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Today, the few staff left at the U.S. Agency for International Development have been officially severed from the agency. It marks the end of what Jeremy Lewin, USAID’s deputy administrator, previously called USAID’s “final mission” — a wind-down period that lasted from March 28 until Sept. 2.
The year of upheaval has left those who worked at USAID — along with the programs and organizations it supported — navigating uncertainty, scrambling to find their next steps as the agency that once defined U.S. foreign aid fades into history.
Also in today’s edition: The cost of contraceptives and their unknown whereabouts, and the death (or is it?) of official development assistance.
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“The need for your position no longer exists.”
That was the blunt message received by thousands of USAID staffers earlier this year, just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration began dismantling the agency. Staff were given one of two end dates — July 1 or Sept. 2 — and told that their roles would soon become a thing of the past.
Over the last five months, a steadily shrinking staff worked to shift some of USAID’s programs to the State Department and shutter everything that remained. And now, just three dozen staff will remain at a hollowed-out version of what was once the largest bilateral donor in the world.
“People with decades of government or NGO experience are applying for junior-level positions just to stay in the sector,” said the head of one aid agency, speaking to Devex Senior Reporter Colum Lynch. “It’s not just their jobs, their profession is being erased, at least in the U.S. context.”
In the past six months alone, more than 10,000 USAID employees have been let go. Tens of thousands more have been cut from the aid groups, nonprofits, and development contractors that USAID once funded, making the sector’s hiring market into what the agency head called a “wasteland.”
Julia Hurley, a former senior policy adviser at USAID, founded OneAID — an online information hub for the foreign assistance community. She’s still applying for jobs, with the number of roles she’s applied to now topping 100. Doug Mercado, a veteran humanitarian worker and once a go-to contractor for USAID’s emergency surge efforts, saw job after job disappear. Mercado is now volunteering his time with a friend’s nonprofit, lecturing about the humanitarian sector in colleges, and working as a security guard at a concert venue.
Others are going down a very different path. Some are toeing the ever-thinning line between humanitarian aid and the private sector; others are tossing neutrality for humanitarian causes that “support America’s national security.”
“This administration wants to do things differently; let’s do things differently,” said a former senior USAID official who was recently hired by a for-profit organization.
Read: Laid-off USAID workers struggle to find work as new job cuts approach
Of course, it’s not just the aid workforce that’s become a wasteland. Nearly everything USAID touched has been affected by the agency’s collapse — including the provision of family planning supplies.
In July, the State Department announced it would be incinerating $9.7 million of what it called “abortifacients,” despite the fact that since 1973, U.S. law has prohibited the government from providing any sort of abortion-inducing drugs. Several sources familiar with the held-up supply chain — including a congressional aide who saw the commodities — said that they were actually made up of long-acting contraceptives. But even so, the State Department said those supplies would be torched in France imminently.
Over a month later, the agency has declined to comment on whether it’s actually done so — making it unclear whether the commodities have actually been incinerated, or even if the State Department is still planning to toss them.
The Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition found that the result of the incineration across several countries those commodities were meant to reach will result in 362,000 unintended pregnancies, 161,000 unplanned births, 110,000 unsafe abortions, and 718 preventable maternal deaths.
Read: How $9.7M in lost US contraceptives disrupted family planning globally
ICYMI: $9.7M in US-funded contraceptives slated for incineration this week
It’s all contributing to what Degan Ali, the chief executive of Kenyan nonprofit Adeso, described as official development assistance’s “very fast path to death” — due to not just the hollowing out of USAID, but cuts in foreign assistance across Europe.
OECD estimates show that this year, ODA could fall by up to 17% of 2024 spending, with further cuts possible in 2026. And while the news has been met with shock from the global north, Ali said many on the African continent have had a different reaction.
“What I was seeing, particularly on African Twitter, or X, was ‘Finally, I’m glad, because the system was corrupt or was not doing what it was supposed to, and maybe we can finally be rid of this soft power and all of these things,’” said Ali, speaking at a Devex Pro event last week.
Instead of ODA, Ali said she wanted to see different forms of finance flow through the continent, such as direct budget support and long-term lending for infrastructure. It’s an ask more attuned to the type of foreign assistance the Trump administration seems to be leaning toward — such as limited humanitarian aid, and continued investment from institutions such as the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.
Watch: Is ODA really ‘on a very fast path to death’? (Pro)
Related: Is this the end of aid as we know it? (Pro)
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For months, we’ve known that the U.K. was planning to slash its aid budget to new lows, moving from spending 0.5% of the country’s gross national income on ODA to just 0.3%. In a recent report, the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office shared details on what that amounts to this year: A 12% cut in spending to the African continent, and a plummeting of funding for several countries facing crisis.
“The cuts revealed today are tough, and appear to hit Africa especially hard,” says Adrian Lovett, the ONE Campaign’s executive director for the U.K., Middle East, and Asia Pacific. “A year from now we will have plummeted over the cliff edge of far deeper cuts, gutting vital programmes supporting some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Palestine will get £101 million, a reduction of around 21%, while £120 million is earmarked for Sudan — a nearly 18% cut, Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth reports. Women and girls will be even worse off: The sector will see a loss of almost £285 million, amounting to a 42% cut, while health spending will fall to £527 million, a 46% drop.
“The world’s most marginalised communities, particularly those experiencing conflict and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices,” says Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at Bond. “At a time when the US has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back.”
Read: What FCDO will spend its money on this year
Related: Beyond aid cuts, 3 major signs the UK is abandoning development (Pro)
Low-income countries are shifting away from U.S. dollar debts and onto currencies with low interest rates, such as the Chinese renminbi and Swiss franc, to reduce borrowing costs. [Financial Times]
The rebel group controlling western Darfur, Sudan, is appealing for humanitarian aid after a landslide killed over 1,000 people in the region. [BBC]
The Trump administration may tap economist Pierre Yared to succeed Gita Gopinath as IMF deputy managing director. [Reuters]
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