Earlier this month the U.S. Congress surprised the development world by proposing a more-generous-than-expected $50 billion foreign assistance bill. But a closer look reveals that much of the money is dedicated to security and diplomacy, not aid.
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Picking up the bill
The United States has allocated far more funding to a foreign assistance bill for fiscal year 2026 than many feared — $50 billion, in fact. But what is the money being spent on, and how much in fact qualifies as foreign assistance?
My colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan has been through the bill and broken it down in detail. His findings? There’s less money that really counts as foreign assistance than we might expect at first glance.
Read: The $50B US aid budget — what’s in it for development? (Pro)
On top of that, there are also questions over the capacity and the willingness of the U.S. Department of State to actually spend the money in the bill. Senior Reporter Michael Igoe spoke to experts last week to understand the state of play.
Watch: Congress may pass a $50B foreign aid bill. Will Trump spend the money? (Pro)
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Funding activity
We publish tenders, grants, and other funding announcements on our Funding Platform. Here are some of those viewed the most in the past 10 days.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has provided €190 million ($225 million) in funding to upgrade Tunisia’s digital infrastructure.
The Central American Bank for Economic Integration has approved $150 million to modernize and reconstruct sports venues in El Salvador.
The Asian Development Bank is seeking consulting services to implement a technical assistance subproject to strengthen women’s entrepreneurship in Armenia.
The African Union Commission has announced a call for proposals to strengthen institutional capacity in methane detection, monitoring, and mitigation across the oil and gas value chain in Africa.
The Global Environment Facility has announced a grant proposal to support community-led environmental protection and sustainable development initiatives in Guinea.
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WHO’s holding the bag?
Among the casualties of the U.S. retrenchment on aid has been the World Health Organization, which the Trump administration has withdrawn from. But WHO says that the U.S. owes it $260 million in dues.
The Trump administration has now said it will not pay that money.
“All U.S. funding for, and staffing of, WHO initiatives has ceased,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a statement on Thursday. They accused WHO of “profound failures” during the pandemic, claims that WHO disputed in a response statement.
Read: The Trump administration says it won’t pay what it owes WHO
Case by case
It was in mid-February last year that the first legal battles over the closure of USAID began. Almost a year later, some of those cases are still ongoing, including two brought by the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council, among other organizations.
In both lawsuits, the central argument is that the U.S. Congress, not the president, has power over federal spending — and because of that, President Donald Trump’s foreign aid freeze is illegal.
So where are those cases now? My colleague Elissa Miolene spoke to the plaintiffs to find out.
Read: Fighting for billions — the legal battle to keep US foreign aid alive (Pro)
Flexible funding
There is less funding to go around in the world of aid today. But what to do about it?
One answer is to look at new ways to fund, and that’s one of the goals of the Radical Flexibility Fund, which works with the sector and funders to find new ways to deliver money to aid projects.
The fund is also looking at ways to put communities in the driving seat when it comes to how funding is allocated, and is experimenting with new models of loans, recoverable grants, and participatory governance structures in order to make that happen.
Devex contributor Christine Sow caught up with Riva Kantowitz, founder and CEO of Radical Flexibility Fund, during a recent Devex Pro Funding Briefing, to find out more about what makes the model work.
Read: How the Radical Flexibility Fund is using new tools to finance aid (Pro)
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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.
