Latest news with #CenterforGlobalDevelopment
Egypt Independent
7 hours ago
- Business
- Egypt Independent
The UK, Germany and Canada have slashed foreign aid this year, deepening damage done by US cuts, analysis shows
London CNN — Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD). The aid cuts will mean 'significant losses' for many developing nations, according to the analysis from the DC-based think tank, shared exclusively with CNN. Ethiopia is projected to lose the most aid in nominal terms, with Jordan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo also hit particularly hard. Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50 percent of their aid. 'It's setting fire to the bold ambitions to solve poverty and transform developing countries,' Lee Crawfurd, one of the authors of the report, told CNN. 'It's some of the poorest, most fragile places in the world that are going to be hardest hit.' The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026. The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56 percent reduction compared to levels two years ago. The Trump administration's gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void. 'A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,' said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD. The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39 percent reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27 percent, Canada 25 percent and France 19 percent of their international aid budgets. The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration's proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK's defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3 percent of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999. Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending. 'Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world's most vulnerable people,' said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. 'It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.' A sign for GIZ, Germany's international development agency, is seen in February 2017. Michael Gottschalk/Photothek/Getty Images Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a 'really small part of government budgets' and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. 'It's a choice… it's a political choice,' he added. The think tank wrote in its analysis that 'one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little' – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country's needs. Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19 percent fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its 'comparable' neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39 percent. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9 percent of the funding for UN response plans had been covered. 'Every year, the UN has been helping more than 100 million people in the world as they go through the worst time of their lives in wars and disasters. But let's be clear: we won't reach the level of funding in 2025 that we've seen in previous years,' Anja Nitzsche, OCHA's chief of partnerships and resource mobilization told CNN in a statement. 'Vulnerable families are being left without food, clean water, healthcare, shelter or protection in places such as Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan.' Minimizing the damage The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to 'ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.' Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said. In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which 'can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,' according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. 'A new lead donor may not continue the same programs' or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis. Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts. 'Coordination is an ongoing challenge,' Crawfurd told CNN. 'The easiest way to do that is just to fund big multilateral funds like the World Bank.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The UK, Germany and Canada have slashed foreign aid this year, deepening damage done by US cuts, analysis shows
Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD). The aid cuts will mean 'significant losses' for many developing nations, according to the analysis from the DC-based think tank, shared exclusively with CNN. Ethiopia is projected to lose the most aid in nominal terms, with Jordan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo also hit particularly hard. Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50% of their aid. 'It's setting fire to the bold ambitions to solve poverty and transform developing countries,' Lee Crawfurd, one of the authors of the report, told CNN. 'It's some of the poorest, most fragile places in the world that are going to be hardest hit.' The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026. The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56% reduction compared to levels two years ago. The Trump administration's gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void. 'A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,' said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD. The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39% reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27%, Canada 25% and France 19% of their international aid budgets. The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration's proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK's defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999. Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending. 'Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world's most vulnerable people,' said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. 'It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.' Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a 'really small part of government budgets' and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. 'It's a choice… it's a political choice,' he added. The think tank wrote in its analysis that 'one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little' – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country's needs. Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19% fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its 'comparable' neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39%. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9% of the funding for UN response plans had been covered. 'Every year, the UN has been helping more than 100 million people in the world as they go through the worst time of their lives in wars and disasters. But let's be clear: we won't reach the level of funding in 2025 that we've seen in previous years,' Anja Nitzsche, OCHA's chief of partnerships and resource mobilization told CNN in a statement. 'Vulnerable families are being left without food, clean water, healthcare, shelter or protection in places such as Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan.' The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to 'ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.' Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said. In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which 'can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,' according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. 'A new lead donor may not continue the same programs' or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis. Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts. 'Coordination is an ongoing challenge,' Crawfurd told CNN. 'The easiest way to do that is just to fund big multilateral funds like the World Bank.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The UK, Germany and Canada have slashed foreign aid this year, deepening damage done by US cuts, analysis shows
Western countries have slashed foreign aid budgets this year and reductions will steepen in 2026, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada cutting the most, according to a new analysis from the Center for Global Development (CGD). The aid cuts will mean 'significant losses' for many developing nations, according to the analysis from the DC-based think tank, shared exclusively with CNN. Ethiopia is projected to lose the most aid in nominal terms, with Jordan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo also hit particularly hard. Smaller nations will also be hammered by the reduction in foreign aid, with Lesotho, Micronesia and Eswatini each losing around 50% of their aid. 'It's setting fire to the bold ambitions to solve poverty and transform developing countries,' Lee Crawfurd, one of the authors of the report, told CNN. 'It's some of the poorest, most fragile places in the world that are going to be hardest hit.' The analysis looked at projections of bilateral aid – money provided directly to another country rather than routed through multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies or the World Bank – for 2025 and 2026. The US is projected to cut the most, with a projected 56% reduction compared to levels two years ago. The Trump administration's gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year has already left a hole in many international aid budgets, and several other Western nations are following suit rather than filling the void. 'A big, big chunk of overall cuts in the next couple of years are going to be from the US pulling out, rather than other countries. But these other countries are making things worse,' said Crawfurd, a senior research fellow at the CGD. The UK aid cuts are estimated to represent a roughly 39% reduction compared to 2023 levels of spending. Meanwhile, Germany is cutting about 27%, Canada 25% and France 19% of their international aid budgets. The true level of aid cuts remains unclear, as the Trump administration's proposed budget and other government proposals are still making their way through legislatures. But some funding cuts are almost guaranteed. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced in February that his government would increase the UK's defense spending by cutting its aid budget to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027, its lowest level since 1999. Many organizations and aid workers have raised alarm about European governments pitting aid budgets against defense spending. 'Cutting the already lean aid budget is a false economy and will only increase division and amounts to a betrayal of the world's most vulnerable people,' said Halima Begum, head of Oxfam GB. 'It is a false dichotomy to pit international cooperation to tackle poverty against national security interests in order to avoid tax increases.' Crawfurd said that bilateral aid is a 'really small part of government budgets' and the money for defense or security could be found elsewhere. 'It's a choice… it's a political choice,' he added. The think tank wrote in its analysis that 'one striking takeaway is that some countries are projected to lose large amounts of ODA (official development assistance) simply because of who their main donors are – while others are projected to lose very little' – a game of chance, with losses not matching up to the recipient country's needs. Yemen, for example, is projected to experience a 19% fall in its bilateral funding compared to 2023, while its 'comparable' neighbor country Somalia is projected to lose about 39%. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has also warned that multilateral aid cuts are threatening efforts to tackle 44 of the highest-priority, protracted humanitarian crises. As of April, only 11.9% of the funding for UN response plans had been covered. 'Every year, the UN has been helping more than 100 million people in the world as they go through the worst time of their lives in wars and disasters. But let's be clear: we won't reach the level of funding in 2025 that we've seen in previous years,' Anja Nitzsche, OCHA's chief of partnerships and resource mobilization told CNN in a statement. 'Vulnerable families are being left without food, clean water, healthcare, shelter or protection in places such as Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Myanmar and Afghanistan.' The CGD is urging Western donors to reallocate aid to the poorest countries to try to 'ensure that resources are directed to populations in greatest need.' Western countries also need to improve coordination to mitigate further damage, especially as they are withdrawing from countries receiving aid, the think tank said. In some countries, the cuts will change who the largest donor is, which 'can lead to major shifts in what gets funded and how,' according to the CGD. For example, Portugal will likely overtake the US in aid to Angola, and Japan is projected to overtake France in Egypt. 'A new lead donor may not continue the same programs' or may take time to get up and running, according to the analysis. Giving a larger share of aid to multilateral organizations can also help improve international cooperation and cut down on duplication of aid efforts. 'Coordination is an ongoing challenge,' Crawfurd told CNN. 'The easiest way to do that is just to fund big multilateral funds like the World Bank.'
New York Times
09-04-2025
- Business
- New York Times
New Generation of African Chocolatiers Gets Hobbled by U.S. Tariffs
Dana Mroueh, a small-business owner in Ivory Coast, was negotiating to introduce her organic chocolate bars into stores in New York and Washington when President Trump announced new tariffs on all U.S. imports last week. Ivory Coast is the world's biggest cocoa producer, and the United States is the world's largest consumer of chocolate, though most of it comes from Canada and Mexico. Ms. Mroueh wants more chocolate from Africa to break into the American market. Her company, Mon Choco, is part of a new generation of West African chocolatiers striving to create jobs and wealth at home by transforming raw cocoa beans into processed delicacies. 'We were hoping to start exporting within the next few weeks,' she said. Now, along with the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cocoa beans imported by the United States from Ivory Coast annually, her mango, ginger and coffee flavored chocolates are facing a 21 percent levy that she fears will badly hurt her business. The tariffs are expected to hobble several African economies that had long seen in the United States a welcoming market. It is not just cocoa. Car parts from South Africa and apparel from Madagascar will also be hit, and Lesotho, the southern African nation that provides denim used in jeans, is poised to bear some of the highest levies, at 50 percent. 'We're definitely going to face some issues,' Ms. Mroueh said. The tariffs come as African nations are still reeling from the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The agency, which provided crucial foreign aid on the continent for more than six decades, was gutted shortly after Mr. Trump took office in January. 'The United States' credibility in Africa had already been damaged by the sudden closure of aid programs,' said Karen Mathiasen, a project director at the Center for Global Development. 'Now the tariffs will only add to that, because there's no methodology and no clear signal for African countries on what to do to get rid of the tariffs.' In Ivory Coast, farmers have been picking cocoa husks this month as part of the semiannual harvesting season. Nearly six million people rely financially on cocoa in the West African nation, which produces about 45 percent of the world's crispy sour beans that are turned into sweet treats. Global cocoa prices have nearly tripled over the past two years because of low supplies caused by poor weather in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's second-largest producer. Yet most West African farmers live in poverty, with intermediaries reaping the benefits of the lucrative industry. Global chocolate manufacturers like Mars, Hersheys and Cargill, did not respond to a request for comment on how the new U.S. tariffs might affect their imports. Europe, not the United States, remains the main destination for Ivorian cocoa, and Asia has been a fast-growing market in recent years. Still, the American tariffs only add to the uncertainty of the African cocoa sector, which has struggled in recent years to increase its value by producing semi-processed and processed goods like cocoa paste and chocolate. 'Are we going to export less because consumers might consume less?' asked Olga Yenou, an Ivorian entrepreneur whose company, Tafissa, exports more than 20 percent of its production of cocoa paste and butter to the United States. Before this week, more than 30 African economies had been exporting goods to the United States duty free as part of an agreement called the African Growth and Opportunity Act. The legislation supporting the act expires in September. On the other end, China eliminated tariffs for goods from 33 African countries in December last year. At $295 billion last year, its level of trade with African economies was four times higher than U.S.-Africa trade. African leaders and analysts studying the continent's economies have called on the United States to renew the free-trade agreement, though the new tariffs have effectively ended it already, economists say. 'Africa isn't shielded by the trade agreement it had with the United States,' said Zainab Usman, the head of the Africa program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. 'But that means that it might be possible to negotiate a new future for U.S.-Africa trade relationships.' In Ivory Coast, cocoa prices have fallen by more than 10 percent since last week. There are concerns among exporters that more U.S. chocolate makers will now turn to cocoa-producing countries like Ecuador, which is facing lower tariffs, to do business. For artisanal chocolate makers like Ms. Mroueh, a once-alluring market suddenly looks confusing and volatile. 'We're a bit lost now,' she said.
New European
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
Now poor Elon Musk is bullied off his favourite video game
Leaving aside the very real fact that the Center for Global Development has estimated that Musk's swingeing cuts to USAID have the potential to kill three million people this year alone from disease, hunger and poverty, which probably counts as 'physical hurt', the bullies have taken things one step further. Now they've driven him off his favourite video game! Poor Elon Musk. The Tesla owner, self-styled first buddy and walking midlife crisis was last month reduced to wailing on his own social media site about nobody liking him, writing: 'My companies make great products that people love and I've never physically hurt anyone. So why the hate and violence against me?' (The answer, he concluded, was that he is 'a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls'). Musk was livestreaming himself playing Path of Exile 2 when a torrent of abuse from his fellow players around the world flooded its chat feature. 'YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY,' said a player named ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC. That was one of the kinder jibes. Others mocked his playing prowess, laughed at the tribulations of his faltering car company, posed as Ashley St. Clair, a conservative influencer who says she is the mother of Musk's latest child, or simply wrote 'YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE'. After 30 minutes of this, during which he stared blankly at the screen throughout, Musk flounced out of the game, apparently unaware that it is possible to turn the chat off. He also repeatedly died at the hands of the game's very first boss, despite having claimed to be one of the world's best players. Rats in a Sack reported speculation earlier this year that Musk had been paying someone to play the game on his behalf round the clock so that he could pretend to be amazing at it. Perhaps that's one employee the DOGE head honcho needs to get back on the payroll!
