientists at the University of California at Davis to increase poultry production by breeding healthy chickens that are heat and disease resistant.

While we wait to see who will lead the MCC and USAID in the Trump Administration, one thing is certain: Africa should be seen as both an opportunity as well as a challenge to America’s efforts to reduce global poverty and promote economic growth. If the Trump Administration seeks to leave a lasting legacy by improving global stability and economic growth, Africa should be at the center of its plans.

Even modest investments in helping ensure children attend, remain, and learn in school leads to a greater and better-educated workforce— which in turn improves local, regional, and national economies. And in Ethiopia, USAID investments have helped achieve 95 percent enrollment in primary school over just the past 15 years. What’s behind these numbers? Investing in those who teach. One USAID program is designed to reach remote areas of Ethiopia, providing schooling in off-the-beaten-path areas that had never had access to basic education, where the nearest government school is two hours away on foot.

This year’s presidential debates will be different. While national security has had its own debate in the past, “Securing America” has been announced as one of the topics in the first and widely anticipated debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and will also be part of the other debates. In the wake of domestic terror attacks and global conversation about “uncertainty and unease and strife” at the UN General Assembly, what should we expect to hear on America’s role in the world?

Over the past two decades, there has been a dramatic transformation in developing countries: the number of people living in extreme poverty has been more than cut in half and, as a result, there are one billion fewer people living in extreme poverty today. But if we are going to achieve the United Nation’s sustainable development goal and eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, we must first understand how the landscape of poverty has changed.