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The Global Fragility Act is falling apart, with the State Department bureau that once spearheaded it facing elimination and USAID having been gutted. Staff are cut, funding is slashed, and insiders warn the vision could collapse without urgent action.
Also in today’s edition: We look at Mission 300, the rise of private global health actors, and how aid cuts hurt migration.
It was all a dream (of peace)
U.S. President Donald Trump kicked off his second term calling himself a “peacemaker and unifier.” But the U.S. foreign aid law most closely tied to that vision — the Global Fragility Act — is now on the chopping block.
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Passed in 2019, the GFA aimed to prevent violent conflict by making U.S. diplomacy, defense, and development work together. It focused on hot spots such as West Africa, Haiti, and Mozambique, with nearly $2 billion committed.
Now the State Department bureau leading it is being shut down, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes. USAID, which ran much of the programming, has been gutted. Staff have been laid off, and funding has been slashed.
“There are a lot of people trying to put Humpty Dumpty together again, but a lot of the damage is irreversible,” says one USAID staffer. “That now rests on the shoulders of [the] State Department.”
Bureaucratic turf wars didn’t help. “It really wasn’t the three Ds at that point,” says former USAID official Rob Jenkins. “It was the State Department making all the final decisions.”
And with USAID sidelined, Jenkins says bluntly: “There are no three D’s anymore. There’s just two now. And that’s a problem.”
A new bipartisan bill hopes to save the GFA and extend its funding to 2029. But insiders say that without clear leadership, it could fizzle. “If it’s just given to some officer," says a State official, "the promise of GFA … is not going to come to fruition."
Advocates say the stakes are too high to walk away. “Maybe we don’t want [what’s happening in] the Sahel to be spreading to our allies and going all the way down to the ocean in West Africa,” Jenkins warns. “If only we had some way to work in these environments. Well, we had them. They can rebuild them. But at the moment, they don't have it, and they don't even have any partners left to go to.”
Read: How Donald Trump signed the Global Fragility Act — and then kneecapped it
+ A hundred days into Trump’s second term: How has U.S. foreign aid changed? On May 6, join Devex for a live discussion on USAID, the future of global development, and more. Save your spot now. This event is exclusively for Devex Pro members. If you’re not a member yet, start your 15-day free trial today.
21 questions
At last week’s World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, Mission 300 — the bold push to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030 — took center stage. Backed by $58 billion from the World Bank and African Development Bank, the initiative has already powered up 21 million people, with another 89 million on the way.
“Mission 300 enjoys strong momentum,” said Anna Bjerde of the World Bank. Twelve countries have launched National Energy Compacts, and 20 more are in talks.
But the plan faces big questions: What qualifies as access? How should it be powered? And how will countries pay?
“For countries that are contributing almost nothing to global emissions ... it makes no sense to have the number one priority for those countries to lower emissions,” said Nancy Lee of the Center for Global Development.
Critics want a clearer benchmark, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes. “Does it mean that you have enough power to light one light bulb for six hours a day, or does it actually mean 24/7 electricity that will enable you to have functioning schools, to have functioning hospitals, to have electricity at home, to have electricity for factories?” asked Vijaya Ramachandran of the Breakthrough Institute.
At an event in March, Ajay Banga said tier-three power is the goal — electricity for real productivity. “You can’t do that by saying, ‘I won’t finance the grid because it’s connected to natural gas.’ That’s bunk.”
The ambition is massive. So are the trade-offs.
Read: One year in, Mission 300 tests what it takes to power Africa
Mo money, mo problems
Private power in global health is facing new scrutiny. From Big Food to Big Pharma, powerful private actors — or PPAs — are increasingly influencing who gets care and how. Experts now want to know: Who holds them accountable?
That question took center stage at a Kuala Lumpur symposium hosted by the U.N. University’s International Institute for Global Health and the Third World Network, Devex contributor Andrew Green writes.
“Increasingly, we are recognizing that the private sector plays an important role and has power in determining health outcomes and health equity,” said WHO’s Dr. Rabi Abeyasinghe. “Our challenge is to protect and ensure where partnerships are undertaken that these are done in such a way that maximizes health benefits, while protecting everybody from the conflicts of interest.”
“It’s about unregulated and excessive private power, abusive private power, and unethical conflicts of interest,” said David McCoy of U.N. University.
Examples included junk food marketing, tobacco, air pollution, and financial firms buying hospitals. “They use financial instruments to do that. Models that enable investors to get involved and make it financially more attractive,” said University of Glasgow’s Benjamin Hunter. The result, said Dr. Abhay Shukla, is “overcharging and extraction.”
Private foundations weren’t exempt. “We’ve allowed private institutes to take over completely,” said Nicoletta Dentico of the Society for International Development, noting the Gates Foundation could soon become WHO’s top donor.
McCoy stressed the goal isn’t to vilify, but to demand oversight. “We have to start with this big picture, to wrestle with this complexity,” he said. It “boils down to a question of governance.”
And that, he added, means governments must lead: “[They] have the authority to play the critical role in setting the regulatory and legal frameworks.”
Read: The rise of private global health actors sparks calls for accountability
+ For more content like this, sign up for Devex CheckUp, our free weekly global health newsletter.
99 problems and migration is one
USAID’s unraveling is hitting migration programs hard — slashing $2.3 billion in funding globally, including $200 million aimed at deterring irregular migration from Central America. The result? Fewer services to help people stay put, and growing risks for U.S. interests.
“They are truly global,” says Lawrence Huang of the Migration Policy Institute. The funding cuts “hit every region of the world, and there isn’t a sense that they targeted … one particular region over another.”
Programs supporting job skills, education, violence prevention, and more are being dismantled, Devex contributor Disha Shetty writes. MPI outlines three possible futures: a global aid retreat, a stopgap response by other donors, or a reimagined aid model. For now, stopgaps, such as Norway stepping up its humanitarian assistance, are buying time — but not solving core issues.
This scenario is not sustainable, as it does not address the fundamental drivers of displacement, Huang says. And with climate change accelerating migration pressures, anthropologist Nina Khamsy says the world needs to come up with a more efficient system that can deal with the challenges — rather than return to the one long in place.
“The aid was also somehow putting a plaster on the big wound,” she warns.
Read: How US aid cuts hurt migrant and refugee programs
In other news
The memorial wall to fallen USAID staffers has been removed from the agency’s headquarters with no word of its new home. [The Independent]
Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair has come under fire for saying that relying on the rapid phaseout of fossil fuels as a climate strategy was “doomed to fail.” [The Guardian]
While Jordan has secured the continuation of $1.45 billion in annual U.S. aid, most of the $430 million earmarked for development programs remains frozen. [Reuters]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
