When the Money Stops: Rethinking Development in a Shifting Global Landscape

Foreign aid, long considered a cornerstone of international development and diplomacy, is now undergoing a seismic transformation. In recent months, the global aid landscape has been dramatically reshaped by sweeping budget cuts, the closure of USAID, and a reallocation of funds toward defense spending in major donor countries like the United Kingdom and Sweden. These are not just bureaucratic shifts, they are real-time decisions with life-and-death consequences, most deeply felt by the world’s most vulnerable populations.

Aid, at its core, is not just emergency relief. It plays a vital role in supporting long-term development, helping communities build the infrastructure and capacity they need to eventually become self-sustaining. It funds global health initiatives, from PEPFAR’s HIV/AIDS programs to Gavi’s childhood vaccination campaigns, which have saved millions of lives. In conflict zones and disaster-stricken regions, aid is often the only thing standing between survival and catastrophe.

In our recent podcast episodes on the future of aid, we spoke with leading thinkers and practitioners to unpack what these changes mean, not just politically, but humanely and structurally. What does the end of USAID mean for global health systems? Who fills the void when governments pull back? What alternatives can emerge from this crisis?

If you haven’t listened yet, tune in here:

Duncan Green runs the LSE Activism, Influence, and Change blog where you can read him weekly.

Michael Sheldrick co-founded Global Citizen, an advocacy platform dedicated to achieving the end of extreme poverty, powered by a community of millions of Global Citizens. Visit the platform and get involved.

The Collapse of a Cornerstone: USAID and the End of an Era

For decades, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) supported life-saving programs across more than 60 countries, from PEPFAR’s HIV treatment efforts to famine response and mine clearance in Southeast Asia. In one of our episodes, we traced the human toll of its abrupt closure millions of people now cut off from antiretroviral treatments and maternal health care, often with no warning.

Our guests highlighted the growing chaos on the ground: HIV treatment programs in sub-Saharan Africa have been abruptly shuttered, clean water initiatives in Goma, DRC have been halted, and sustainability project in the Amazon have been defunded. These life-saving programs are vanishing just as Western governments shift priorities, increasingly redirecting funds toward defense and treating foreign aid as the easiest line item to slash, regardless of the human cost.

Shifting Alliances and New Power Centers

Western retreat from aid has geopolitical consequences. As our podcast guest, Duncan Green, noted, China and Russia are already stepping in, filling the gaps not through traditional aid frameworks, but through infrastructure deals, loans, and diplomacy rooted in mutual interest and strategic positioning.

At the 2024 China–Africa Cooperation Forum, China pledged $51 billion in aid and development loans, cementing its ambition to become the new donor superpower in regions historically shaped by Western influence.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, one of the current largest recipients of aid in recent years, the risks are both humanitarian and strategic. Cuts to aid impact everything from agriculture and trauma support to psychosocial care for war-affected civilians. Aid, it turns out, is also a security tool and its absence could destabilize fragile alliances.

What Happens Now? A New Architecture for Aid

Foreign aid has never been perfect. Critics argue it fosters dependency, lacks accountability, and is often more political than principled. But as we noted in our recent episodes, what replaces aid now matters more than what it was. In this moment of reckoning, a new aid architecture must emerge, one that’s more local, more flexible, and more connected to the realities on the ground.

Key takeaways from the podcasts include:

• Philanthropy and private sector investment offer potential. They require patient capital and long-term partnerships.
• Diaspora and faith-based networks are stepping up informally, especially during crises, offering a glimpse into a more distributed future of aid.
• Advocacy matters more than ever. As said on our podcast:

“You have to be an optimist to be a good advocate, it can be hard to know where to begin but we can all start somewhere.”

Michael Sheldrick in Episode 222

From Security to Solidarity: Reframing the Case for Aid

In an increasingly unstable world, we must ask: What is the true cost of cutting aid? It’s not just programs that disappear, it’s opportunities lost, lives shortened, and relationships severed.

To justify continued investment, experts on the podcast outlined a new way to pitch aid:

• Frame aid as return on investment—for global stability, future markets, and pandemic prevention.
• Center real people in the narrative: from mothers in Nigeria losing access to health clinics, to smallholder farmers in the Amazon trying to sustain forest economies.
• Frame aid as a security priority.

Aid is not a handout, it’s a strategic investment in a more stable, healthy, and cooperative world. While donor nations shift their priorities, the need doesn’t disappear. It transforms, and we must transform with it. Now is the time to build new alliances, unlock new sources of funding, and tell the real stories, the ones that reveal what aid has achieved, and what will be lost if we let it disappear.