Over the last few days, there have been fears that various Kenyan projects funded by USAid are at risk of a funding freeze following an executive order issued by newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump.
For sure, Trump’s return to the White House was bound to trigger a disruption in the donor funding model, among other areas, especially in view of his goal of re-orienting America’s foreign policy. This is, in turn, expected to create new pain points for non-governmental organisations and public agencies that have been relying on US government funding for survival.
In past years, USAid has been spending upwards of $250 million (about Sh32.5 billion) annually on Kenya’s health sector alone. This money has largely benefited HIV, TB and malaria prevention and management programmes, prevention of child and maternal deaths as well as family planning education and technologies.
The suspension of this funding will, for sure, affect delivery of life-saving medicines to the over 1.2 million Kenyans living with HIV. It will also adversely affect the delivery of equipment such as treated mosquito nets, which have had the effect of preventing the deaths of children under five and of pregnant women.
In addition to the health sector, USAid has also been funding programmes in education, agriculture, conservation — particularly in community-owned ranches — as well as Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) in marginalised areas. All these programmes are now facing a sudden and unexpected funding drought unless a miracle happens and President Trump changes his mind.
Two options, therefore, confront the leadership teams that run organisations in the disrupted segments. The first, of course, is to count their losses and close shop, which might be the easy thing to do. The only problem is that there are lives and livelihoods involved and closing shop, tempting as the option may be, would clearly be as ill-advised as it will be short-sighted.
How, for instance, would the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority (Kemsa) close shop because its partnership with the Mission for Essential Drugs and Supplies (MEDS) has been abruptly halted on the grounds that MEDS receives the bulk of its funding from USAid?
That would be unthinkable for a government agency that plays such a critical role in Kenya’s health ecosystem, which, as we all know, is already reeling from the compromising of the quality of services in public and mission hospitals occasioned by the introduction of the grossly inefficient Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF).
What this means is that Kemsa must come up with a new model of bridging the gap that the halting of the MEDS partnership has created. It can seek additional funding from the Treasury, for instance, or reach out to new donors who are in that space.
Just as in Kemsa’s case, the second option for all affected organisations is to go back to the drawing board and come up with ideas on how they can ride out the turbulence that President Trump has engineered.
For far too long, beneficiaries of donor funding have operated on the false and shaky assumption that their sectors or programmes are immune to shortages in funding since the model has worked for decades anyway. Now that the reality has hit home, they must feel challenged to come up with innovative ideas about how they can first survive and, ultimately, thrive in the face of the disruption.
This, I must warn, is much more difficult than it sounds at first glance. However, there comes a point in the life of an organisation when it must change with the times or perish, just as is illustrated in imagery of the old eagle.
As the story goes, the aging eagle must either fly to the furthest rocky mountain, crash its beak and tear off its claws for new ones to grow and make it young and agile again.
The other option, sadly, is to do nothing and die. This is the tough and stark choice that beneficiaries of USAid funding face, and it also offers a lesson for other organisations that solely rely on donor support for sustenance.
The question they must ask themselves is whether they are ready to sit back helpless and let all the hard work they have put in in the past to go to waste, or whether they can find within themselves and their networks the wherewithal to rise again and give fresh hope to the beneficiaries of their programmes.
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