The past few months have brought an uncomfortable but necessary wave of reflection across the development sector. Fear, uncertainty, and disruption are becoming the norm, especially for grassroots organizations and the communities they serve, particularly in the Global South.
As global aid faces massive cuts with the United States leading the rollback and Europe following suit, the consequences are cascading across countries like mine. Her Initiative, the organization that I lead in Tanzania, recently experienced this firsthand. We were a sub-grantee of a USAID-funded project that supported civic and political participation for women and girls ahead of Tanzania’s national elections in October 2025. The project aimed to shift systems and mobilize more women, especially young women to lead. But it was abruptly cut short.
Yes, we have a woman president. But one woman in power does not change the deeply rooted inequalities across our political, economic, and social systems. That’s why this project mattered. That’s why aid still matters.
Aid Cuts Through a Gender Lens
Globally, less than 3% of aid goes to youth-, women-, and girl-focused initiatives. With aid cuts, that number risks dropping even further. What does this mean for girls in rural villages, young mothers trying to start a business, or youth-led organizations operating on a shoestring budget?
Let me break it down.
Aid cuts are not just a financial problem. They are a crisis of justice. They lead to:
- Loss of jobs. Not just any jobs, but jobs held by skilled, purpose-driven individuals supporting families and communities.
- Increased risks of gender-based violence, hunger, HIV, and mental health challenges, especially for those already marginalized.
- Silencing of voices from the grassroots and shrinking civic space, especially for youth and women-led organizations who are already underfunded.
We are no longer just talking about unemployment due to skills mismatch, we are seeing widespread unemployment of highly skilled youth who were once catalysts of change.
But here’s the deeper question:
Who is collecting and amplifying the voices of youth, women, and girls in this moment of crisis? Where is their part of the story?
The people most affected by these aid decisions are rarely consulted, let alone empowered to co-create the solutions. Where are the listening mechanisms, the storytelling platforms, and the participatory spaces that center their lived realities? If we are serious about equity, we cannot make funding decisions in boardrooms without hearing from the very communities those funds are meant to serve.
We Can’t “Profit” Our Way Out of Inequality
The push toward “sustainability” in aid often translates to pressure on nonprofits to become self-reliant overnight. While diversifying income is important, sustainability cannot replace philanthropy, especially not in contexts where communities have yet to access basic services.
This “profit-first” shift risks reinforcing power imbalances. When everything has a price, those without purchasing power are once again pushed aside. Sustainability should not be about monetizing every solution, it should be about investing in dignity, trust, and long-term change.
So, What Can Be Done?
Here are a few pathways forward for countries, funders, and affected communities:
1. Governments must assess and respond transparently.
Countries affected by aid cuts must map the impact across employment, health, education, and gender, and publish national relief and recovery plans. Ignoring the impact is a political choice that puts lives at risk.
2. Funders must rethink what funding looks like.
Now more than ever, we need:
- Unrestricted, long-term funding to help grassroots organizations build reserves and grow their own income streams.
- Emergency grants for frontline work supporting girls' education, political participation, maternal health, HIV, and malaria prevention.
3. Communities must be heard, not just helped.
Marginalized communities need more than empathy. They need platforms to share their experiences, voice their needs, and shape the solutions that are meant to serve them.
We must create intentional spaces, surveys, listening sessions, youth parliaments, digital storytelling platforms, where youth, women, and girls can speak and be taken seriously. Not as passive beneficiaries, but as co-creators of the future.
4. Let’s center care and connection.
In times of crisis, mental and emotional health are essential. We must normalize conversations around burnout, depression, and suicide especially among youth leaders—and create safe spaces for healing.
5. This is also a time for bold innovation.
Just like COVID-19 birthed new models, this crisis can too. What opportunities exist to build more resilient, localized, and feminist development systems that work beyond traditional aid?
We cannot solve deep systemic inequalities with surface-level reforms or quick funding fixes. We must dismantle the power structures that define who gets funded, who gets heard, and who gets left behind.
The future of development must be community-led, feminist, youth-centered, and just. Let’s build a world where support is not transactional but transformational. Where sustainability includes solidarity. And where girls and young women don’t just survive the cuts, they lead us toward something better.