This year has seen massive changes for global development, with the United States, United Kingdom and other donors announcing cuts to foreign assistance. The Development Policy Centre has estimated that official development assistance, which peaked in 2023, will reduce by between 25% to 50% by 2027.

In Australia, initial commentary on funding global development concentrated around three big questions. First, the impact on affected communities, including in Southeast Asia and the Pacific and in sectors like humanitarian aid, health, democracy and human rights. Second, the impact on the development sector and its viability and future capability. And, third, convincing Australian policymakers not to follow other countries’ lead in the federal budget — which, thankfully, has been successful so far.

A few have taken the view that the size of the shock will mean the need to re-think and re-make using a different development paradigm. But mostly the discussion has been about how to react to changes in the sector and to preserve funding. Development organisations and contractors are laying off staff and trying to work out how to survive. And everyone is just trying to keep track of what’s happening with the speed of change.

There are very different conversations going on elsewhere. In March, I attended the Raisina Dialogue, India’s premier geopolitical conference. This gave me a chance to hear voices rarely heard — including from Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Bhutan. I was struck by the different narratives I heard regarding funding global development.

One reaction was good riddance. “As a policy-maker from a recipient country I will not be grieving the death of USAID”, said Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Indian Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. “We are entirely capable of funding our own TB program”. He linked foreign assistance with interference — including “fishy protests” and a coup in Bangladesh — with most aid aligned with the interests of source countries. He described USAID as “the biggest scam in human history”. This was echoed in another panel on funding global development which mentioned African leaders who are celebrating USAID’s demise, seeing it as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” that destabilised governments.

Read the full article about funding global development by Melissa Conley Tyler at Devpolicy Blog.