March 21, 2025

Re-imagining foreign aid

Farah Stockman in her NY Times editorial decries the chaos and devastation from cuts in US foreign aid, but also calls for re-imagining a foreign aid that addresses serious flaws inherent in the current forms of aid.  We know that local groups (especially under-funded government health systems) are far more cost-effective and attuned to what communities need – and stay long after foreign workers depart. Cutting out the middlemen is essential, and more cost-effective – as leaders in the global south have been demanding for decades. Here is the article.

We should remember that re-imagining aid must include investing in and supporting the public sector in LMICs, since local NGOs don’t have the capacity to reach the majority of the poor who need help. And the private sector simply creates dual systems of inequitable services. Let’s also re-imagine our other harmful global practices, including reducing global theft from the rich countries, reducing our enabling illicit money flows from the elites of the global south to secret accounts in the USA, and helping move toward fairer national and global taxation systems.

Image: John Moore/Getty Images