Who is shaping development’s next era? The new power map as aid falls

RFLD analysis · The new power map of development

Official development assistance is falling faster than at any point in recent memory. The space it leaves behind is filling quickly. A small group of people now holds unusual influence over where development money goes, which technologies reach clinics and classrooms, and who sets the terms of partnership with African governments. Most of these shifts are visible today only to people who follow budgets, board decisions and policy fine print. By the time the wider public notices, the new rules will be in place.

This analysis maps the figures and institutions gaining ground across five arenas: development capital, African ownership, artificial intelligence, philanthropy and foreign assistance. For the 1,143 member organisations of RFLD across more than 35 African countries, knowing who decides is the first step to shaping the decisions.

Aid retreats and the map is redrawn

According to preliminary OECD data, official development assistance fell by 23.1 percent in real terms in 2025, the steepest annual decline ever recorded, after an 8.5 percent drop in 2024. The OECD expects a further 6.9 percent fall in 2026, and bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa is projected to fall by 11.6 percent. The United States dismantled USAID. The United Kingdom moved toward 0.3 percent of national income. Germany, France and the Netherlands trimmed their budgets. Health and gender programmes have been among the first casualties.

Money does not disappear from development when governments step back. It moves to other hands. Some of it shifts to private foundations and new giving vehicles. Some moves into blended finance and development banks. A growing share is now tied to bilateral deals that carry new conditions. Each of these channels has its own gatekeepers, and they rarely answer to the communities most affected.

Who controls the capital

The largest private pool remains the Gates Foundation. In 2025 Bill Gates and CEO Mark Suzman announced that the foundation would spend around US$200 billion over twenty years and close in 2045, with the majority directed to Africa. That timeline makes the foundation’s priorities, in maternal health, vaccines, agriculture and now AI, some of the most consequential funding decisions on the continent for a generation.

On the public side, the African Development Bank entered a new era in September 2025 when Sidi Ould Tah became its ninth president. He has made scaled-up lending and co-financing with partners central to his agenda. His choices will influence how much African infrastructure and social spending is financed on African terms, and how much gender targets survive inside large loan portfolios.

African institutions claiming ownership

The most important change may be political. African leaders are speaking openly about ownership of financing and health systems. At the UN General Assembly in September 2026, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama presented the Accra Reset, built on ownership, cooperation and domestic accountability, summed up in his phrase “no ownership without control”. Ghana’s Cabinet also rejected a proposed US health compact. Speaking in New York in September 2026, Mahama called it “humiliating”, pointing to clauses that would have required Ghana to share pathogen data and medical records and to accept medical products outside the inspection of its Food and Drugs Authority. It was a rare public rejection of donor terms.

In public health, Jean Kaseya, Director General of Africa CDC, has called for the continent to manufacture its own vaccines and build health financing that does not collapse when a single donor leaves. At Gavi, CEO Sania Nishtar is steering the alliance toward greater country ownership and co-financing by national governments.

Ownership matters for women’s rights. When national budgets take over health programmes, sexual and reproductive health services can be protected or quietly dropped. Feminist organisations need a seat in national budget processes, alongside the ministries now gaining control.

Technology leaders and the AI turn

Artificial intelligence has entered development faster than any policy framework can follow. In January 2026 OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, and the Gates Foundation launched Horizon1000, a US$50 million initiative to bring AI tools to 1,000 primary health clinics by 2028, starting in Rwanda. In May 2026 Anthropic, led by Dario Amodei, and the Gates Foundation announced a US$200 million partnership over four years, combining grants, API credits and technical support for AI in health, education and agriculture. It includes learning tools for sub-Saharan Africa and public datasets and benchmarks that others can reuse.

These partnerships could improve diagnosis, extension services and access to information. They also concentrate decisions about data, language and design in a few companies. Who owns the data collected in clinics? Whose languages are prioritised? Will women health workers, who make up most of the frontline workforce, shape these tools or simply use them? The same technologies can also spread technology-facilitated gender-based violence when safeguards are missing.

New philanthropic models redirecting resources

Two organisations deserve far more attention from African civil society than they currently receive.

Coefficient Giving, known until November 2025 as Open Philanthropy, is funded mainly by Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna through Good Ventures and led by CEO Alexander Berger. It has given more than US$4 billion to date. Its new model goes beyond a single family’s wealth. It now runs thirteen pooled funds that other donors can join, including a US$125 million Lead Exposure Action Fund. The money it directed from other donors more than doubled in 2025, from just over US$100 million in 2024. As new tech fortunes look for places to give, Coefficient Giving is becoming a gateway that shapes their priorities.

GiveWell, led by Elie Hassenfeld, recommends charities on the basis of cost-effectiveness evidence and moves hundreds of millions of dollars a year from individual donors. After the 2025 aid cuts it approved around US$53 million in rapid grants to keep programmes running, most of them in malaria prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, including work by Concern Worldwide in Somalia, ALIMA in Cameroon and Action Against Hunger in Nigeria.

Both organisations have shown that rigorous evidence can move large sums quickly to where lives are at stake. That rigour is an opening for African women’s organisations. Maternal and newborn survival is a clear example. Postpartum haemorrhage is a leading cause of maternal death in sub-Saharan Africa, and the tools that prevent it are low-cost and well measured. They save the most lives when women reach care early and when communities hold health services to account. RFLD’s maternal and newborn work in West Africa shows how measurable health results and rights work can go together. Funders focused on cost-effectiveness and organisations rooted in women’s rights have more in common than either side usually assumes.

Unexpected decision-makers in aid and global health

Some of the most powerful people in development today do not come from development. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio now oversees most US foreign assistance after the closure of USAID. Under the America First Global Health Strategy, the State Department is signing five-year bilateral health compacts that require domestic co-financing. Kenya signed the first in December 2025. By mid-2026 more than 20 African countries had signed, including Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Niger and Burkina Faso in West Africa, along with Ethiopia, the DRC, Tanzania and others. Ghana chose not to sign. According to the Center for Global Development, funding under these agreements averages about 49 percent below 2024 levels, and the US can reduce its contribution if governments miss their commitments.

Peter Sands, Executive Director of the Global Fund, closed the eighth replenishment at US$11.34 billion, below its target. His decisions on which programmes and countries to prioritise will be felt in HIV, tuberculosis and malaria services that many women depend on.

What the new map means for women’s rights

Only about 1 percent of gender-related aid has ever reached women’s rights organisations directly. As power moves toward foundations, banks, technology companies and bilateral compacts, the risk is that feminist movements lose the few entry points they had. RFLD sees four priorities for its members and partners:

• Track national budgets where health and social programmes are being absorbed, and demand that sexual and reproductive health and survivor services are funded.
• Work with new philanthropic actors, including Coefficient Giving and GiveWell, by showing measurable results for women and girls, starting with maternal and newborn health.
• Insist that AI partnerships in health and education include safeguards against technology-facilitated violence and give women a role in design.
• Use the African Charter, the Maputo Protocol and the Accra Reset to hold governments to their commitments on gender equality as they claim ownership.

The people shaping development’s next era are making decisions now. African women’s organisations have the knowledge and the networks to influence them, provided they know where to look. RFLD will keep following these actors and sharing what our members need to act.

Read more: how little gender aid reaches women’s rights organisations, aid cuts and women’s organisations in francophone West Africa, African philanthropy and feminist movements and who funds feminist movements in francophone West Africa.

Sources: OECD, preliminary ODA data 2025 and projections 2026; Gates Foundation (May 2025); African Development Bank; Africa CDC; Gavi; Global Fund; OpenAI and Gates Foundation, Horizon1000 (January 2026); Anthropic and Gates Foundation (May 2026); Coefficient Giving, “Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving” (November 2025); GiveWell, response to funding cuts; Center for Global Development, analysis of US global health agreements; US Department of State; Public Citizen, texts of US bilateral health agreements; President Mahama at the Council on Foreign Relations (September 2026).