In March 2025, the Trump administration abruptly cut 83% of programs run by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), bringing development work built over decades to a sudden halt. These funding cuts had clear and immediate consequences. Some examples include: women giving birth without skilled care, people living with HIV unable to access testing and treatment to stay alive, and survivors of domestic violence being turned away from the only clinic in their area. These are not abstract consequences. They are human ones.

The Impact

The scale of the shift is stark, and Sub-Saharan Africa will be the worst-affected region. Donor Tracker estimates that aid spending by the 17 largest Western donors will be more than 25% lower in real terms in 2026 than in 2024, marking what The Economist calls the definitive end of the post-Cold-War era of international development. According to the Centre for Global Development, bilateral aid cuts will be equivalent to more than 1% of gross national income in nine African countries, including Malawi, Liberia and Ethiopia. Through reductions in humanitarian and health spending, these cuts put an estimated one million lives at risk globally.

The shockwaves are being felt far beyond the countries that receive aid. In Geneva — long a symbolic and operational heart of the global humanitarian system — the effects are tangible. Swiss media report that between 3,500 and 4,000 jobs out of roughly 27,000 linked to international organizations in Geneva could disappear as a result of shrinking donor budgets. UNICEF has already announced the relocation of around 300 jobs from Geneva to Rome, retaining barely a third of its positions in the city, with U.S. aid cuts playing a central role. Geneva’s international ecosystem, built on decades of donor-funded multilateralism, is contracting in real time.

None of this diminishes the immense value of humanitarian aid. Emergency food assistance, vaccination campaigns and maternal health programmes have saved lives and prevented suffering on a vast scale. The problem is not the existence of aid itself, but the way some parts of the global development system have come to rely on funding structures that are inherently unstable. When priorities shift in donor capitals, programmes can unravel quickly — not because communities no longer need them, but because they were never designed to function without external support.

Implications and Reactions

In Sierra Leone, the abrupt dismantling of USAID — while headline-grabbing in Washington and Brussels — was described by many as “not unexpected”. Years of exposure to the rhythms of foreign aid have fostered a quiet realism: external actors arrive, define programs, and eventually leave. Each cycle brings activity and attention, but too often leaves behind limited institutional capacity and fragile systems once funding dries up. For many, the latest cuts did not represent an unprecedented rupture, but the continuation of a familiar pattern.

What is striking today is that not all African leaders see the current moment only as a catastrophe. Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, has described the abrupt closure of USAID as “long overdue.” Speaking to the Financial Times, he acknowledged the pain of the cuts but framed them as an opportunity: “It forces us to grow our economies and to do the things we should have been doing.” His message is not one of isolationism, but of agency. “It’s painful for now,” he said, “but longer term, it’s a good thing.”

Social Incomes Thoughts

From the perspective of organizations like Social Income, which provides unconditional cash transfers — a form of universal basic income — this moment is less a reckoning than an opening. Not because the cuts are welcome, but because they expose the limits of a development model that has too often relied on complex, externally driven systems that struggle to endure. 

Cash transfers do something radical in development terms: they shift power. Instead of donors deciding what people need, individuals decide for themselves. Instead of projects ending when funding cycles close, households can gain predictability and autonomy. In countries facing volatile aid flows, this matters enormously. Cash transfers are not a replacement for humanitarian relief in emergencies, but they can form the foundation of long-term, self-directed development.

The end of the old aid era will be messy and uneven. The question is no longer whether the old system can be restored; it cannot. What matters now is whether governments, donors and development institutions are willing to build something better: models that are simpler, fairer and grounded in human dignity. Universal basic income and direct cash transfers do not offer charity; they offer something far more powerful — trust, autonomy and genuine self-reliance.