It’s been a dramatic few days for the aid sector at the end of a dramatic month. The battle in the courts has seen judges order that USAID contracts be resumed, only for the State Department to abruptly end 10,000 awards — including many that had waivers.
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In this edition of Career Hub, we look at which organizations have made layoffs, and we’ve also got the first large-scale survey specifically of staff from USAID and affected implementers. Plus, some of the best new job opportunities from leading organizations such as Clinton Health Access Initiative, Tetra Tech, and more.
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Top jobs this week
Top full-time staff jobs this week
International Team Leader
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation
Vietnam
Senior Manager, Global Sexual & Reproductive Health Team
Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc.
Ghana and Malawi
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist
Improving Economies for Stronger Communities (IESC)
Dominican Republic
Project Manager
Cowater International
Ukraine
Expanded Special Project for Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases, Supply Chain Officer
JSI
Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte D’Ivoire, Burundi, DRC, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Togo.
REnew Pacific - Business and Investment Adviser
The Palladium Group
Australia
Top consultancies this week
Change Management Expert - Institutional Reform Consultancy
SOFRECO
Pakistan
Consultancy Services (Technical Assistant) - Atauro Island Solar Renewable Energy Project
DT Global
Dili, Timor-Leste
Programme Manager, Middle Income Countries
GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance
Switzerland
Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) Specialist
Tetra Tech
Philippines
MAJI Monitoring and Evaluation Officer
Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)
Mozambique
Request for Proposals (RFP): Baseline Study for Sanitary, Phytosanitary, and Food Safety Enhancement for Benin's Agricultural Trade Project
Partners for Development
Benin
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How the aid freeze has affected jobs
The impact of the U.S. aid freeze has been deep and immediate. Increasingly, we’re starting to see the evidence in the actions of USAID’s partner organizations.
We’ve put together a furlough tracker to understand the impact of the cuts on all the different organizations, and it’s a roll call of the biggest and most influential names in the global development sector.
So far, USAID has seen between 1,600 and 2,000 staff members laid off, with the remainder of the agency’s 4,765 direct hires being placed on administrative leave. And almost 2,000 contractors are also known to have lost their jobs. Up to 50,000 jobs are believed to be at risk in the U.S., and more than 100,000 worldwide.
Devex has conducted a large-scale survey of both former and current USAID workers, as well as former and current staff members at implementing agencies.
The survey finds that 93% of USAID respondents believe reform is needed within U.S. foreign assistance, but 72% believe that the current changes will severely hinder those reform efforts.
Over 90% of current and former USAID staff members also say the Trump administration’s actions will lead to mass layoffs, with respondents highlighting concerns around job security. “We lost staff who have been with us for 30 years. We lost institutional memory,” one respondent says. Another says: “Even if funding comes back online in 90 days, we will have lost most of the people involved to other work.”
Among the staff of USAID’s implementing partners, 48% of workers say that they think up to half of the employees in their organization could ultimately lose their jobs.
For a while, there was a hope that court interventions would provide the answer after a judge ruled that USAID must reverse the funding freeze and pay what it owed. But those hopes appear to be fading after the Supreme Court paused the order to pay. The State Department, meanwhile, has responded to the order to pay by canceling nearly 10,000 awards.
Read: How the USAID funding freeze impacted the agency’s staff and partners
Explore more: Supreme Court pauses order to release billions of dollars in foreign aid
Latest updates: Tracking furloughs, layoffs, and cuts
Teach someone to fish
The development sector as a whole isn’t crumbling around our ears, however. Despite huge disruption in the United States and potentially in the United Kingdom in the near future as well, the work goes on.
One thriving area of work is aquaculture — working with fisheries and cultures that depend on fishing for their livelihoods. The challenges are diverse: it’s both about the sustainability of the seas and about ensuring that people working in fisheries have some control over their livelihoods.
What the experts tell us:
Carlos Fuentevilla is a fishery officer for technical program coordination with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO. He stresses the number of different partners that aquaculture specialists have to be able to engage with. At one end of the scale, there are the local fishing cultures, but at the other end are powerful national governments.
And aquaculture doesn’t always sit solely within agricultural government departments. It also involves engaging with navies, coast guards, financial institutions, and civil society.
Irna Sari is a consultant on fisheries management, small-scale fisheries value chain, and livelihood development.
Sari works with many of the thousands of small-scale fisheries across Indonesia’s 17,000 islands. She says that one often overlooked element is the involvement of women — they are deeply involved in the fishing process, but their needs are often overlooked when setting policy.
Harrison Karisa is a senior fisheries specialist for aquaculture at the World Bank Group. He says that change and innovation were commonplace in the sector. There’s more private investment, which the World Bank is involved in supporting. And the sector is becoming more automated, with key innovations in artificial intelligence, DNA analysis, and robotics.
Read: What development pros need to know about fisheries and aquaculture (Career)
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Around the watercooler
News and views from around global development worth knowing about.
• UK aid to fall to 0.3% of GNI. In a second major blow to the aid community, the U.K. government has announced further aid cuts, with a reduction in spending to 0.3% in order to increase its defense budget.
• Foundations falling short on local funding. More than two years ago, 26 major foundations committed to improving local funding. A new study has found that only one has reported any progress. [Devex Pro]
• Ten years of fighting for farmers. Agnes Kalibata is stepping down after ten years as leader of AGRA, the African-based farming organization. “The Green Revolution ship has sailed,” Kalibata says in an interview with Devex.
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About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
