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After months of insisting it could run foreign aid without USAID, the State Department is now hiring back familiar roles — with LinkedIn job posts revealing the scramble in real time.
Also in today’s edition: What happened to Oxfam CEO Halima Begum, and a look at the state of consultants in a post-USAID world.
+ The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s model has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign assistance for two decades. However, the agency is now navigating a complex landscape of new challenges and adapting after a tumultuous year. Join us tomorrow as we speak to experts and former officials about the shifting currents inside MCC and what these changes mean for future compact development. Save your spot now.
State a little longer
After spending much of the year insisting it could run U.S. foreign assistance without USAID, the State Department is now quietly doing something else: hiring back the people who used to do that work.
The signal isn’t coming from official announcements or congressional notifications — it’s coming from LinkedIn. In early December, a growing number of foreign aid job postings began circulating that looked strikingly familiar to former USAID staff. “Oh look the job I was RIFed from,” one former employee wrote under a post advertising one of the new roles.
What’s emerging looks less like a grand redesign and more like a practical scramble, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes. Recruitment firms long tied to USAID have been tapped to source candidates for positions scattered across regional bureaus, embassies, and offices reporting to the Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance. The State Department is staffing up even as its aid architecture remains unsettled, opaque, and very much in flux.
That rebuild comes after USAID’s July shutdown wiped out most of its 10,000 staff and hollowed out entire teams. “It’s almost like they walked into a giant factory, just started ripping out parts, saying ‘who needs this, who needs this?’ and then they tried to make the factory run,” says one former USAID staffer, capturing a frustration that’s widely shared across the aid world.
The timing matters. Billions in foreign assistance are still moving — including a newly announced $2.5 billion bilateral health agreement with Kenya — meaning a much smaller State Department workforce is being asked to manage an enormous portfolio. For now, the department appears to be quietly reconstructing the machinery it dismantled, one job posting at a time.
Read: State Department scrambles to rebuild foreign aid workforce (Pro)
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Begum to differ
Oxfam is reeling after the sudden exit of its CEO, Halima Begum — a departure that has triggered clashing accounts, internal tensions, and a very public dispute, writes Devex contributing reporter Andrew Green.
Begum left over the weekend following staff allegations of bullying, which have since been disputed. Oxfam declined to explain the circumstances, telling Andrew it would “be inappropriate to comment on any individual,” while confirming that staff “raised concerns about culture” that informed an independent review by “an independent specialist consultancy with recognised expertise in workplace culture, equity, and inclusion.”
That review has become a flashpoint. An Oxfam spokesperson previously told The Times it found “serious issues in the CEO’s leadership behaviour and her decision-making,” though the charity would not confirm those findings to Andrew. Reports that the board unanimously forced Begum out have also been challenged by trustee Dr. Balwant Singh, who said the account did not “reflect my views as a trustee” and accused others of “seeking to destroy Halima and her reputation.”
Begum has not commented, but her lawyer, Lawrence Davies of Equal Justice Solicitors, called her the “victim of alleged victimisation and discrimination.” Former colleagues, including Shabna Begum of the Runnymede Trust, have also defended her, pointing to Oxfam GB’s “long running internal disputes about racism and sexism” and warning that “women of colour [are] being demonised when they have been brought in as leaders to do tough work.”
Chief Supporter Officer Jan Oldfield has been appointed interim CEO as the fallout continues.
Read more: Battle lines drawn in UK aid sector over sacking of Oxfam CEO (Pro)
Cuts before clarity
That’s not U.K. aid’s only headache at the moment. Senior officials at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office faced tough questioning from members of Parliament last week as they defended deep staff cuts that some worry will leave long-protected areas of development work exposed, writes Devex contributing reporter Susannah Birkwood.
Appearing before the House of Commons International Development Committee on Dec. 9, Nick Dyer, second permanent under-secretary at FCDO, said the department would no longer be able to protect “every single area we have worked on for the last 25 to 30 years” and would have to make “some tough choices” as up to a quarter of U.K.-based roles are cut over the next four years.
Dyer appeared alongside Permanent Under-Secretary Oliver Robbins and Finance Director Tim Jones, who outlined a restructuring that could result in up to 1,885 redundancies, according to the Public and Commercial Services Union, or PCS. Robbins said FCDO had become “too hierarchical” and “too slow,” and that leadership was responding to staff feedback that the department needed to modernize.
MPs voiced alarm that the restructuring is moving ahead before ministers have settled the U.K.’s aid allocations for 2026-27. International Development Committee Chair Sarah Champion warned in a Nov. 27 letter that the department was acting “far too fast,” risking damage to staff morale, institutional memory, and the U.K.’s development reputation.
Read: UK’s aid department defends major staff cuts as MPs fear brain drain
Related: Watchdog warns UK aid risks ‘strategic drift’ away from the neediest
AfDB aggressive
Against a backdrop of shrinking aid budgets, the African Development Fund has pulled off a rare victory: a record $11 billion replenishment for its 17th replenishment cycle, or ADF-17.
The concessional arm of the African Development Bank secured the ADF-17 raise this week in London from 43 partners, making it the largest replenishment in the fund’s history, up from $8.9 billion raised during ADF-16. The outcome lands well below earlier ambitions of $25 billion, after foreign aid cuts and policy shifts — including in the U.S., historically a major ADF contributor — reset expectations.
“This is not just a replenishment,” AfDB President Sidi Ould Tah said in a statement Tuesday. “It is a turning point. In one of the most difficult global environments for development finance, our partners chose ambition over retrenchment, and investment over inertia.”
Beyond the headline number, donors also approved a governance shift allowing the ADF to borrow on capital markets, potentially unlocking up to $5 billion per three-year cycle. “The innovations we have collectively endorsed, particularly the Market Borrowing Option, will define the next generation of the Fund,” Tah said, enabling greater leverage and impact.
Observers say the result stands out given donor retrenchment elsewhere, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes. “This is quite remarkable as a result, given the significant budget cuts in many large donor countries, including the largest ones to the ADF,” says Annalisa Prizzon of ODI.
Read: AfDB’s concessional arm raises record $11B, opens door to market borrowing
Adding consult to injury
In February, Lorenz Wild thought he had his next move lined up — a personal service contract with USAID Ecuador as an economic growth and private sector engagement specialist.
Then it evaporated. Like many consultants tied to USAID, Wild suddenly had no work — and little clarity about what was happening to people in his position, my colleague Emma Smith writes.
While much of the attention focused on USAID staff layoffs and project cuts, Wild realized how widespread the anxiety was among consultants — and decided to put numbers behind it. He created a survey, later expanding it with Wayan Vota, founder of Career Pivot, and Alethia Wong, an independent consultant.
Even with just 126 responses, the results were stark: lower earnings, nonstop networking, and mounting mental health strain. Many had relied heavily on USAID, with more than 60% of their recent income coming from the agency, Wong says. Some described hiring practices as “predatory” and “underpaid.”
As Wild put it, “Part of it is that as independent consultants, we just don’t have a voice, we don’t have an advocacy body … there’s a power discrepancy.”
Read: Post-USAID survey of consultants finds many questioning the path (Career)
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In other news
In a Vanity Fair interview, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said she was “aghast” at the rapid dismantling of USAID under Elon Musk’s leadership, criticizing the abrupt halt to billions of dollars in U.S. foreign assistance. [Reuters]
The Marshall Islands has launched the world’s first national universal basic income scheme delivered via cryptocurrency, offering quarterly $200 payments through a stablecoin, bank transfer, or check. [The Guardian]
Rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo say they will withdraw from Uvira in response to a U.S. request. [BBC]
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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.
