Prepared by: Dr. Susan Murphy, Chair, DSAI
On March 3, 2025, the DSAI issued a call for opinion pieces, inviting our community to reflect on the ‘potential implications of the suspension of USAID on funding for development research’. Little did we realise that this suspension would mark the end of USAID as the largest and arguably most influential international development cooperation agency and donor. Aid was in decline[1] before Trump’s January 20th 2025, Executive Order[2]. However, there is little doubt that this order has acted as an accelerant. Since this announcement, a number of large institutional donors have followed the US's example, reducing and redirecting international development and humanitarian funding towards national interests, security, and defence. For some, the core principles of international cooperation and the shared commitments outlined in UN Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals are at risk of being left behind. For the US, they have been totally discarded. All indications since March 2025 seem to support Tony German’s claim in his contribution from April 2025, that ‘we are at the start of the end of aid – except maybe for emergency humanitarian assistance’. Given the horrific genocide that has unfolded in Gaza, where humanitarian assistance has been deliberately withheld and actively weaponised, it would seem that even emergency assistance is no longer assured. This may come as little surprise to communities in crisis, away from the global gaze, including Sudan, South Sudan, Niger, Haiti, and many other areas where the international community's response appears to be one of silence and indifference rather than collective action and care.
As we share this synthesis report of opinion pieces received and featured on our website over the past 10 months, we situate our comments and reflections on what we now know and where the development cooperation research community now find themselves. The contemporary conjuncture is marked by escalating conflict and distrust, centring national interests over international cooperation and global concerns, declining support for universal values, accelerating catastrophic climate breakdown, and chaotic global economic relations supercharged by the emergence of trade tariffs and barriers, rapidly and radically redefining the global economic order and geopolitical alignments.
In response to our call for opinion pieces, we received ten thoughtful and thought-provoking contributions that provide insights into the (1) broader consequences for development funding streams; (2) shifting priorities of development research; (3) the challenges and opportunities for researchers and institutions; and (4) potential strategies for mitigating funding gaps.
(1) Broader Consequences
In Aid is dead, kid, Kelly describes the dystopian reality that has unfolded in the US as a discourse of compassion and care has been traded with a techno-capitalist self-help self-interest, me-first mode of thought. The celebration of monetised misery seems to have locked in the pathway to the current tragic moment of despair, isolation, and loss. Kelly claims, ‘they didn’t just dismantle USAID. They salted the ground’.
In a helpful overview of the macro implications for ODA and global development cooperation, Peter Taylor outlines the scale and reach of the cuts, calling on other donors to avoid following the US example. As evidence has demonstrated over successive generations of researchers, despite its failings, global development cooperation is still necessary to mitigate the risk of future/further conflict, instability and extremism, insecurity and climate chaos. The focus of donors, Taylor argues, should shift to reform rather than destruction of the global cooperation structures and processes so that ODA can be spent on prevention of conflict and collapse, rather that its ‘deadly consequences.
Sadly, this call appears to have gone unnoticed. Since these contributions, there is evidence that some funding has started to flow from the US for humanitarian causes. However, the conditions under which aid is now distributed have shifted dramatically and questions abound concerning the integrity of basic core humanitarian principles. Further, the active dismantling of the liberal rule-based international order grounded in normative foundations of human rights, equality, diversity and inclusivity, has continued at pace.
(2) Shifting Priorities
Angela Garvey’s compelling contribution argues that USAID is not just a funder, it is also a ‘signalling institution’ whereby its priorities and funding decisions often shape the broader donor policy, priority and funding landscape. Thus, the implications of USAID’s collapse are a cause for concern not only in terms of the financial hole that this creates, but in the areas that are prioritised in development research. Key areas under attack are those that Trump his followers see as distinctly threatening to their worldview – climate science and the transition to green economies, and all things related to equality, diversity and inclusivity. Consequently, research on climate change, just transitions, green economies, gender relations, inequalities, the gender effects of climate change and actions, and so on, is no longer possible through US funding agencies. Pressure is likely to be placed on others to follow suit.
These anti-science, anti-gender tendencies pose clear epistemic and ontological threats to researchers across the globe, with specific implications for those specialising in climate change and justice, gender equality and social inclusion, biodiversity and ecological restoration. Sadly, despite the rhetoric of the anti-science, anti-gender movements, climate breakdown continues to unfold, and multidimensional and intersecting inequalities continue to exist, posing distinct and complex challenges for communities across the globe. Ignoring the rights, interests and needs of human and more-than-human communities simply fosters division, decay, and destruction. It seems antithetical to the interests of any state, yet the shift to the extreme right seems to gather momentum as states respond to new perceived threats and risks, recalibrating geopolitical alignments and eroding the basis for cooperation and collaboration.
In the short term, there are implications for policymakers and practitioners who utilise evidence to inform policy design, development, and implementation. Cecy Edijala Balogun reflects on the harmful implications for evidence-based policy making in Nigeria and South Africa as USAID data sets and longitudinal studies are discontinued. The information and data gaps are likely to be significant and will have harmful implications for communities and government ministries that rely on these insights but lack the resources and capacities to fill them. The speed of the suspension and withdrawal left many ‘high and dry’ as Taylor notes, seriously damaging trust and relationships in early 2025. Since then, researchers and organisations have been collaborating to fill gaps where possible, albeit in a piecemeal way and with serious concerns about the ongoing viability of this approach.
(3) The Challenges and Opportunities for Researchers and Institutions
For Taofik Oyewo Hussain, Trump’s Executive Order 14169 is not just a bureaucratic hiccup, it is a harsh reminder of the fragility of unequal relations and a catalyst to rethink the landscape of development research and governance. We are reminded that USAID not only funded development research but influenced development research directions and priorities.
When policy shifts, it not only disrupts financial flows, it also affects research momentum. Aprita Chowdhury argues that the impact on early career researchers and emerging scholars will be far-reaching and long-lasting. Hussain observes that the funding freeze and subsequent elimination have resulted in ‘stalled careers, unpublished findings, and lost data’. For Balogun, there is a risk that ‘the visibility of vulnerable populations in policymaking may diminish’. They note ‘it risks leaving behind knowledge vacuums as community-driven pilot programs, policy evaluations and large data sets are abandoned midstream, resulting in incomplete outputs, demoralised researchers and disengaged communities.
In Aid to Agency, Hussain cites the example of CODESRIA, the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, which provides funding and intellectual platforms for African scholars and calls upon this agency and others to seize this moment and take a much greater role in driving African research funding and priorities. They note that this episode is a call to action… to work towards a future where African development research is ‘resilient, independent and grounded in context’. Balogun, similarly calls for a mindset shift in their contribution, From Dependency to Resilience, where they acknowledge the damage caused by the sudden disruption to funding flows, but also see an opportunity for African research institutions to reassess and build more self-sufficient research frameworks for the continent's future. ‘Development research is the foundation of Africa’s socio-economic transformation’, they argue, and so must be protected and extended. This moment, they argue, represents an unprecedented opportunity to decolonise African research agendas.
(4) Potential Mitigation Strategies
Lawrence Makamanzi focuses on the range of potential mitigation strategies to fund the gap that can be considered by development researchers. They identify potential strategic areas that could support the transition to a new funding model, including South-South cooperation, to leverage shared experiences and resources. Further, they call on the regional development banks and multilateral financial institutions to step forward and help fill the vacuum. In addition, Makamanzi proposes local resource mobilisation, including domestic funding mechanisms, progressive taxation, sovereign wealth funds, and public-private partnerships. They consider digital and tech solutions including crowdfunding platforms to catalyse development funding at scale, with philanthropy and private foundations identified as appropriate and flexible sources of funding. Finally, they call for further investment in capacity building of local NGOs and society to support long term sustainability, resilience, and a locally owned development financing ecosystem in the global South.
As deliberation continues on the options and opportunities presented by this rupture, consideration of the risks associated with such strategies is also required. Makamanzi notes that alternative strategies are required to ensure continuation of essential development initiatives, and therein lies the rub. There will inevitably be tensions, competition and contestation on what to prioritise, how this should be done, whose voices should be considered and how harm can be minimised as trade-offs are made. There will continue to be significant spillover from the Trump Regime, and this creates tensions and competition between co-dependent entities that need to cooperate rather than compete for their joint success. In addition, discussions around the role of development banks must be considered in the light of the current debt crisis, and strategies implemented must seek to avoid increasing unsustainable debt levels that are already deeply problematic. Based on the communique that followed the June Financing 4 Development conference in Seville, it is unlikely that the current debt crisis will be resolved any time soon.
Concluding Comments:
Despite the painful experiences and complex challenges currently eroding the foundations of global solidarity and cooperation, this moment also presents us with an opportunity to ask, as Tony German suggests, what the post-ODA development architecture could or should look like.
The actions of the US and other institutional donors have severely eroded trust in several distinct ways: between donor and recipient countries, international institutions and non-governmental organisations, and between researchers, institutions and participants (Garvey, Chowdhury and Taylor). They also pose a significant risk of epistemic injustice through widening the global knowledge production gap (Chowdhury) as the impacts of cuts are likely to be felt more acutely by early career researchers, researchers from the global South, and those from low-income backgrounds as projects stall and results go unpublished (Hussain, Chowdhury, and Balogun). At the same time, this moment also opens space for enhanced South-South cooperation (Makamanzi), new partnerships (Garvey), and a radical reimaging of the localisation agenda and locally led development research (Hussain). As unwanted as the recent attacks on aid may be, they present an unprecedented moment to drive radical transformation of the development cooperation industry, placing locally led development initiatives, needs, and the voices of affected populations at the centre of governance and practice. Research and evidence are central to this transformation. As Garvey notes in her defence of sustained investment in development research, ‘evidence-based policy is not a luxury, it is the backbone of effective accountable development’.
[1] OECD (2025) ‘Cuts in official development assistance OECD projections for 2025 and the near term’. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/06/cuts-in-official-development-assistance_e161f0c5/full-report.html.
[2] Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid – The White House