Which development programs should donors keep and which ones to reduce? | Experts’ Opinions

Prioritization, restructuring, and savings – these are some of the most used words in 2026 in international organizations that are adapting to significant funding cuts. However, on the ground, the development and humanitarian needs remain high despite continuously shrinking budgets. Because not all challenges can be addressed simultaneously, organizations face immense pressure to reprioritize interventions, or even eliminate specific activities. While discussions often focus on which sectors need additional resources, another important question emerges: What should donors deprioritize or stop funding under the current constraints? DevelopmentAid asked international development consultants to share their expert perspectives. Read the article below to learn more.

DevelopmentAid: As development aid budgets shrink, which sectors, interventions or approaches should donors protect from funding cuts, and why?

“When development resources become scarce, donors should protect interventions that save lives, prevent people from falling deeper into poverty and strengthen communities’ ability to withstand future crises. Priority should be given to healthcare, food security, clean water and sanitation, basic education, social protection and humanitarian assistance, particularly in fragile and crisis-affected countries. Donors should also protect programs that strengthen local institutions, governance, livelihoods and economic resilience. These investments can reduce long-term dependence on external assistance by enabling governments and communities to develop their own capacity. However, protecting essential sectors should not mean protecting every existing programme. Funding should increasingly be directed towards initiatives with demonstrated results, strong local ownership, transparent financial management and realistic prospects for sustainability. In a period of declining aid, the objective should be to protect the most vulnerable while investing in programmes that create lasting improvements rather than short-term dependency.”

“Global aid is contracting sharply, with Official Development Assistance (ODA) experiencing its largest single‑year drop on record in 2025—a 23.1% decline in real terms. Humanitarian funding has fallen by one-third since 2023, including a 36% reduction in life‑saving assistance (the number could not be verified-editor’s note). As budgets shrink, donors should protect sectors where cuts create irreversible harm, escalate future costs, or destabilize fragile contexts. Health systems must be prioritized because they prevent outbreaks, sustain essential services, and avert economic downfall. Humanitarian response is life‑saving; reductions immediately increase mortality, displacement, and instability. Food insecurity is a conflict multiplier, and undernutrition—especially in children—creates lifelong developmental losses that are nearly impossible to reverse. Social protection systems are equally critical, preventing households from falling into extreme poverty and stabilizing communities during shocks. Climate adaptation funding must also be safeguarded, as climate‑driven crises are intensifying. Within this, water security is a foundational climate‑health priority. Water scarcity amplifies disease outbreaks, disrupts food systems, and increases displacement. Cuts to water programmes create irreversible damage—collapsing sanitation systems, depleted aquifers, and failing rural water schemes cannot be quickly rebuilt. Protecting water‑climate‑health programmes reduces future humanitarian costs and strengthens resilience. Finally, gender integration must remain protected. Funding cuts disproportionately harm women and girls, reducing access to health services, increasing exposure to gender‑based violence, and weakening climate‑resilient livelihoods. Gender‑responsive approaches enhance effectiveness across all sectors; removing them undermines equity, stability, and long‑term development outcomes.”

“Lately, aid agencies and donors are discussing funding allocation priorities amid increased funding reductions. Keeping in mind that humanitarian work, ideally, would be crucial in emergencies, during and immediately after a crisis, be it conflict or natural disasters. It would be essential to keep funding for emergency programs, with the emergency components of the sectors most involved in emergencies, namely Disaster Risk Reduction, health, shelter, water and sanitation (WASH), education and security (ensuring that case management (GBV and CP) and legal protection in emergencies are also funded). Regarding funding during stabilization and funding for development, each context might be different from the other. Taking a sustainable approach to designing projects is important. Encouraging direct funding for local organizations, or encouraging projects that emphasize collaboration with local authorities, when applicable, can lead to more sustainable programming and more efficient use of funding. Funding focused on policy reform, advocacy, and human rights is also essential, as it creates slower, measurable results but can lead to substantial changes that can be sustained.”

“Donors should prioritize investments that address structural vulnerabilities and build community capacity. Essential sectors like health, nutrition, food security, education, climate resilience, and the empowerment of women and youth generate multiplier effects and prevent temporary shocks from becoming protracted crises. Donors should also support locally driven development and invest in community capacity building. Local organizations (too often overlooked), possess the on-the-ground knowledge and networks needed to effectively reach vulnerable populations. Funding should therefore support not only service delivery but also local leadership, accountability, and institutional strengthening. Finally, donors should promote a results-oriented culture. Too many resources are mobilized without proportional impact. In a context of budgetary constraints, funding must be linked to measurable results, rigorous monitoring, evaluation, and learning. Programs demonstrating effectiveness, local ownership, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness should be prioritized. The goal is not simply to maintain funding, but to protect investments that sustainably improve people’s lives.”

“As aid budgets contract, donors should protect the interventions that expand people’s real capabilities and freedoms, not those that merely chase aggregate economic growth. Development’s ultimate purpose is societal well-being, not GDP alone. Drawing on the human development tradition of Amartya Sen and Sabina Alkire (prominent figures in modern welfare economics and human development, distinguished for translating theoretical concepts of human freedom into practical tools for measuring poverty, editor’s note) (as some others), priority should go to programmes that enable individuals and communities to escape the poverty trap by building durable capabilities: quality basic education, primary healthcare, nutrition, and social protection that reaches the most vulnerable. Equally, donors must shield support for vulnerable communities and territories (rural, indigenous, and marginalized populations) where withdrawing funds reverses hard-won progress and deepens inequality. These investments are foundational: they multiply the impact of every other sector and are the hardest to rebuild once lost. Protecting them safeguards not only immediate needs but also the long-term autonomy of people to shape their own lives.”

“Currently, shrinking development aid budgets are a new norm that governments and implementing partners in developing countries have to cope with. Since 2020, there has been a decreasing trend in official development aid as a proportion of the gross national income for low- and lower-middle-income economies, with an increase among upper middle-income countries. I think that donors should protect budget cuts to critical sectors and sub-sectors in agricultural value chains, health systems, and climate resilience. Investments in these sectors would safeguard development outcomes that the respective local markets and systems are unable to fund, while leveraging the catalytic impact of the remaining aid. Notably, the United States administrative action in 2025—the 90-day stop-work orders and subsequent termination of 86% of the awards justifies the need for prioritizing investment portfolios instead of indiscriminate budget cuts. However, such short-term policy interventions are likely to derail sustainability efforts linked to long-term strategies such as the Journey to Self Reliance (a framework introduced by USAID Administrator Mark Green in mid-2018, editor’s note), geared towards building state capacity, commitment, and unlocking resources from the private sector.”

“In my work in the Philippines, I have seen how development challenges rarely exist in isolation. A health problem can quickly become a livelihood problem; a disaster can disrupt education, food security and access to basic services all at once. For this reason, I would protect programs that directly preserve people’s ability to live, recover and interact within society: primary healthcare, food security, basic education, social protection and climate and disaster resilience. But my experience in law, public-sector capacity building and healthcare systems has also taught me that funding services alone is not enough. Donors should protect the less visible systems that make those services work: accountable institutions, local capacity, financial and payment infrastructure, data systems and effective governance. The test I would use is simple: if donor funding disappeared tomorrow, did the programme leave the country more capable of solving the problem itself? Development assistance should meet urgent needs, but its deeper value is building institutions and systems that eventually need less assistance.”

DevelopmentAid: What types of development programmes or spending should donors reduce or stop funding in order to use increasingly limited resources more effectively?

“To optimize shrinking budgets, donors should reduce funding for large-scale infrastructure projects, such as major highways or commercial ports. While valuable, these capital-intensive projects can be financed through private equity, blended finance, or multilateral development bank loans rather than scarce grant aid. Donors should also phase out standalone, short-term capacity-building workshops. These localized training events lack scalable impact and often yield poor long-term returns compared to systemic institutional reform.”

 

“As resources tighten, donors should reduce or discontinue programmes that deliver minimal impact, lack scale pathways, or create long‑term inefficiencies. Fragmented technical assistance such as short‑term consultancies and isolated advisory units absorb significant funding without building measurable contextual capacity. Donor‑driven pilot initiatives with no realistic direction to integration in government systems or budgets should be deprioritized; boutique innovations that remain small projects do not justify limited and scarce resources. Prestige or visibility projects, including symbolic infrastructure or branding initiatives, prioritize optics over measurable outcomes and should be minimized. Generic governance or democracy programs focused on training, workshops, or messaging rarely shift accountability or service delivery unless tied to concrete institutional reforms. Donors should also rationalize inefficient delivery chains. Long sequences of INGOs, subcontractors, and intermediaries inflate overhead, slow implementation, and dilute accountability for results. High‑cost infrastructure without credible operations and maintenance plans should be avoided, as assets deteriorate quickly and become fiscal liabilities. Finally, diffuse multi‑sector country portfolios and parallel donor systems—stand‑alone procurement, M&E, or fiscal management structures—fragment effort and undermine national institutions. In a constrained funding environment, donors should concentrate resources on fewer, high‑impact programmes rather than sustaining scattered, low‑value spending. This focus maximizes impact, legitimacy, and resilience in fragile, resource‑scarce contexts worldwide.”

“It is hard to have a single answer that fits all contexts, as each context has its own specific challenges and needs. I will try to sum up a few components that donors can consider reducing to use the funding more effectively. Revision of coordination structures and pushing for local leadership—empowering local actors and relevant stakeholders to lead sectors, which in turn increases local involvement and sustainable change. In some contexts, it can reduce heavy coordination structures with UN and INGO entanglements. Additionally, it would be important to consider reducing funding through intermediaries and focusing on establishing direct links with implementing partners. This change of funding modality can generate savings. In many contexts, local partners have strong capacity and some experience in direct funding.”

“Donors should reduce funding for programs with less-demonstrated impact, low local ownership, disproportionate administrative costs, or limited sustainability. Projects should not be renewed simply because they have been funded previously; decisions should be based on relevance, results, cost-effectiveness, learning, and long-term value. Donors should also address the duplication of interventions. In several contexts, as I have observed, different donors separately fund projects carrying out similar activities within the same communities, sometimes under different titles. Enhanced portfolio monitoring, mapping, data sharing, and joint analysis are needed to identify duplication, gaps, and opportunities for complementarity. In contexts marked by corruption and weak governance, donors should review management practices. Co-management arrangements involving donors, governments, and local actors, with a clear separation of responsibilities, financial controls, and accountability mechanisms, can reduce resource waste while strengthening national ownership.”

“Donors should reduce spending that perpetuates dependency rather than building autonomy -what we might call “assistentialist aid”. Recurrent handouts and short-lived relief packages that substitute for local capacity, with no strategic route toward self-reliance, are precisely the flows most exposed to budget cuts, and their sudden withdrawal leaves communities worse off than before (built expectations with short or no long-term results). Limited resources should instead be mapped against longer-term strategic priorities, with firm commitments and measurable, lasting results. This means phasing out fragmented, one-off projects that duplicate efforts, carry heavy administrative overhead, or end the moment the funding does. It also means scaling back interventions justified mainly by visibility or donor preference rather than by evidence of transformative impact on people’s capabilities. The aim is not to abandon those in need, but to shift from palliative spending toward investments that leave institutions, communities, and territories genuinely stronger.”

“There is a need for donors to reduce or stop funding programs with weak evidence of the impact of various developmental interventions. First, donors should deprioritize funding additional pilot studies embedded into programs without a sustainable financing strategy to scale. Secondly, donors should conduct intensive and periodic reviews of complex programs with limited evidence to ensure cost-effectiveness. Thirdly, evident from climate adaptation initiatives, development aid should be leveraged as a catalytic fund in scenarios where the national governments, private sector, and/or program beneficiaries are willing to co-fund the proposed intervention. Therefore, to ensure effective use of the available limited resources, donors and implementing partners should co-design sustainable programs that are outcome-oriented for funding purposes.”

“Donors should reduce or discontinue programs that consistently demonstrate limited impact, weak accountability, duplication, or excessive administrative costs. Scarce resources should not continue funding projects simply because they have existed for many years. Greater scrutiny should also be applied to spending on unnecessary international travel, conferences, workshops, branding and layers of administration that do not directly contribute to development outcomes. Where appropriate, donors should shift resources from expensive international consultancy arrangements towards building local expertise and institutions. Duplication is another area that deserves attention. Several organizations sometimes operate similar programmes in the same communities while vulnerable populations remain underserved elsewhere. Better coordination and shared services could reduce these inefficiencies. However, donors should avoid abrupt withdrawals that leave communities without essential services. Funding reductions should be planned, evidence-based and gradual, with transition arrangements where necessary. The goal should not simply be to spend less, but to ensure that every available dollar produces the greatest possible human, social and long-term development impact.”

“I would start with duplication. In my work across legal, governance and operational systems, I have seen how institutions can accumulate studies, platforms, consultants, workshops and pilot projects while the underlying problem remains unresolved. Limited development funding should not repeatedly pay to rediscover a problem that is already well documented. Donors should scrutinize programs with heavy administrative layers, overlapping assessments, standalone digital tools that cannot integrate with existing systems, and short-term technical assistance that disappears without transferring knowledge or capability to local institutions. This does not mean eliminating consultants, research, safeguards, or innovation. All can be essential. The question is whether they enable implementation or become the programme themselves. I would rather see limited funds complete and institutionalize one workable system than finance several impressive pilots that never scale. Spend less on proving that something can work, when that is already known, and more on making it actually work—locally, sustainably and at scale.”

“Donors must completely eliminate tied aid and boutique pilot projects. Tied aid forcing recipients to buy goods from donor countries inflates procurement costs by up to 30%. It is protectionism masquerading as development. Concurrently, we must stop launching fragmented, unproven pilots. We need to consolidate our resources behind scaling existing, evidence-based interventions that minimize overhead.”

 

 

See also: Could deeper cooperation between developing states reshape traditional aid models and speed up poverty alleviation? | Experts’ Opinions

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