Multilateral agencies are facing a difficult future after the past year, with the United States withdrawing funding and billions of dollars of bills still unpaid. But which agencies went into that period with the strongest funding pipelines? We did the research to find out.
Also in today’s edition: What DFC will do next, and the company preserving some Feed the Future projects.
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Multilateral money
In 2024, even before U.S. President Donald Trump took an ax to the international aid system, the amount of cash going to multilateral agencies was in decline. More than $90 billion of funds from international donors was channeled through the multilateral system, which is a sizable amount, but still $16.9 billion less than the year before.
The bad news is that the United States was the largest contributor to the system, with aid worth $23.2 billion. And of the money provided by other donors, more than a quarter — $19 billion — went to a single multilateral institution — the European Union.
Who got the rest? My colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan has figures on who spent what and who got it.
Read: What did donors spend on multilateral aid in 2024? (Pro)
This week, we’ve got two great events for you. On Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET, we’ll hear from two global development professionals who launched successful consultancies after layoffs on exactly how they found clients, set rates, scoped work, and overcame their first-year challenges. Register here.
And on Friday at 9 a.m. ET, we'll have the World Health Organization’s new Africa chief, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, for a discussion on navigating aid cuts and health reform and resilience in the region. Register here.
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 African Development Bank has approved a $200 million loan to boost agricultural production and reduce food imports in Nigeria.
The Green for Growth Fund has announced a partnership to support utility-scale renewable energy projects across Serbia.
French DFI Proparco is providing €2 million ($2.4 million) to support financial inclusion of rural women in Senegal.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has allocated an emergency fund to reinforce response to large-scale forest-fire emergencies in Chile.
The World Bank Group has approved a $143 million grant to support more jobs, services, and climate resilience across Afghanistan.
+ From daily funding opportunity alerts to exclusive intelligence on donor trends, Devex Pro Funding gives development professionals the edge they need to navigate today’s complex finance landscape — and win. Sign up with a five-day free trial now.
Coming in from the Cole
Few parts of the U.S. aid system are still going strong. But some agencies have emerged relatively unscathed, and one of them is the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, or DFC.
DFC struggled through a tricky reauthorization process which hampered its ability to invest, but it’s now got a new leader and a new mandate, and senior figures are in a bullish mood.
My colleague Adva Saldinger caught up with Conor Coleman, the head of investments, who outlined the new vision of his similarly alliterative boss, Benjamin Black.
“We’re not deploying dollars just for the sake of deploying capital,” Coleman tells Adva. “We’re really deploying capital to drive the president’s foreign policy objectives, promote economic growth in the host countries that we are investing in, all while delivering a return for the U.S. taxpayer.”
Read: Senior DFC official details agency's plans, new vision (Pro)
See also: A Q&A with DFC investment chief Conor Coleman (Pro)
The future of Feed the Future
We previously brought you the story of how independent funders stepped in to keep much of the work going when USAID’s innovation division was shut down. Now, in a similar vein, here’s a story of how researchers were able to preserve some projects from USAID’s billion-dollar Feed the Future program, rather than see U.S.-funded research simply go to waste.
Read: When Feed the Future shut down, these researchers built something new (Pro)
ICYMI: New fund revives USAID’s ‘discovery engine’ outside of government (Pro)
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Lost lives
The impacts of USAID’s closure continue to reverberate in every sector. In Zimbabwe, youth programs which once helped people build skills and develop livelihoods were suddenly closed overnight, leaving young people bereft. Devex visited Teen Rescue Mission, a local organization supporting youth recovering from drug addiction, and found that many people who were receiving support from USAID have still not found an alternative way to move forward.
Read: Zimbabwe’s youth pay the price of US funding drawdown
+ This story is part of The Aid Report, a Gates Foundation-funded, editorially independent initiative to track and document the on-the-ground impacts of the U.S. aid cuts with firsthand reporting and a verified, contributor-based data collection system. For more information and to read the stories, go to https://www.theaidreport.us.
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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.
