Foreign Aid Is Shrinking. Development Cannot Shrink With It.

Mark Suzman’s recent essay in Foreign Affairs, “The End of Foreign Aid Is Not the End of Development,” should be read carefully by every government, funder, university, research institution, think tank, and development professional working in Africa.

Not because it announces the death of aid. It does not.

Its real message is more important: the old aid model is no longer politically, financially, or institutionally safe to rely on. That is a very different argument. And it is one we should take seriously.

Suzman, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, is not arguing that development has failed or that wealthy countries should walk away from global responsibility. His argument is that aid must be redesigned to achieve the thing it has always promised but too often postponed: building systems strong enough to reduce the need for aid over time. The Foreign Affairs essay frames the challenge as doing more with less, not abandoning development altogether.

This matters because the numbers are no longer theoretical. OECD preliminary data show that official development assistance fell by 23.1 percent in 2025 to US$174.3 billion, the largest annual contraction on record. OECD also notes that the decline followed a 6.1 percent fall in 2024, with pressures pointing to continued constraint.

In plain language: the aid environment has changed.

For years, many institutions in the development space behaved as if another call for proposals would always come, another project cycle would always open, and another donor would always be willing to fund the next pilot. That assumption is now dangerous.

But this should not lead to despair. It should lead to discipline.

The future of development will not belong to institutions that simply know how to write proposals. It will belong to institutions that can solve real problems, translate evidence into action, and leave behind systems that continue working after the grant ends.

That is the pivot.

For those of us in the R&D space, this is the moment to move from projects to platforms. A project asks, “What activity can we fund?” A platform asks, “What system are we strengthening, and who will use it after the donor leaves?”

That distinction is no longer academic. It is becoming the difference between relevance and redundancy.

The Gates Foundation itself is signaling this shift. It has said it will accelerate giving over the next two decades and focus its work around three major goals: ending preventable deaths of mothers and babies, reducing deadly infectious diseases, and helping hundreds of millions of people escape poverty. Reporting on the foundation’s 2026 direction also notes that it is narrowing priorities while maintaining a strong commitment to global health, with around 70 percent of its giving directed to global health priorities such as maternal and child survival and infectious diseases.

That narrowing is important.

It means the next era will reward focus. Broad language about “capacity building” will not be enough. Donors, governments, and partners will ask harder questions:

What problem are you solving?

Whose decision will your evidence change?

Which system will absorb the solution?

What cost will fall because of your work?

What local institution will own it after external funding ends?

How will we know it worked?

These are no longer annex questions. They are the main questions.

For African research and development institutions, the lesson is clear: we must stop presenting ourselves as local partners and start behaving like development infrastructure.

A local partner waits to be included. Development infrastructure is too useful to ignore. This requires several practical shifts.

First, move from fragmented research to mission-oriented portfolios. The question should not be, “What research can we do?” The better question is, “What national or regional problem must be solved, what evidence is missing, and what combination of policy, technology, financing, regulation, and delivery capacity is needed?”

Second, take translation seriously. A journal article is important, but it is not the end of the journey. A dashboard is useful, but it is not impact by itself. A pilot can be promising, but it is not scale. The real test is whether research becomes a decision tool, a public good, a product, a protocol, a financing model, a regulatory pathway, or a government routine.

Third, design for exit from day one. Every serious R&D initiative should have an aid-independence pathway. Who pays for this later? Which ministry, agency, university, regulator, county, or regional body will own it? What budget line will carry it? What capacity must be transferred? What minimum version can survive without donor oxygen?

Fourth, treat AI as infrastructure, not decoration. The Gates Foundation and OpenAI’s Horizon 1000 initiative, for example, is supporting work to strengthen primary healthcare in 1,000 African clinics and surrounding communities by 2028, beginning in Rwanda, with a $50 million commitment. The lesson is not simply that AI is exciting. The lesson is that AI must be embedded in real delivery systems, with frontline value, local adaptation, and practical use.

African institutions should therefore avoid adding AI to proposals as a fashionable paragraph. AI should help reduce decision delays, strengthen surveillance, support diagnostics, improve grant management, synthesize evidence, personalize agricultural advice, and assist frontline workers.

Fifth, build public goods that can travel. The future will not favor isolated tools that work only inside one project. It will favor interoperable platforms, open standards, shared data systems, reusable methods, and trusted institutional arrangements that can serve many countries, sectors, and funders.

This is where Africa has a major opportunity.

The continent should not enter this new era as a continent of proposal applicants. It should enter as a continent of problem owners.

We know where the systems fail. We know where data does not reach decision-makers. We know where diagnostics arrive too late. We know where agricultural technologies remain trapped in demonstration plots. We know where national research systems are fragmented. We know where policies are written without evidence and where evidence is produced without policy demand.

That knowledge is power if we organize it well.

The institutions that will matter most in the next development era will be those that can convene governments, funders, scientists, implementers, communities, regulators, and private actors around a real problem and then manage the journey from evidence to adoption.

That is what serious R&D leadership now requires. Suzman’s essay should therefore be read as a warning, but also as an invitation. The warning is that the old comfort zone is disappearing. The invitation is to build something better. For Africa’s R&D institutions, the strategic question is no longer, “How do we win the next grant?”

The better question is, “What must we build that Africa will still need, use, and fund ten years from now?”

That is the standard.

If a project ends and only a report remains, we have failed. If a project ends and leaves behind a stronger lab, a better surveillance system, a trusted data platform, a functioning research-matching system, a validated diagnostic pathway, a policy adopted by government, a trained regulatory network, a cheaper delivery model, or a public good others can use, then development has moved forward.

The end of the old aid model is not the end of development. It is the end of lazy development. And perhaps that is exactly the disruption we needed.

About the Author Dr. Julius Kirimi Sindi is a global expert in research funding, policy impact, and donor relations. With extensive experience in analyzing philanthropy, business, and science funding, Dr. Sindi fosters sustainable and inclusive research ecosystems. He has facilitated international business relationships across Africa, Europe, and Asia. His upcoming book, The Blueprint of Life Well Lived, explores successful strategies for navigating complex business environments while achieving sustainable growth. He is also the author of an upcoming book, How Societies Change and Why Most Reforms Fail, which introduces an African Theory of Scaling rooted in emotional truth, political safety, and system coherence. He is working toward publishing Changing the Batteries: How to Renew Purpose, Growth, and Connection When Your Light Grows Dim. Dr. Sindi is the creator of The Daily Pulse, a widely read LinkedIn newsletter offering sharp, human-centered analysis of policy, politics, and development.