With USAID help, the Moldovan wine industry was completely restructured. Moldova now exports about $150 million of wine per year, which is a lot for a small country — it’s over $50 per Moldovan. And it went from exporting around 80% of its wine to Russia, to around 15%. Most Moldovan wine (around 60%) now goes to the EU, with an increasing share going to Turkey and the Middle East.
(If you’re curious: their market niche is medium to high end vins du table. Not plonk, not fancy, just good midlist wines. I can personally recommend the dryer reds, which are often much better than you’d expect at their price point.)
Russia tried the “ooh we found a sanitary problem” trick one last time a few years ago. It fell completely flat. Putting aside that it was an obvious lie — if something is safe for the EU, believe me, it is safe for Russia — Moldovan wine exporters had now diversified their markets to the point that losing Russian sales was merely a nuisance. In fact, the attempt backfired: it encouraged the Moldovans to shift their exports even further away from Russia and towards the EU.
And the second story:
If you’ve ever been in a hospital in a poor, post-war country… yeah at this point someone makes a dumb joke about the NHS or something. No. We’re talking regular blackouts, the electricity just randomly switching off. Rusting equipment, crumbling concrete, cracked windows. A dozen beds crammed into a room that should hold four or five. Everything worn and patched and held together with baling wire and hope.
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Every hospital bed in that emergency room had been donated by USAID. I believe they were purchased secondhand in the United States, where they were old and obsolete. But in this country… well, they didn’t have enough beds, and the beds that they had were fifty years old. Except for those USAID beds. Those were (relatively) modern, light and adjustable but sturdy, and easily mobile. The hospital staff were using them to move kids around, and they were getting a lot of mileage from them.
And of course, every USAID bed had that sticker on it. And so did some other stuff. There was an oxygen system that a sick toddler was breathing from. USAID sticker. Couple of child-sized wheelchairs. USAID stickers. Secondhand American stuff — USAID was under orders to Buy American whenever possible — but just making a huge, huge difference here.
From the first story:
And the second story:
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