Transcript
A (0:05)
Welcome to Into Africa, a podcast where we explore Africa's geopolitical landscape, its evolving global role and the challenges and opportunities shaping the continent's future. I'm your host, Oge Onborgu, Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the center for Strategic and International Studies, Foreign. Welcome back to Into Africa. Today we are diving into a crucial conversation about the future of international humanitarian and development assistance in Africa. For decades, the model of humanitarian and development aid to Africa followed a predictable path, often top down. But. But in 2026, this model has reached a critical inflection point driven by a convergence of severe funding shortages, escalated climate and conflict related crises, and a necessary but challenging shift from donor led relief to locally led long term development. Traditional aid to African countries from the global north is shrinking while crises from the ongoing civil war in Sudan to climate driven droughts in the Horn of Africa to insecurity in the Sahel are becoming more complex. This isn't just about a funding crisis, it's a paradigm shift. We're moving from a system of assistance to one of partnership where local leadership, innovation and community led resilience are no longer optional. They are the new foundation. Today we're joined by two amazing guests to explore how we navigate this period of transition. Jada McKenna is the chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations. In her role as CEO, Jada leads a global team of over 4,000 humanitarians who work to provide life saving relief and support transformational change in more than 40 countries across the world. My colleague, Noam Unger is Vice President of the Global Development Department at csis, where he is also the Director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative and a Senior Fellow with a Project on Prosperity and Development. Prior to joining csis, Noem held several leadership positions in the US Government and nonprofit sector. Jada Noem, thank you for joining us here today. We keep hearing that the humanitarian and development landscape are at an inflection point. From your experience, Jada, leading one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations, and Noam, given the number of years that you've worked on US policy issues and now as Vice President of our Global Development Program here at csis, how would you describe the shift that we're seeing in this landscape from 2020 to 2025 to what we are currently today in 2026? Jada, let me start with you.
B (3:12)
Yeah, thank you, thank you for having me and thank you for the question. You know, 2020 to 2025 I see was really about the World dealing with multiple large overlapping crises happening at once. And it was about how to scale response to those crises. In that latter period, we were also dealing with the beginning of what I call an era of indifference. And so we were seeing increasing flagrant international humanitarian law and rules of war. So starting from 2023, we started to see closing space for humanitarian actors, a lot of attacks on civilian infrastructure that we hadn't seen before, and just an increasingly hostile world with many overlapping crises to the point where we were straining with resources. I think 2026 was just a fundamental break and a disruption in the system. I think up until 2026, there was still a belief in humanitarian aid is still a belief in the fact that it was a good thing, and a belief in the rights of civilians to be able to exist even in the midst of crises. In 2026, beginning with the precipitous change in U.S. policy, you know, the U.S. government was accounting for 40% of the humanitarian development funding, as well as as really holding a lot of pieces of the architecture of the system. You know, the US Government was the host of Fusene security system that gave us early warning signs of famine. We counted on the US as a broker and a convener. And so in 2026, we saw the US step away from that role dramatically. We saw it was a very sudden shift. So a lot of organizations were left in the lurch at once, which also undermined trust in the entire system from everyone. And then soon after that, we started to see other donors, other institutional donors like Europeans, starting to announce their own aid cuts because of their need to invest in their own defense spending. So I see this period in 2026 that the need has arisen now to renew the world's commitment to humanitarian assistance, to really renew our sense that everyone has a right to try to survive, that civilians should not be victims in conflict, and that the world does owe an obligation to help the rest of us. So it really is a fundamental gathering support again for the entire system and the entire need to do the right thing here, as well as all of the infrastructure really reorienting itself towards a period of great instability, while also meeting ever growing demands.
