Devex Pro Insider: Everything Pro Week — and next steps on the US aid budget

Last week was Pro Week at Devex, during which we addressed some of the key issues that affect our professional members — you, in other words. Unless, perhaps, you’ve had this email forwarded to you, or you’ve obtained it in some nefarious fashion. Historically, Pro Week has covered a variety of themes — but this year, it’s been all about the recent seismic changes in the political and funding environment, and how they have impacted key institutions in our space. Here are some of the key themes we explored. As aid funding is cut, more and more people are turning to philanthropy for the answers — but it won’t be able to offer all the answers. Aid cuts are in the region of $50 billion, while development philanthropy is $10 billion annually. But that doesn’t mean change isn’t coming. The sector is growing as the wealthy grow wealthier and decide to give more cash away. We’ve looked at the shift away from foundations and toward philanthropic advisers, as well as a shift toward sunsetting. More of the aid sector is also turning to multilateral development banks. To help with this, we’ve mapped out the current assets and lending of all of them in a new report. We've also looked at reform at the World Bank, which seems to have shifted its approach to fit in with the messaging from the Trump administration. A pivot to climate over the last few years has been followed by a sharp pivot away from climate, and toward jobs in 2025 — although there’s some criticism that the bank is moving too slowly and cautiously. The same can’t be said for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, billed by some as China’s answer to the World Bank. AIIB is turning 10 — by far the youngest of the major development banks — and there’s a feeling that it’s still overfilled with the exuberance of youth, and needs to move ahead more cautiously if it wants to avoid overreach and the possibility of scandal. Meanwhile, it’s all change at the big bilateral donor agencies. Official development assistance looks set to fall by tens of billions, and it’s not clear whether the role of the donor will ever be the same again. But the reaction is curiously mixed, with many possible future directions. At the same time, new donors are emerging, particularly in China and the Persian Gulf States. And other international powerhouses, such as India and Brazil, may soon be demonstrating more muscle on the global development stage. It’s all change, too, at the United Nations, where leaders have been left scrambling by widespread cuts. We’ve looked at UN80, the reform package introduced to try to manage the funding reductions, which has had widespread pushback. And we’ve also looked at how China is exerting more control as the United States pulls back. It’s an area that will enjoy greater scrutiny in the coming weeks, as the focus moves on to the U.N. General Assembly in September. Finally, we look at another sector massively affected by the cuts: INGOs, whose leaders told us they see dramatic change coming in the sector. We’ve conducted our annual breakdown of the top 50 INGOs in the U.S., and found they had seen a drop in income even before the USAID cuts. However, we also found that perhaps the impact may be smaller, overall, than some first feared. Only 18 of the 50 largest organizations depended on government funding for at least half their income. In total, the U.S. sector looks to have lost around 15% to 20% of its funding. It’s a mark of how worried the aid sector was that this outcome seemed to have been viewed as a good thing. Also in today’s edition: The fire sale of the items USAID left behind; a new definition of poverty; and the ongoing saga of the U.S. budget. Bits and pieces Fire sale. One of the most heartbreaking and extraordinary parts of the fall of USAID has been the waste. Because USAID was shut down so suddenly, and with so little preparation or forethought, there were many programs that were ready to deploy. Commodities that had been purchased were sitting in warehouses and were due to be given out within days. USAID has historically stored over 100,000 tons of food, medicine, and emergency relief supplies at warehouses on three continents. What has happened to those supplies since, very few people seem to know. There’s little information about how much more of that might expire, be stolen, or sold on the black market. In July, we read that the U.S. government planned to incinerate 500 tons of food, and last week, my colleague Elissa Miolene wrote about the unknown fate of $9.7 million worth of contraceptives that were due to be torched. Also last week, an article in The Atlantic reported how commodities and equipment worth many millions had been sold off for pennies, given away, or simply abandoned. The article paints a picture of an extraordinary variety of items going to waste — from cars to iPads to generators to textbooks. Even when equipment has gone to a good home, it’s often now likely to be useless without the training and funding to maintain it. It brings to mind the incredible pictures of equipment graveyards outside African hospitals. Aid emergency. One consequence of these cuts was to be seen last week in Botswana, where President Duma Boko made a televised announcement declaring a public health emergency, largely due to U.S. aid cuts. Before the cuts, the U.S. funded one-third of the country’s HIV response, among many other things. It offers insight into how the cuts are playing out in practice, although African leaders have largely remained sanguine in the face of cuts — as typified by former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s “Why are you crying?” speech earlier this year. Completely misunderstood. Sticking with USAID for a moment longer, here’s a fascinating take on what happened to the agency. It takes a fair bit of issue with the Devex take on what happened to USAID — although I’m not sure that what it argues against actually is the Devex take. The piece essentially argues that USAID didn’t do very much wrong and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time — that right-wing culture warriors were just looking for something to break, and they happened upon USAID at a time when the normal democratic protections were unusually weak. There’s a lot our readers may well agree with, and a lot they may well not, but it’s a useful and interesting challenge. Poverty line. And speaking of fascinating takes, here’s a really interesting look at what poverty means. Earlier this year, the World Bank changed its definition of extreme poverty, increasing it to $3 a day. Earlier this month, Our World in Data published a breakdown of how this happens and what the new data tells us. Essentially, low-income countries are seeing faster increases in income than the world as a whole, but the poverty level, as defined by the World Bank’s member countries, has risen even faster. As an aside, it’s worth looking, if you haven’t seen it already, at the “elephant curve” popularized by the former World Bank economist Branko Milanović, which shows how unevenly the benefits of growth have been shared in the 21st century. The rich have gotten a lot richer, as has an emerging global middle class in countries such as China and India, but two groups haven’t benefited: working-class people in Europe, and the very poor in low-income countries. Moving on CFK Africa, an international nonprofit that empowers young people in poor districts in Africa, has named its first chief executive, Jeffrey Okoro, who joined the organization as a youth worker in 2009 after growing up in Kibera, on the outskirts of Nairobi — one of the world’s largest informal settlements. The organization also appointed Beth-Ann Kutchma as executive director and Nelia Verano as director of philanthropy. Kutchma will lead the organization’s U.S. office. A top Trump official is to leave the State Department, according to multiple reports in the U.S. political press. Michael Anton, who has worked on the U.S. national security strategy and is a key figure in running the department, is likely to leave later in the year, amid reports of disagreements with colleagues. Daniel Puglisi, European Commission press officer for humanitarian aid and crisis management and EU foreign and security policy, will step down after 10 years. He has not announced his next steps. Up next The development calendar this week looks relatively clear in advance of a series of heavyweight summits that traditionally dominate the latter part of the year — the U.N. General Assembly, the World Bank annual meetings, and the COP30 climate summit, all of which we’ll be covering in great depth here at Devex. But there’s another key item on the agenda — and that’s the return of the U.S. Congress on Sept. 9, and the attendant ongoing budget circus. This is absolutely vital for the development sector, because it’s this process that will set the development budget for 2026. For those outside the U.S. — and even for many who’ve lived with it their whole lives — the federal budget process remains Byzantine in its complexity. In theory, a budget bill requires Democratic votes to pass the Senate, so the Republicans can’t simply bulldoze it through. It looks as if the bill could be heading for a showdown, though. The U.S. budget process involves separate spending proposals from the White House, and both chambers of the legislature, and the House of Representatives has proposed a much smaller spending cut than the president. Insiders suggest the Senate could propose an even smaller cut. The most likely situation is that the various parties can’t reach an agreement, and instead they’ll pass something called a continuing resolution, which rolls over existing budgets (including around $60 billion of aid money). The issue is that so far, the administration has proved reluctant to actually spend the money it’s asked to by Congress. If that continues to be the White House position, it’s not clear what might happen next. Job of the week Your Devex Pro membership includes access to the world’s largest global development job board. Here’s the latest opportunity: • Kenya Country Director, CARE Search for more opportunities now.