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A
By the year 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African. The choices that we make now across Africa will shape the world's collective future. Welcome to the Youth Bloom, where we explore the stories, the trends and the issues we face in the present that will define the coming decades. I'm your host, Katherine N. Suzuki. After the suspension of most US Foreign assistance back in January, two organizations came together to track the human and economic impacts of the aid freeze. The first organization is Accountability Lab, a global translocal network that is focused on governance. And the second organization is Humentum, an NGO that works to strengthen social good organizations. These two orgs came together to form the Global Aid Freeze Tracker that measures the impact of this US Aid freeze on organizations around the world. The Global Aid Freeze Tracker just released the latest round of results from their global survey conducted in May. And I'm joined today by two of the CEOs of Accountability Lab and friends of the pod, Blair and Sherry.
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B
I'm Blair Glencores, founder and co CEO of Accountability Lab.
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C
I'm Sherry Lee Erasmus, co CEO and chief learning and Agility Officer of Accountability Lab.
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A
We're going to unpack the findings of their latest survey round and zoom out to hear what Blair and Sherry think the future of the aid and development sector could be. So Sheri, could you please walk us through the respondents for this latest round of surveys in the Global Aid Freeze Tracker? Where are they based and what sort of sectors do they work in?
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C
Yeah, so in this last round of surveys, we really wanted to do like a three month retrospective over the initial three months. First we heard from more than 800 organizations initially and got a good sense of that initial impact. Right. And now in May, what we wanted to do was find out what happened three months later. People had gone through initial software orders, they had gone through terminations, and we wanted to find out where the sum of the dust at least had settled at this point. So we heard in this round from about 260 organizations, and this is a split between for profit and nonprofit organizations who are all development implementers. They are based really across the board. I'd say the top countries where they are primarily based would be across the United States, Kenya, Nigeria, the DRC and Uganda. Those are sort of the top five places where they indicated that they were headquartered in. But many of them implement across a multitude of countries. And then it's also important to note that many of these organizations are, I would say filling in a form for one office, but again, or filling it in as one entity. But they are based in several places. So actually the data we are getting would be indicative of a larger organization in terms of sectors and the thematic areas they were working on. Some of the highest representatives themes were in the health space, gender, governance, climate, human rights and economic development. And then also education and youth were highly represented.
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A
So, Blair, what are the main findings on how the aid freeze has impacted the operation ability of these organizations?
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B
Thanks, Catherine. And unfortunately the findings are quite bleak. The few different pieces of this I'd like to highlight. One is around months of financial resources remaining for organizations. Of those that responded, about 21%, a fifth or so only have one month of financial resources remaining. Another quarter or so have about three months. So we're looking at almost half of the nonprofits that we surveyed that only have three months or so of Runway left financially. Another 17% or so have about six months. So there are massive shifts happening now in the sector and some real challenges coming up for many, many organizations. We also asked about restructuring and merging. About 35% of the organizations that responded are considering restructuring or merging and another 19% are open to discussions about those issues, which of course reflects the fact that many are running out of financial Runway. And so again, more than half of organizations are looking at new ways of working or thinking through how this affects their sustainability over time in quite substantial ways. We also asked about layoffs and staffing. Almost 55% of the organisations that we spoke to have laid people off. Another 15% or so are still considering it. So again, we're getting up to sort of 3/4 of organisations that have let people go, unfortunately, because of the speed of some of the cuts that are happening. And about 30% of the organisations we talk to have laid off 80% plus of their staff. So these aren't just one or two people, it's fairly significant amounts of people in many cases. And then finally we asked about organisations at sort of at risk in terms of operational ability and closing offices. And 33%, about a third, are considering closing one or more offices. And 33% said that their entire organisations are at risk of closing. So we have to look at this as a very clear signal that the field is shrinking, that there are going to be extreme difficulties for many civil society and social sector organizations. And we all, whether we took direct US government money or not, are going to feel the ramifications of this for a long time to come.
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A
And Sheri, what has been the human impact?
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C
Thank you, Katherine. That is such an important question because, you know, over the last few months, A lot of us have been looking at the impact in terms of data, right? All of these spreadsheets coming out and we look at the names of organizations and the numbers in terms of the size of grants that have been lost and the number of quote, unquote beneficiaries tied to a particular grant. And it's easy to diminish impact to numbers because that's what often happens when we look at things on a spreadsheet. What we've been trying to also do over the last couple of months is to ask a couple of open ended questions to get a real sense of what the human impact is. And in addition to our data, I've also been heartened to see a number of real human impact stories coming out in the media. And you know, it's really difficult to grapple with because the reality of the situation is people turning up at clinics and not being able to access the tuberculosis medication or the antiretroviral medication. And it's not just about skipping a couple of dosages, it's building up resistance, right? That could be very well a life sentence depending on what you're being treated for. Or just recently I was reading a series of articles about the more stricter rationing of food supplies in refugee camps. Again, in time, that literally becomes malnutrition, which becomes death for people. And so I cannot overstate that this is a life and death situation. We look at it in terms of numbers, but there are humans behind these numbers. And it's a generational cris really in many countries, because the growth stunting, the setbacks in terms of education that can happen as a result of this is massive. And then there's another sort of like employment repercussion of this, right? Even just if we look around us in the D.C. area, just being very local for us, there's been a massive diaspora created of people who now have lost jobs in the development sector. So even just around the two of us, we can see that daily. Right, I'm sure you have that in your circle as well. But then in all of the countries from which we've gathered data, that is a fact as well. And so here in D.C. we know that many people have lost their jobs in the development sector, have very few options in the space. The job market really is not looking good for people. But the same is true for development practitioners in Kenya or in Uganda or in the Philippines who have lost their work and people have built a livelihood and have taken pride in doing this work. So there's also in many Ways, you know, work in the sector has been villainized and I think that's also something we should talk about. There's been a really negative narrative built up around this work that I think we also need to counter in many ways because good work has been done. There are things we can say that have not been perfect 100% and I'm very happy to have that conversation. But at the same time there are also people who have lost livelihoods.
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A
Blair, my next question for you is are there certain sectors that are more affected than others and are there countries that are like, particularly affected by the global aid freeze?
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B
The data that we collected is indicative. Of course, it's not representative. It reflects the communities that we were able to reach. But the sectors that we heard were most affected include health, gender, education and youth. But others that were also significantly affected include climate and human rights, the governance and anti corruption as well. One sector that isn't showing up in our data, but I also know anecdotally is heavily affected is media. For example, I was reading recently that 9 out of the leading 10 media organizations in Ukraine, for example, were funded by the US Government. I think the same could be said for many African countries. And that is another important and difficult part of all of this. In terms of countries, again, this data is indicative. But the top countries that we've got data from in terms of the worst affected organizations are Kenya, Nigeria, drc, Uganda and Ghana. And this was global. So it's obviously an issue here that's affecting Africa in particular and it correlates with other data that we're seeing. ID Insight. For example, another great data collection organization recently looked in a slightly broader way at all of this as to how countries are affected and looked a bit more at the cuts relative to gdmp, the likelihood of restoration of aid to certain countries, and the ability the national response capacity of organizations to fill holes fiscally and through their analysis. The top 10 countries were also all African countries, starting with CAR, all the way down to to Sierra Leone and Uganda. So unfortunately the picture for Africa here is not great. Most of the worst affected places across data sets seem to be on the African continent. So that's going to require again some fairly significant thinking about ways forward.
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A
And Sheri, I want to get back to something you mentioned earlier about the vilification of people in the development sector. I'd love for you to just talk a bit more about that. You know, you're a practitioner, I'm sure it's been building up. There is a notable switch, especially here in the US about how we talk about people, people in the development sector. So I'd love to hear more.
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C
Yeah, I think this is a difficult needle to thread without, like, treading into the realm of politics, which I don't want to do. But, you know, there is this narrative around certain development agencies harboring corruption or, you know, not being transparent enough, which then creates a narrative that vilifies that particular body of work. Right. Which kind of takes away almost like the dignity of doing that work, because you could then have a piece of the population who, based on a limited amount of information, could buy into that narrative and, and believe that and just see it as, oh, people were, I don't know, spending money in ways that are not transparent or on the wrong things or, you know, doing things that were not in the best interest of the US or whatever. And I've heard from so many people that even in applying for other jobs, they're being told to take their development work off of their resume because it's actually counting against them in applying for jobs. Don't want to make that as a blanket statement, but I've even read stuff about that on LinkedIn. So there are definitely groups of people who feel that this work is being vilified. And similarly, as that narrative has taken shape in the US if this country with so much power is saying that this is a space that's used money in the wrong ways, other maligned government actors can buy into that too. And they have. And we know that in other spaces, development practitioners are now less safe because not only have civil society in other countries lost their funding as a result of the global aid freeze, their work has not been vilified, and things can now be said about them doing corrupt work, because that's the narrative that's coming out of a very powerful country. Right? And so it just creates an unsafe space. In countries where civic space is already limited, people can actually be persecuted for this work. And we're seeing that. And that is incredibly problematic. Another practical outflow of this, I think, just for people who really care about this work, is say, for example, you've been working on a project for 10 years, you've poured your heart into it, you've built an organization, partnerships with communities, with other local organizations. You're in a civil society ecosystem in a country, and tomorrow the plug gets pulled because your project just gets terminated. Can you imagine how it might feel like your work just never mattered in a way? Right. That's a sentiment I've heard from people, because much of your identity might be tied to what you do, to those relationships that you've built. And another element I think that's really important to people who deeply care about development, Katherine, is trust. And I think that's something that's been lost here. It's that trust that people placed in actors from the US to partner with them in development work. And then you get a phone call saying, I'm sorry, but this project is first suspended and then, I'm sorry, but this project is now then terminated. Right. And even if, I don't know, years from now, we turn that around. I think in the ecosystem, trust has now been broken in ways that's going to be hard to rebuild. And I think that the challenge is that even between practitioners, between different countries, even though we are not the ones that created this shift, we have to, to be honest, that there's a power dynamic and that we are also caught in this brittle trust that now exists. Wow.
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A
You know, I want to take a step back with Sherry and Blair. And you're both very well known prominent leaders in this field. And I just really want to understand what all of this means. And so we'll spend the remainder of our time thinking through the state of the aid sector overall. And my first question, I'll direct it to you, Blair, is, you know, what's the state of the aid sector at present? Has the industry, has the field as we know it been changed irrevocably? Is there anyone trying to fill in this gap? And I'll actually put forward my second question as well, is, given everything we've seen over the last six months, what are the different schools of thought for the way forward for this sector?
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B
I think the AIDS sector has changed fundamentally, Catherine. Absolutely. And this isn't just the US government aid cuts, it's other donor cuts that have happened before those and afterwards. In some ways, what's happened in the US has provided a permissibility for others to come. AID the UK is a good example, but this reckoning has been coming for a while. I was just at the Mo Ibrahim Foundation Governance weekend recently and they have some great new data out on all of this. And if you look at that, it shows that ODA has actually been declining to Africa for more than a decade. It's actually decreased about 11% over the last decade. So this has just accelerated a trend that was already happening. And donor governments elsewhere in the global north are not stepping up, as we know. And many of European governments, for example, have also got aid. The French, the Dutch, the uk. There are a Few small donor governments that are holding the line or have increased even slightly. Places like the Irish government, Spain, Denmark. But of course, these are not huge donors in comparative terms, and this is not going to fill the gap. And I think we can get into a conversation in a minute about the opportunities that all of this presents. But there is no question that the cuts, particularly from the US are, have been very sharp and have led to many challenges. Some foundations are stepping into the breach. We've heard some interesting things from the Gates foundation, of course, in relation to Africa in the last week or so. There are others that fund in Africa that are increasing payouts and stepping into the gap. But philanthropic capital can't possibly fill the gap that's left by donor governments. ODA, official ODA from donor governments to Africa last year was about $42 billion. And philanthropic flows last year were about 10% of that 4 billion. So we're talking 90% here of funding that somehow needs to be covered as things are cut. But I think there's moving to your second question. A lot that can be done as it relates to the aid sector. There's maybe four quick things I would touch on and I think Sherry has thoughts more related to how we can rethink aid. I would say there are related issues that we need to think about here to fill the gaps. One is debt. Of course, AFTA's external debt has almost doubled over the past decade. If we don't get to grips with, you know, with debt and work out how to relieve debt, then we're not going to be able to deal with many of these challenges. The other is tax. Of course, Africa has the lowest tax to GDP ratio in the world at about 16%. So thinking about things like progressive wealth taxes, I think would be something that we need to consider. The Ibrahim foundation was suggesting that if there was a tax across the continent that started taxing assets at over 5 million, it could yield about $12 billion for the continent annually. That's a lot of schools, it's a lot of hospitals, a lot of roads that could be funded. The third big one is illicit financial flows. Of course, there's a lot of money that leaves the continent illicitly. Think about 90 billion a year. So if, you know, if aid was 42 billion and 90 billion is leaving illicitly, if we can just recapture some of that and divert it back to legitimate spending priorities, then a lot of these challenges would be met. That requires close collaboration, of course, between the Global North. That has not been nearly good enough. At closing, some of these Loopholes as it could be with African governments. And then the final is African resources themselves. Sovereign wealth funds in Africa are valued at about 130 billion. Pension funds are about 220 billion. But they don't invest in Africa, they invest elsewhere for various reasons. Remittances are about 90 billion a year. Money isn't really the issue. It's about how we mobilise it, how we capture it and collectively deploy it in ways that support development on the continent and are citizen centric. So aid is needed in order to put in place the mechanisms and the rules and the policies to allow for all of this. But it's going to be a different kind of aid, I think, and it's an opportunity for us to restructure a system that was unfair and unequal in any case. Yeah.
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A
So, Sherry, same two questions for you. What's the state of the aid and development sector at present? And what are the different schools of thought for the way forward for this sector?
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C
For me personally, we're at such a watershed moment that is both incredibly difficult and daunting, but that also holds opportunities. So this is duality which we have to first acknowledge and accept and then move on. Right. I think if we first accept that we are probably never going back, we can sort of make plans and move on. And I like to think of three things that this is a moment to reimagine resource and rebuild anew. That's how I've been framing this time for myself. And I think often that we reach these moments and as humans, we tend to not learn from the last time we had this opportunity. Like when I think about COVID and I'll preface this by saying this is nothing like, this is so much more complex than Covid, but how much did we really learn? We adapted quickly, we learned new habits, and now in 2025, we are right back to 2019. And my hope is that as we reimagine things, we actually learn and change. And one of the things I think we ought to do is not learn and adapt in silos. I think the challenge here is that we have to embrace the fact that the only way forward as a sector is together. And together also means bringing Global north and Global south actors closer together. Pre challenges, we were trying to really strengthen the localization piece of development. We definitely made some strides, by no means enough. And I worry that we could again be at an inflection point where we only deepen the divides as the scarcity is more Right. Because everyone's competing for less in this Moment because the funding crisis is so much more than just the usg. So how do we counter start by actually putting our minds together and actively figuring out together what the pathway forward is. One way I think we should think about this is adopting a movement mindset. So how do we get out of working just as individual organizations, all as a silo shop if you will, and actually integrating some of our functions so that we can save resources? We already think, I think in many ways around certain functions that we could share, like smaller organizations who are fiscally sponsored, who have their accounting or back office functionality outsourced to other organizations. But I think there's so much more we can do actually to integrate and to share resources. Like what about sharing communications functionality, business development and even monitoring and evaluation? There's no reason why we couldn't integrate more all in a movement way to share these resources across. Because if we look at the data around the amount of people organizations have already had to furlough or lay off, it's clear that we can't all keep our whole staff. So how do we keep going and operate as organizations delivering as best we could without keeping all of these functions but still delivering? We also need to think about alternative revenue. We can't just be age reliant again. That pool is getting smaller. It's not in the foreseeable future going to be the same as it used to be. So what are the different ways in which we are going to resource ourselves now? I don't have all of the answers for that today, but one thing I can say is that this is an area where philanthropy can be helpful. What I want to say is I'm not asking in this moment philanthropy to step in and fill the gap. That is actually not at all what I'm doing. What I am saying and going to ask for is for some catalytic funding as you will, to buy organization's time to think through what alternative revenue models might be. Because when private sector entities face a difficult moment in the market when there's a a pivot needed, for example, they bring in a McKinsey or whatever to help them think through what the next, I don't know, Microsoft 2.0 is or they're able to hire in the expertise in a nonprofit organization, first of all, we don't have those in house expertise. In the best of times, we don't have the additional resources to hire in those expertise. We certainly don't have resources. Now the data shows us that that though. So I think this is a critical moment where again in A partnership model where it's not helping one organization, but maybe a collective of organizations in an integrated way. As I talked about, sharing this in a, almost in a movement way where philanthropies can really help us in a very catalytic way, share resources, buy in some expertise to think about organizational transformation and what alternative models for the future look like. And then there's a third piece to this that I think is going to be critical and that's around accountability towards our governments. Right. So for a very long time, many services like the ones I've referenced, like access to healthcare, education, in many countries have been, for a variety of reasons, delivered through foreign assistance. And I'm not saying that there's not a reason for that. There absolutely is. But in the absence of that, and we've reached that point now, we ought to hold our governments accountable for amending budgets and finding ways where they can to make those services available. And I'm not talking about drawing blood from a stone. The money isn't there. It's not there. But working in the anti corruption space, I also know that in many countries the money is there if we look at using tax money in a more equitable and transparent way. And I think this is an opportunity also for civil society citizens more broadly to call for more accountability and transparency and to actually ensure that governments build the budgets that include the services that citizens should be getting.
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A
No, that's brilliant. And I mean, there's so much to pick up from what you both said, but I've really enjoyed the push to have that accountability approach to look inwards.
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C
Right.
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A
As Blair mentioned, what we lose in illicit flows annually far exceeds what Africa gains in aid. And the rubbers hit the road. The complacency with the amount that we lose can no longer continue. Thank you both so much. It's really great listening to both of you. Thanks for tuning in. This podcast is produced by Gina Kim and our music is by Wonder Child. If you have any suggestions for future topics, you can find me on X and Instagram at catherinezuki.
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Sam.