Rajiv Shah named Administrator of USAID

President Obama on Tuesday named Rajiv Shah, a 36-year-old doctor and agriculture expert, to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, filling what lawmakers and aid experts had called a glaring vacancy on a key foreign-policy front.

Read more:

• Mary Beth Sheridan in The Washington Post
• Nomination by Secretary Clinton
• Announcement by the White House
• Associated Press coverage
• Rajiv Shah's biography from the USDA website
• The coverage from the Modernizing Foreign Aid Network

The Obama administration has laid out an ambitious agenda on foreign assistance: pledging to double it to $50 billion a year, make economic development a pillar of his strategy in Afghanistan and push for a $20 billion program in conjunction with other countries to fight hunger.