This session at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2026 explores new approaches to global aid, focusing on how international support can be more effective, equitable, and responsive to changing needs.
At Davos 2026, leaders argued that global aid must be rebuilt for a harsher geopolitical era while staying focused on basic human needs. South Africa’s Ronald Lamola highlighted shrinking donor support alongside rising climate and conflict burdens: Africa receives “less than 5%” of climate finance despite being “the most affected,” while crises in Gaza, Sudan and eastern DRC require access and respect for humanitarian law. Arancha Gonzalez Laya urged shifting from “development assistance” to “cooperating for development,” protecting aid where markets won’t go (fragile states, humanitarian response, institutions) while mobilizing public development banks, de-risking tools, and better impact metrics. Senator Chris Coons defended past gains—USAID partnerships “directly saved” 90 million lives; PEPFAR saved 26 million—and argued U.S. public support remains: “80% of Americans believe” in humanitarian relief. But he acknowledged reputational damage and a domestic fight over whether America is “cruel and transactional, or… compassionate and reliable.” Wellcome’s John-Arne Røttingen warned health aid may fall 30–40% and called for integrated health systems over “vertical programs,” plus local manufacturing capacity. Audience interventions sharpened the stakes: the post–WWII order may be “dead,” and aid must reflect lived vulnerability. Panelists converged on a pragmatic agenda: prioritize fragile contexts, strengthen state capacity, consolidate financing, and prove results.
Hello, I'm Stephanie Flanders, head of economics and government at Bloomberg, and this is a session on rethinking global aid. Global development assistance. We were just talking before this session. I've been to probably too many of these World Economic Forum's, but it feels that this year the problems of the world are less evident in the promenade and in the shop fronts and in the events, but certainly the underdevelopment of the world, the challenges for the poorest, for people in crisis, emergency situations in Sudan, in Gaza they certainly haven't gone away. And actually some of the key tools that were used to support those situations have been, whittled away or put through the shredder, even, in the last year. So this is a pretty urgent conversation, even though there aren't that many conversations along these lines happening at the World Economic Forum. And we have an extremely, high value, broad panel, to, to discuss them, to think about not just what works, what hasn't worked in development assistance, but with putting our kind of realist hat on that we heard also from, for example, the Canadian prime Minister yesterday. What could work? What is an effective approach to the world we see now, the world we see now in the developing world, but also in, the major donor countries. We have opposite me, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, who's the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs. Sciences-po. She's also a former foreign minister for Spain and is just recently announced as co-chairing the coalition on the Future of Development Assistance, which we might hear a little bit more about later. Senator Chris Senator from Delaware. Very good to have you with us, Senator. You've obviously been working across the aisle for many years in the area of development assistance. John Rottingen, who's the chief executive officer for the Wellcome Trust, is one of the biggest philanthropic funders of health research, in the world. And Minister Ronald Lamola, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation at South Africa. I want to make sure that we we have a bit of diagnosis and a sort of scene set of where we are and what the problems we see, but I hope we can spend at least half of this session, hearing from you and perhaps some of the people I'm looking around the audience. We've almost got a full panel sitting in the audience as well. Hearing from from you on, on the way forward on on on solutions. But, Minister, as South Africa is both a recipient in some areas of development assistance, but also, one of the strongest economies in sub-Saharan Africa. From your perspective, how do we rethink global aid? What what is to be fixed and what works?
Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunity. And to all the fellow panelists. Good morning. We are fortunate that we have just hosted the G20, and it highlighted a number of the issues in relation to global aid, but also to global development finance, noting our reality, particularly in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, that we only receive maybe about 5% of the global, finance in terms of climate change mitigation, less than 5% of it, whereas we are the most, affected. And, in sub-Saharan Africa, the cutting of the aid to various countries, particularly on healthcare, at least, we have, the, the, the global fund that did the replenishment in last, December. But the retreat by major donors, obviously led by the US from these big multilateral donor platforms does need a rethink and also a rethink of the international financial architecture itself, because that gap where the international financial architecture is not funding climate change in the continent, in Africa, leads to a gap where you must now have a huge donor funding and all that. But as we speak now in most sub-Saharan Africa, is being ravaged by by a huge inclement weather, including in my country, Mozambique, and so forth. And we now carry the burden to respond to this challenge that has been caused by, by, by global industrialization. So we think that from the outcomes of our G20, there are clear recommendations that we believe could, take the matter forward, including the expert panel on debt sustainability that was led by our former Minister of Finance and also the expert panel on inequality that was led by Sir Joseph Stiglitz, which a underlined some of the factors. We also also think that there is a need for the global community to work together in terms of resolving the global conflicts, instead of only one country, trying to resolve all the global challenges because you need the multilateral institutions, you need the world to work together to resolve the conflict in Gaza and the conflict in Sudan. I've recently returned from South Sudan, where also the internal displaced people cannot really access aid because of a raging conflict. The eastern DRC, I know the well believes that the conflict is no longer there. But as we are seated here, the villagers are being displaced. There is raging conflict that needs humanitarian assistance. So I think for us, the first point is the world working together and you referencing, Mr. Kuna from Canada speech yesterday, maybe that is the real awakening that South Africa has always been advocating for, for the global community to come together, to resolve and speak in one voice on all these challenges.
Arancha Gonzalez, the the I'm sure you agree with a lot of that, but we know also that the sort of traditional multilateral institutions, the sort of web of coalitions and major donors that have worked that have sort of come to approaches on development assistance over the years, have been undermined in some quite important ways of being questioned, even by Mark Carney yesterday saying the multilateral institutions were actually were going to maybe have to have more flexible coalitions. What's the approach that you would you would see to rebuilding or maintaining the support for the kind of priorities the minister is talking about?
So the first thing I would tell you, Stephanie, is that I'm very glad that we are having this conversation here, because when I come to Davos in Promenade Avenue, one side is all about geopolitics. The other side is all about artificial intelligence. But what do we do with the 700 million people that don't have access to electricity? What do we do with the 3 billion people that don't have access to internet? What do we do with the 1.5 billion adults that don't have digital skills? This is the conversation we want to to take here. I'm going to take it where Stella left it. We have to be very clear that some have lost the appetite for international cooperation, but many still believe that this is the only way forward. So with the many that still believe that this is the way forward, in my view, we've got to relook at how we do development cooperation. This is a bit, what we will try to do in this new coalition that has been launched today, that I will co-chair with, former Vice President of Nigeria, Jimmy Obasanjo. It's a Osinbajo. Sorry. It's a good way to send a signal that some of us different regions, different backgrounds still believe in this. We need to, in my view, have a look at the system of development cooperation. Partly is the aid. It's only 10%, but it's essential in parts of the world where trade, investment, private sector will not go. How do we make sure that it is going there? That is going to Sudan, that is going to, Gaza, that is going to, fragile and post-conflict countries, that is going to to the objectives that maybe a private sector is not interested in supporting institutions, data collection, humanitarian work. So how do we first rethink this part? That is aid, and we maintain this in our political radar, in the political radar of the countries that provide this 10% of the aid, then we need to look at the other part, the ecosystem that is going to suffer from the geopolitical power struggle that we see in the world, but that offers incredible opportunities, starting with the artificial intelligence. Deploying this in Africa is not only going to be very important for Africa's healthcare, for Africa's small and medium enterprises, for the education system, for governments to better administer themselves. But it's also a huge opportunity for the businesses that are operating in this space. So how do we build together a narrative that this is win win, that this is not a zero sum game like geopolitics are? This is Stephanie's is, in my view, how we have to put these two pieces together. The aid piece essential because for many this is the only answer with the wider ecosystem that has to help in climate, in artificial intelligence, in productivity, in competitiveness, and at the end of the day, in growth and jobs, in more inclusive economies.
Senator I mean, the mention of this is not a zero. The approach of this is not a zero sum game. We have quite a zero sum oriented administration at the moment. And seemingly Congress. I know you're someone who's thinking about this, how we could marry the kind of approach that Arancha is talking about with the much more transactional approach. And I would say having I mean, I worked in the second Clinton administration, and some spent a bit of time trying to work on things like Ida replenishment back then, and it was a tough sell then. It's always been a tough sell, and there has always been a transactionalism in these arguments with the US more than other places potentially. So what does that what does that something coming out of this try not not really focusing on the white House but in Congress. Public opinion. What does a sustainable coalition for development assistance look like?
So a few minutes if I could, on things are better than we all know and believe, and we can and should be proud of what has been accomplished together, what has just happened politically, what its consequences are, and where we are headed. So USAID, the American Development Agency for 50 years was a sort of flagship organization that often drove partnership investment development in lots and lots of different areas, and it made a huge impact 90 million lives directly saved by funding and partnerships over that period of time. Probably one of the most signature and well known in the United States initiatives was PEPFAR to fight HIV Aids. About 26 million lives saved through that effort. A global multilateral effort of real partnership. Americans are proud of this, and they know about this. Then take something that's less known because it's more diffuse. How many people went from having no clean, drinkable water to having clean, drinkable water? Mostly in Africa, ten years, 50 million people. When when Americans hear things like this, they say, okay, good, good, good, good. One of the challenges is that it is a widespread misperception. The average American for years believed that foreign aid was at least 10% of our budget. I used to jokingly say to Bono, you should campaign for the one campaign, make it 1% of our budget. That would have been an increase. There's been pushback, and it's part of a larger theme that you hear from the administration. Burden sharing. We spent most of the money that kept Europe safe and secure through NATO. Europe has stepped up dramatically and is taking responsibility for funding. This year, the United States will still be the world's largest humanitarian and development assistance donor, but the visible destruction of aid Elon Musk saying that it is compassion that is the great weakness of the West, the speed and the strength and the cruelty and the senselessness with which whole organizations and partnerships were just burned. Storehouses of medicines and food just abandoned, has created the mistaken impression that the United States has walked away. Next week we will finish passing in Congress and the president will sign $50 billion in the funding area where in the last Congress I wrote that bill that was aid in state. It's only a few billion different. So PEPFAR is still funded. We are still engaged in humanitarian relief. We are still engaged in development assistance. It has taken a huge divot. Our reputation as a trustworthy partner has taken an enormous loss. But I think as we look forward towards rebuilding a few simple facts, 80% of Americans believe that we should be doing humanitarian relief in response to hunger, drought, disasters, pandemics. 60% of Americans think we should be spending on democracy, on rule of law, on sustainability. It is supported by a majority of Americans with with, frankly, lies, a campaign to take down aid quickly succeeded, but it misrepresented what we were doing. It played on the fact that most Americans thought there was some waste, and it wasn't well aligned with their values. There is a determined, bipartisan group of us in Congress and in our NGO community and in our private sector that now are looking at how do you rebuild it and how do you make it sustainable, fit for purpose, for the long term? Years ago, I remember being in South Africa, talking to the health minister about country ownership and transition of PEPFAR from principally U.S. led to principally South African led. Unfortunately, many nations have said, we can't count on you now. We have to reimagine. I hope that we will be there in this next chapter. And I did listen to Prime Minister Carney's speech last night, and I thought, okay, the United States needs to re-engage to use the platform of things like the Development Finance Corporation and the MCC to partner with existing entities like the world Bank, the IMF and multilateral efforts, harness our private sector, use next generation technology, and continue our engagement in addressing things from public health to education to energy. Because at the end of the day, America, to the extent it has been great, it was because it was good. We are having a fight over who are we as a country? Are we cruel and transactional, or are we compassionate and reliable? Give us a little time to have that fight within ourselves about who we are. Don't give up on us. We will be back.
All right. We'll see how long. John Arne Rottingen I mean, there's a lot there. And I suspect you would just sort of want to respond to some of the things that have been said. But I think, you know, as you are representing the the sort of the private, the philanthropic model, and particularly I think, global health, you know, probably one of the things that would be most popular even. Well, I suspect not Elon Musk, but maybe people a bit closer to Elon Musk would say, yes. You know, whether it's the Gates Foundation or Wellcome Trust goals oriented private sector approach to public goods provision like health, that's the way to go. What is the what are the, you know, the pros and cons of leaning more on that approach?
I think first we need to we need to really celebrate that global health aid has been a success. And Bill gates said the same this morning, under under five year child mortality has more than halved since 2000. And we have seen reductions in the big infectious diseases, longer life expectancy, more than ten years in many sub-Saharan African countries. And some of that, not all, but some of that has really been supported by by aid. But the situation is dire. And I think the pandemic really illustrated that, yes, we have achieved these very specific outcomes, but we don't have health systems and capabilities and general population health at the level we want. And in particular in Africa, they also saw the lack of their own industry, the lack of manufacturing capabilities, medicines, vaccines, diagnostics is also a part of our development system when it comes to health. So I think, we saw more than almost $10 billion reductions in health aid only just last year. We know that the Global Fund and Gavi have almost 10 billion gaps in their pledges last year. We know that expectations, hopefully with some corrections maybe, is that health aid will probably be reduced by 30 to 40% as a new steady state. So the combination of the system not fully delivering what country needs and the fact that it will be, smaller in size means that we need to work very differently. So, yes, as Arnold Schwarzenegger said as well, we will be back. I'm glad, but we need to be back differently. And and Wellcome has hosted five regional dialogues on the global health ecosystem, participants from more than 114 countries and a very strong consensus. One of the strong consensus is really about we need to really work with countries differently. We cannot have single minded individual vertical programs delivering on only one specific outcome and do that in parallel, creating a lot of transaction costs, creating a lot of monitoring costs. We need an integrated approach. We need to consolidate the global health financing system in a way that puts countries in leadership positions. They need to decide their priorities, and they need to design the way this can best be delivered, because we need integrated primary health care systems. That was what's shown by the pandemic. We cannot only focus on single interventions, and that's almost going against what you said, because a lot of the improvement that has been delivered is through scaling up of science based solutions vaccines, diagnostics and medicines. So we will continue doing that. We just need to do it in a different way.
I'm interested. Minister. Mr. Rottingen actually threw in. He talked about he was talking about needing a more systemic approach to across all of policy health systems rather than particular health goals. But then he also mentioned ownership. And that is obviously a challenge. The more that the development assistance is oriented towards the all of, you know, the whole swathe of policymaking, the way that government institutions work, there can be a feeling of loss of ownership. So how do you think? I mean, as as someone who sees both sides of this, looking at your neighboring countries, but also in South Africa?
Yeah, we we I don't know whether it's still on. Yeah, we we also saw it, during the Covid, as he mentions, you will remember that one of the challenges was, vaccine hoarding, which we we had to engage with the global North to open up a particularly for the, for the African continent. And one of the outcomes was building our own vaccine capability in terms of manufacturing, which is something the Africa CDC is currently leading. But the patterns and the allowance for that to happen is still going very slow. But that is the work that the world needs to work on to for us as Africa to be also to be self-sustainable. And on what, Senator Said about his discussion with our Minister of Finance, a long time ago, our Minister of Health, to encourage us to have a self-sustainable health, program, particularly with regards to PEPFAR, which was dedicated to the HIV and Aids. By the time we there was an announcement on the executive order to cut them for, for for South Africa and some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, we were at 80% Self-sustainability program. It has had an impact, but at least because of that, building up over years to be capable to do it. So it's clear that when there is a convergence of mind, we can all be able to scale up to do it. And that can reduce, the reliance more, but they still being self-sustainable but also have ownership of the program. And that is what we are remaining with now. We own the process now of running the HIV and Aids program. But we do get a lot of support from the Global Fund and also from the world, but at least it is driven from our own fiscal capabilities. So I think there is a space and room to build on that. And the African continent is coming. Partner with us to build in this aspect, particularly on the manufacturing in the continent, because we do have the capability, some of the world class universities that have been leading in research in this space is to enable them to, to do it, to be able to support the manufacturing in the continent on the vaccines and also on new developments in the, in the, in the research and medical and healthcare space.
One of the things that you have sort of associate you with you is you always say, we can't just talk about development assistance by itself. We have to think about economic policy, geopolitics in the whole. Of course, we've seen that in a negative way in the last year, with the UK government cutting development assistance in order to increase defense spending. But how is a. Given that we have this very changing geopolitical environment and given that we have the sort of the new play or relatively new player of China really very involved in ways that are sometimes in line with global development assistance goals and other times not in sub-Saharan Africa, in other places. How should we how should we respond to that mix of things and be mindful of the geopolitics as you've suggested?
So let me start by maybe using a different words. I think instead of talking about development assistance, maybe we should talk about cooperating for development because it gives a it gives a better picture, a better image of what we are trying to do. I'll start with the fact that this cooperation has to be towards a strengthening states capacities to deliver. So I very much agree with the Minister. There are many states that today are perfectly capable of delivering for their citizens, but there is a problem of financing and there is a problem of financing also because we have very highly indebted economies. So we also have to look at this piece of the jigsaw. So first this let's put the center of our efforts into strengthening state capacity to deliver. And I'm saying this I also know that there are many places where state is very, very, very small and in some cases even absent. But the bulk can be done through states. Second. Yes. A number of funders are reducing their public contributions in the form of Oda, but they have very powerful public financial institutions. They have development banks. Let's make sure that they are ready to take more risks. It's good to have triple A rating. Or maybe it's even better to make sure that you triple the amount of capital that you can deploy on the ground. So this is, it's another way to look at how to get financing. Number three, we have a lot of private sector interested in supporting development on the ground. We just heard vaccine production is a good example. Some of these private sector would be more comfortable if they were de-risking instruments. We talk a lot about this private sector. I think it's very small compared to the potential. Let's deploy all this, risk instruments that can help the risk. They're going into markets to help build the capacity. By the way, a lot of these countries have lots of private sector actors, too. So it's not that this very, very far away private sector very often is is locally. And the fourth thing I would say, Stephanie is going a bit to what Senator Was saying. It probably is less about counting how much money we put and counting much more and much better. The impact that this financing is having on the ground. That's a probably a better way to advertise, more, more actors to be part of this effort at financing and cooperation.
I mean, Senator, it strikes me a few years ago, a lot more of this conversation would about would have been about economic growth, building the capability within countries from successful growth strategies. And it's not like that challenge has gone away. I mean, we and in sub-Saharan Africa, potentially a lost decade post-Covid or and in the years past, the global financial crisis. And yet the efforts that are being taken to in that regard are also negative in terms of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, seems to be is now been sort of over undermined by some of the trade moves. You're going to tell me behind the scenes, it's all fine. But, you know, it strikes me that that whole piece of the conversation is missing in a world where actually we're talking about putting up barriers, fortresses.
So, the focus on more trade than aid, reducing the amount of direct development assistance grants and instead increasing the amount of development and transactions, is right in that what I've heard from a majority of African governments, heads of state after the collapse or the shuttering of USAID was Agoa first assistant. Second, it was just reauthorized for three years in the House of Representatives. I think it will happen next week in the United States Senate. So, yes, I'm going to tell you, it's not all awful.
How is that consistent with the tariffs? Are they just not obey being.
But we have a president who is, I think, wildly, inappropriately and unconstitutionally using a tariff power to do things that are dramatically outside what our Constitution allows. We will see whether our Supreme Court agrees with me or not fairly soon. Part of what is making this moment over Greenland so painful is that he's using tariffs as a threat against NATO allies to break apart the US, EU and the US NATO relationship. So you're absolutely right. This is a moment where that is urgent. Unfortunately, he has succeeded in derailing or distracting most of Davos to talk about Greenland and Denmark and tariffs and coercion rather than what is genuinely urgent, which is the humanitarian crises of Sudan and Gaza, the urgency of delivering electricity and water and health care, of preventing the next pandemic. A quick story in the first Trump administration he signed into law the Build act, a bipartisan group of us had been working for several years to take OPEC, our small, cautious, great rating, but no boldness in investment and turn it into the Development Finance Corporation, which today has significant capacity, is fully funded, is getting a significant increase this year and is the vehicle towards our approach, I think, to development finance, take the Millennium Challenge Compact, or MCC, a roughly $1 billion US program that does multiyear commitments in partnership with developing countries and meets their development goals, and it is implemented by their citizens and their governments. You take those two and superpower them with reliable access to our market, with reliable financing and partnership with the Bretton Woods institutions. And you've got something of consequence.
Just to push back a little bit on that. But again, I'm very happy to be corrected because you'll make all of us feel slightly better about where the America is, where America.
That's my job here today.
Yes.
It's not all awful.
But my the way that current members of the administration talk about the Development Finance Corporation is in a slightly different way. I mean, as in a much more sort of transactional, private, very, you know, new private sector oriented, much more commercial approach to development.
So critical minerals all for us.
Yes. Basically as a vehicle, it's not quite the sovereign wealth fund, but it's, you know, has elements of the sovereign wealth fund that the president talks about.
A current fight in Congress is over keeping the D. It is a development finance corporation, which by statute is supposed to be advancing development, not just extraction. It is not a sovereign wealth fund. It is a development finance corporation. And we are actively engaged in that discussion. It has a chief development officer. It is supposed to approach partners with an open hand, with a development focus. Yes. It is going to do more than initially imagined in critical minerals and in working with middle and upper income countries. But the reauthorization fight, which is joined right now, is about keeping it development oriented. And as we reimagine the architecture of all that the United States does in public health and public institutions and, recognizing that public private partnerships are politically sustainable is valuable. Senator Graham and I worked for years to create the U.S. Foundation for International Conservation. It's based on a model legacy landscapes from Germany. The British government, the French government have expressed interest in it. It is matching government contributions to conservation and human development financing with private sector. It's so, so far has 200 million in it, getting it launched and making it viable in the face of a distracting administration is going to be a persistent challenge. But it had 100 co-sponsors in the Congress, equally divided Democrats, Republicans. It exists. There is the money. It will move forward. You've never heard of it, but it's a model that is public, private, and that says it is going to be in partnership with the countries of Africa, not we fund it indefinitely, and no one knows we ever did it and we get no credit for it. That is the critique of USAID that I think we can lean into, embrace and still make real progress.
I want we're going to get on to questions in a minute, but I am interested. I mean, you were in a unique position in some ways, certainly in terms of on this panel. I'm sure that you're not sort of rewriting welcome zone sort of strategy, you know, day to day. But when you think about how you can contribute to this conversation, how you as an organization can be moving things in the right direction, what are you this year? What how do you think you can make work towards some of the goals that we're talking about most effectively?
So, I, I am just maybe briefly follow up on the discussion on sort of moving more towards investments, private sector. I think that is sound across a lot of development. But at the same time, I am concerned about the human capital, the human development element of it, because the returns are great, but they are very long term. And how do you make that work in the system? And that's why I think we still would need very concessional support, in particular for the least developed countries on this. And, and then I think more specifically on your question, what can we as philanthropy do? We can make sure to invest in global public goods, together with industry, together with governments. That makes it easier for governments to really deliver health impact. We are, now, together with the Gates Foundation, investing in the largest vaccine trial on TB. South Africa is a major country where that recruitment has happened, 20,000 people included. We will get the results hopefully in two years from now. And most likely at least, I'm hopeful that will be the first TB vaccine on the market in 100 years. And TB is still the biggest infectious disease killer internationally. And still it's not as sufficient commercial incentive to do so. So that's illustrates where there are market failures philanthropy can step in and partnership. Another example we see increasing emergence of malaria resistance. Malaria is still killing children. And we need to do something about that. Yes. But we have done something about it. It different collaborations private public Novartis the medicines for malaria venture. Wellcome contributing in early years the first new malaria medicines were proven to be at at level of current medication and can now enter the market in the coming years. And those sort of innovations are needed and we need to collaborate with private sector. But we private sector will not do it on their own. So we are doubling down on understanding where we can make a difference. But we need partnerships. We need partnerships with governments. We need partnerships with industry.
Okay. I want to, give a bit of time. And if you also could say, could say who you are when you when you ask a question if you first and then we'll go to you. Yeah.
My name is Trevor Manuel. I'm from South Africa. I want to go back to what Prime Minister Mark Carney said last night, and I want to confirm the sense that the world that we've known, that organically developed post-World War II is dead. And it's fundamentally important that we take a view on development aid and development partnerships looking forward. And that, I think, is a big challenge because, you know, as as good as the DFC and the Millennium Challenge account may appear, it has to be done on the terms of the US administration. It destroys democracy everywhere. That's a problem I had as Minister of Finance a long time ago when the MCA was set up. It was on the terms of the United States. Now, this hegemonic approach will undermine everything that society had worked for and arrived at. That's a big, big challenge, and we can't take that out. The second point I'd like to make is that it's very hard to compartmentalize what's happening in the lives of people, because that has to be the measure. In Africa, 95% of our agriculture is rain fed, so we have no control over the primary sources of input into agriculture. The primary sources of livelihood. You know, there are about over 80% of Africans who are day wage earners. So there's no social security. Those kinds of dreams are out there in the future. But this is the reality. And and you know, Ranjha was trying to explain what happens in the two sides of the road, the promenade here. And unless we take account of this, I think we missed the point entirely. Can we behave as we have in a world that isn't the world that we've known? Thank you.
We'll just go here and then.
Very good point.
Thank you, thank you. I'm. I'm the chief of staff. As a minister of Social and Solidarity Economy in Senegal. I'm here to explain, especially to philanthropic institutions, what Senegal has done to make aid more impactful by basing it on a system founded on the social and solidarity economy with minimal funding, it is enough to help communities become self-reliant, enabling them to manage their own health and education needs. With the income generated by the economic activities. This form of support allows the donor to intervene once in an area, in an area, and then no longer need to provide funding. This year, 2026 is declared by our president as the Year of Social and Solidarity Economy. Welcome to all donors in Senegal.
Thank you.
And the Afcon.
Very good point. Do you want to introduce another level of controversy in.
Thank you everyone. My name is Alyssa and I am a journalist at Devex. I just had a question for Senator Not, as Stephanie said, to kind of push on your optimism, but I'm just curious about you had a lot of hope for the bill that you mentioned. And I'm just curious, even if it does get passed in, the president signs it into law. What is your thought on the threat of more rescinded funds, and how are you kind of looking at that in the congressional level?
Sure.
Okay. Well, I tell you what, why don't we answer that quickly and then we'll go to Rachel. Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, among the many tragic things, profoundly wrong things that have happened in this past year, the rescission of $9 billion of authorized and appropriated funds that were to go to feeding the hungry, responding to pandemics, improving the world. It was one of the worst in terms of the power of the purse and the balance between the president and the Congress. All of the bills that we are about to pass have what we call strengthening measures that in court allow us to say no. The executive signed this bill, and this bill says for years there was trust between the appropriators in Congress and the president. And things were not in tables and in statute. They were there was a dialogue, and they would seek approval and release from Congress so that when we passed something into statute, the administration largely carried it out. That's been broken. And so what many folks don't know, there have been 500 lawsuits against this administration in federal courts, 75% of them the administration has lost. Many of them were about the sudden firings, the cancellations of contracts, the refusal to follow statutes. I am not saying this is fixed. There is a huge risk of another round of rescissions. The head of the OMB, Russ Vought, the most powerful man in American government you've never heard of. This is his vision is to break the role of Congress. If they do another rescission, then our our ability to appropriate goes away. Really? And there are enough Republicans who have pledged they will not vote for another rescission. I'm holding my breath. I didn't think we would be here. The bills are all posted now. They're all public. Now. You can look at what the numbers are. We will have the vote before the end of this month. So if we collapse and fail and we do not appropriate and there is no more money and it's all by fiat by himself, then if you see me again, say that optimism was profoundly unwarranted. But there there is enough determination to retain our power of the purse that I think it will happen this year.
We're going to run out of time, Rachel, very briefly. And then we could have a response to what Trevor Manuel and the minister said.
I wanted to just turn it back to, the rethinking bit. So I've had a lot of discussion about what's gone wrong. But, you know, what can we do differently in the future? And so I like your response to, you know, two threads. One is we spend almost as much aid in middle income countries and low income countries. So there's a huge opportunity to focus more on on lower income countries. And, there's a lot of ineffective aid and a lot of areas where we have a lot of evidence that it could be extremely effective. So, you know what? What are the routes to focusing our money on the most effective in the poorest countries?
Okay. So I think we're not going to have time for everyone to respond to that. But I think also given Trevor Manuel's comments and others, I mean, arancha. And the Minister, if you want to focus on that. Well, but provocations are supposed to, you know, have a provoke something.
So so I want to thank publicly, Senator For what he's doing in the US, because we need many more Senator In the US Congress to stand up, to make sure the US continues to be a partner. But if the US administration decides that the US is not a partner, make no mistake, the world is full of other partners that are ready to step in. So to your question, Trevor, the options are out there. So disengaged from the world at your peril is my answer. Second point I would make is yes, I totally agree with this. In a way we have to rethink, especially the concessional financing that we have to use it more effectively there, where private sector trade investment will not go irrespective of how much we de-risk. And the second piece we need is to be ruthless about results and impact and have shared metrics for how we're going to measure this and concentrate our efforts in those that are good at getting results. Because at the end of the day, with less, we are going to have to be much better at producing positive results.
We've run out of time. I gave you the first word. You can get the last word. What is the what is the single message that you would like people to take from this conversation?
Thank you very much, is that the world has to work together. And I agree with the the Prime Minister of Canada's comment. We for the whole of last year, South Africa raised the issue of, the non-respect of the international rule of law for all the institutions that we have known after the Second World War, that there needs to be respected, the UN charter, its values. So I think us coming together, working together with the private and and the civil society, NGOs and all that is what the world needs to speak in one voice for humanitarian aid in in Sudan and South Sudan, in the eastern DRC, all of us should call for the respect of humanitarian aid laws to enable access to aid in Gaza. The world can't keep quiet when it's clear that there is violation of international law. So this awakening, it's what we have always called for and what we also see it in Europe. And I heard also, a speech yesterday, which also point to the reality of a need for a coalition of the world to rebuild institutions and a new world order, but also to enable humanitarian aid, to enable development to happen in a cooperative manner. And that's what South Africa stands for cooperation, respect of the UN charter and all of us working in unison. Thank you.
Thank you for that, Minister. And I suspect most of the people, all of the people in this room, agree with that. There's a little problem with some of the people on the outside.