{"id":25031,"date":"2026-06-19T10:06:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/19\/moving-in-a-herd-global-shift-in-development-aid-underway-canadian-affairs\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T10:06:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T10:06:42","slug":"moving-in-a-herd-global-shift-in-development-aid-underway-canadian-affairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/19\/moving-in-a-herd-global-shift-in-development-aid-underway-canadian-affairs\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Moving in a herd\u2019: Global shift in development aid underway – Canadian Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian Affairs<\/a>
\t\t\t\t\tFearless and independent Canadian journalism\t\t\t\t
The global aid system is undergoing one of its sharpest transformations in decades.
Wealthy countries \u2014 including Canada \u2014 are increasingly prioritizing national interests over humanitarian commitments. They are cutting development budgets and tying assistance to trade, geopolitical and immigration goals.
\u201cHistorically aid has always been a pendulum \u2014 there have been moments where it’s been more generous, more altruistic \u2026 but the mix changes over time,\u201d said Stephen Brown, a professor specializing in development aid at the University of Ottawa.
\u201cThe pendulum swings [and now] \u2026 most countries are cutting foreign aid and spending more and more of it on self\u2011interest.\u201d
This is the first article in a Canadian Affairs series examining how shifting political priorities are reshaping the global aid system, Canada’s participation in that shift, and what it means for donor countries and aid recipients.
Official development assistance (ODA) is government funding intended to promote economic development and welfare in lower-income countries. 
ODA has traditionally been used to reduce poverty, improve health and education, strengthen institutions and infrastructure, and respond to humanitarian crises.
Aid has never been purely altruistic, however.
During the Cold War, development assistance was frequently used as a geopolitical tool, with donor countries directing aid toward allies and strategically important states as part of the broader competition between the Western and Soviet blocs. 
\u201cThe U.S. is probably the one country that \u2026 was very clear about its objectives \u2014 it\u2019s always about American interests,\u201d said Teddy Samy, director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.
But after that period, poverty reduction became a more prominent focus of the international aid system.
\u201cAround the year 2000, with the Millennium Development Goals \u2026 we established all sorts of goals around reducing poverty and hunger, and then again in 2015 with the Sustainable Development Goals,\u201d said Brown.
But experts say the system is now shifting again.
Recent OECD data<\/a> show ODA from major donor countries fell to US$174 billion in 2025, down 23 per cent from the previous year. 
The OECD described this as \u201cthe largest annual contraction on record.\u201d
It also warned that core funding to multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank \u2014 which represent a subset of total aid flows \u2014 is under serious pressure, with projected contributions declining as much as 30 per cent. 
These broader declines have been driven in part by sharp reductions in U.S. foreign assistance. The U.S. is the largest single source of development assistance, typically providing between about a quarter and a third of global ODA. 
In 2025, the Trump administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has historically managed most American aid, and sharply reduced other foreign assistance. 
But experts say the collapse of USAID is best understood as an accelerant of a broader trend. 
\u201cMost countries are cutting foreign aid \u2026 and spending more and more of it on self\u2011interest,\u201d said Brown.
In Canada, the Carney government cut aid by $2.7 billion over four years, representing about 10 per cent of its aid budget.
Similarly, the United Kingdom, once one of the strongest advocates for international aid, reduced its aid budget from the longstanding UN target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5 per cent in 2021. In April, it announced<\/a> further reductions due to increased defence spending.
Germany, France, the Netherlands and other European donors<\/a> have likewise cut or constrained aid budgets.
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What distinguishes the current moment is that donors are now moving \u201cin a herd,\u201d Brown said.
\u201c[N]obody’s leading by example anymore,\u201d said Brown. \u201cWe used to have Sweden and the Netherlands \u2026 to aspire to, and now even they are becoming so much more self\u2011interested.\u201d
Funding cuts are having clear impacts on the ground.
\u201cThe reality is that when you have systems like health that are completely built around foreign assistance \u2014 whether it\u2019s through the Gates Foundation or USAID \u2014- and then all of a sudden you come and you dismantle it, you\u2019re actually killing people,\u201d said Samy, of Carleton University.
Last April, UNICEF reported<\/a> that funding cuts were disrupting vaccination programs in nearly half of the low and lower-middle-income countries it surveyed. Meanwhile, outbreaks of measles, yellow fever and meningitis are rising globally.
The shift toward self-interested aid shows up in other ways.
Brown says he knows a Canadian diplomat who was told that an NGO seeking funding for LGBTQ programming in Ethiopia would need to ensure the project is framed in terms of Canada\u2019s interests.
\u201cThey were told by the Canadian Embassy people, \u2018Well, can you frame this as this will be good for Canada?\u2019 \u2026 and the person said, \u2018Well, it\u2019s going to be good for LGBT people in Ethiopia,\u2019 and they said, \u2018Well, then we can\u2019t help you,\u2019\u201d Brown said.
He says this approach helps explain why human rights and civil society programs are often among the first to lose support when budgets tighten.
Global Affairs Canada disputed the suggestion that human rights concerns are being sidelined.
\u201cCanada remains committed to reducing poverty, advancing human rights, and supporting the world’s most vulnerable, particularly women and girls,\u201d a department spokesperson told Canadian Affairs in an emailed statement. 
At the same time, the department said it is \u201cmodernizing\u201d its approach to international assistance.
It is doing this \u201cby strengthening mutually beneficial partnerships, supporting country-driven priorities, and using public resources strategically to catalyze greater investment from multilateral institutions and the private sector,\u201d the spokesperson said.
Samy says aid can also now function as leverage in geopolitical negotiations. He points to April reports<\/a> that the U.S. is linking aid assistance to access to strategic resources.
\u201cThe Americans were basically saying, \u2018Okay, unless you give us access to your critical minerals, we\u2019re not going to give you money for things like health and so on,\u2019 which we had never seen before,\u201d he said. 
Vitalice Meja, executive director of Reality of Aid Africa, a Nairobi-based civil society network focused on aid policy, says aid was \u201cnever a free lunch.\u201d
\u201cAid has been used to access markets, access influence, buy votes in the United Nations, it has been used to \u2026 force countries into buying goods and services that are otherwise very expensive \u2014 above market rate,\u201d he said.
From this perspective, recent trends do not fundamentally change aid\u2019s logic. They just make it more explicit.
\u201cFor the first time \u2026 we\u2019ve taken off the mask and we\u2019re able to see what is underneath,\u201d Meja said.
Meja says the shift toward more openly strategic funding may present recipient countries with an opportunity.
\u201cI think this new iteration removes us from managing dependence and provides a new opportunity for countries of the South \u2026 to chart a path that leads them to empowerment and transformation,\u201d he said.
\u201c[Africa] needs to take this opportunity.\u201d
African governments have an opportunity to reduce reliance on unpredictable aid, negotiate with donors on the basis of collectively defined priorities, and better leverage their domestic resources, he says.
\u201c’You want these resources? [Then] here is what we need in return for our own transformation,’\u201d he said.
But others say that opportunity is constrained by structural inequality in the global system.
\u201cThese are poor countries,\u201d said Brian Tomlinson, founder and executive director of AidWatch Canada<\/a>, a non-profit that conducts independent research on Canadian aid. \u201cIn least developed countries, the scope of what\u2019s possible there is really reduced.\u201d
That imbalance helps explain why some countries are consistently deprioritized as aid becomes more strategic.
\u201cWho has geostrategic interests in Malawi? Who has an important trade relationship with Malawi? Nobody \u2026 it\u2019s one of the poorest countries in the world, and they have huge needs,\u201d said Brown.
\u201cWe don\u2019t really have [economic] interests [in South Sudan] \u2014 we\u2019re just going to abandon them.\u201d
Samy agrees. \u201cThere are certain things that aid will do that economic interests are not a perfect substitute for,\u201d he said, pointing to Haiti and the Central African Republic as examples.
He added that neglecting fragile states can ultimately increase instability and long-term costs globally.
\u201cWhen there\u2019s instability somewhere, it spills over,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople move, and we end up spending more money trying to fix the consequences.\u201d
The aid shift comes as global defence spending accelerates, reaching an unprecedented<\/a> record of nearly $2.9 trillion in 2025. 
Samy says the growing defence\u2013aid imbalance reflects a political shift that has not been adequately debated.
\u201cWe\u2019re ramping up defence spending \u2026 but there\u2019s going to be less money for things like human rights, gender equality and civil society,\u201d he said.
What concerns Brown most is that Canada\u2019s strategic priorities are increasingly overriding its stated values as it seeks to diversify trade.
\u201cWe\u2019re cozying up to countries that are major violators of human rights,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re putting human rights on the back burner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian Affairs is one of the few outlets in Canada offering reported coverage of international relief and development work. Our coverage is made possible in part thanks to the financial support of Canadian aid groups.
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAlexandra Keeler is a Toronto-based reporter focused on covering mental health, drugs and addiction, crime and social issues. Alexandra has more than a decade of freelance writing experience.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Alexandra Keeler\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a> \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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