Presented by Abt Global
A storied — and still-growing — humanitarian outfit is now benefiting from some Fortune 500 C-suite savvy.
Also in today’s edition: Githinji Gitahi, group CEO of Amref Health Africa, details the fundamental problem with the new global health partnership between the U.S. and Kenya.
+ How do we successfully build the AI for Good ecosystem? Today at 11 a.m. ET, we’ll sit down with Evidence Action’s Kanika Bahl to dive into how the global ecosystem must reorganize to ensure the benefits of AI reach the people who need them most. Register now. If you can’t attend live, we’ll send a recording.
From tech to triage
Perhaps the only thing Salesforce — the software giant that manages customer relations — and Direct Relief — a heavyweight among humanitarian nonprofits — have in common is that they’re both based in California. Or rather, I should say, used to have in common.
They now have Amy Weaver in common, the Salesforce chief financial officer who stepped down a year ago and landed at Direct Relief as its new CEO.
Since taking the helm of the NGO — ranked fifth on a Forbes list of America’s top 100 charities — in May, she’s been on a listening tour learning about how Direct Relief moves hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free medical aid and disaster relief across the U.S. and around the world, sourcing donated medicines and supplies and delivering them to clinics, hospitals, and community health centers.
Now, she’s ready to determine what’s next, as the organization — which has never taken government money — dramatically expands its global footprint, my colleague Catherine Cheney writes.
That expansion includes opening a new European headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany. The move reflects a broader shift in how Direct Relief is positioning itself globally — closer to where medicines are manufactured, closer to new donors, and closer to the regions where needs are growing fastest.
“We want to make sure we’re looking everywhere for sources of medicine,” Weaver tells Catherine.
She says the transition from CFO of a public company to CEO of a nonprofit was actually a “natural evolution.” Weaver, who served as a board member for Habitat for Humanity, says she was drawn to Salesforce in part because of its 1-1-1 model, a philanthropic framework pledging 1% of equity, 1% of product, and 1% of employee time to social impact.
Now, Weaver is bringing her legal, financial, and tech chops to Direct Relief, as well as her experience as a CFO during the supersonic growth of AI.
“I got to witness company after company making these quantum leaps forward,” Weaver says. “I really felt passionately that we've got to have the humanitarian world come along. What I don't want to have happen is that corporations are getting better, and staff are getting more efficient, and the gap is just growing and growing and growing.”
Read: How Salesforce’s former CFO is scaling a humanitarian giant (Pro)
+ Experience Devex Pro with a 15-day free trial and explore expert analyses, unlock hidden funding opportunities, connect with key players at exclusive events, and access a wealth of knowledge you won’t find anywhere else. Check out some of the content exclusive to Pro readers.
Partisan issue
The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, supports sexual and reproductive health across the world. As such, it’s a perennial lightning rod of conservative opposition in the United States, with every Republican president since 1985 slashing its funding — Donald Trump being no exception.
A group of Democratic lawmakers are trying to reverse the latest cuts with the Support UNFPA Funding Act, which would restore “a common-sense, bipartisan approach: supporting voluntary, rights-based family planning and maternal health while ensuring full compliance with U.S. law,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to Devex.
But as the minority in Congress, Democrats face slim chances of getting their bill passed. For a sampling of the pushback it’s likely to encounter, check out Rep. Chip Roy’s summation of the organization: “The United Nations Population Fund is a globalist, Orwellian, propaganda machine,” the Texas Republican wrote while reintroducing a bill to block funding to UNFPA earlier this year.
Roy — and many other Republicans — have lobbed accusations for decades that the agency participates in “coercive abortion practices” in China — claims that have been widely refuted, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes.
So why introduce a bill that likely won’t see the light of day? “If we’re looking realistically, I’m not optimistic that in this Congress, the [bill] moves,” says a congressional aide involved with the legislation. “But we felt it was really, really important to put a strong marker in the sand, and to say we remain committed to this.”
Exclusive: Senate Democrats introduce bill to protect UN Population Fund
ICYMI: Fighting for facts and funding — UNFPA’s new chief steps into the storm
Here we AGOA-gain
Another piece of legislation may have stronger odds in Congress — which could be a major boost to African nations staring down deep aid cuts. The African Growth and Opportunity Act, a 25-year-old trade program between the U.S. and sub-Saharan African nations, expired at the end of September but is showing flickers of life.
Last week, the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee approved a bill with bipartisan support that would extend the act, known as AGOA, for three years, my colleague Adva Saldinger writes.
“Reauthorizing AGOA will provide not only economic benefits, but also strategic benefits in America’s efforts to strengthen our critical supply chains, and it will help counter efforts by nations like China and Russia to spread their often harmful influence in Africa,” says Rep. Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri.
Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat from Alabama, touted AGOA’s success in helping spur billions of dollars in two-way trade and creating jobs in Africa and the United States. Without it, she warns, “African exporters face sudden and significant tariff spikes” that many countries cannot absorb.
Even the Trump administration seems to be in favor of some kind of extension for the landmark program. Osvaldo Gómez Martínez, deputy assistant U.S. trade representative for African affairs, reaffirmed support for a one-year renewal to allow the administration time to work with Congress to “modernize and align the program to the ‘America First’ trade policy.” A modern AGOA, he says, would create incentives for “more reciprocal trade relationships,” ensure that benefits accrue to intended recipients, and that benefits also reach American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, service providers, and businesses.
Read: Can the US-Africa trade program AGOA be resurrected?
See also: AGOA, the Lobito corridor, and the future of US-Africa engagement (Pro)
Power imbalance
Neither good nor bad. That’s how Dr. Githinji Gitahi, group CEO of Amref Health Africa, describes the recent Kenya-U.S. health deal.
“At face value, a U.S. commitment of $1.6 billion over five years looks like an unequivocal win for Kenya’s health system,” he writes in a Devex opinion piece.
But dig deeper and flaws emerge. “If Kenya did look the gift horse in the proverbial mouth, the teeth would reveal a fundamental decay in how wealthy nations now conduct global health partnerships and Kenya’s constrained position in negotiating them,” he argues.
For one thing, the U.S. has for decades been a pillar of global health funding both for moral and security reasons. Gitahi points out that the founding philosophy of USAID was that keeping other nations safe helped keep Americans safe too.
“That era has ended. The current U.S. foreign policy doctrine has explicitly reframed foreign assistance as a tool of American statecraft to advance national interests,” he writes. “This isn’t a minor change. It represents a fundamental reorientation that global health assistance is no longer primarily about saving lives.”
“This situation reveals the core problem with bilateral deals,” he adds, noting that it allows the powerful to exploit the weaker.
Opinion: The Kenya-US health deal is pragmatic, but could have been done better
+ Tomorrow at 9 a.m. ET, we will host a Devex Pro Briefing with Duke Global Health Institute’s Jirair Ratevosian, Resilience Action Network Africa’s Aggrey Aluso, and Mark Dybul, former U.S. global AIDS coordinator, to dive inside the U.S. bilateral health agreements. Save your spot here.
The work that makes it worth it
U.S. aid cuts have taken a heavy toll on Africa, but hiring for development positions continues, even if at a slower pace than before.
In our latest career hiring analysis, we look at the countries with the most job openings in North, East, West, Central, and southern Africa over the past 12 months — focusing on employers beyond the United Nations and other large international NGOs and multilateral development banks that have incomes of over $500 million.
Read: The top global development hubs hiring in Africa in 2025 (Career)
+ A Devex Career Account membership gives you access to the article and other benefits including timely reports analyzing development career trends, the full job board with regularly updated opportunities and recruiter insights, exclusive events with insider information from top career coaches and sector leaders, and more. Start your 15-day free trial now.
In other news
Oxfam GB CEO Halima Begum has been discharged from her position by the charity’s board after an investigation found “serious issues in the CEO’s leadership behaviour and decision making.” [BBC]
An investigation by The Telegraph has found that at least £11 billion — roughly £1 in every £10 — of U.K. foreign aid since 2010 has been channeled through private consultancies, with spending including five-star hotels, golf resorts, and PR services. [The Telegraph]
A drone strike on a U.N. peacekeeping facility in Sudan’s Kordofan region killed six Bangladeshi peacekeepers and wounded eight others, an attack the U.N. chief said could amount to a war crime. [AP]
Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.
About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
