On development funding for Nigerian CSOs in post-USAID world

Prior to the exit of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from the Nigerian development and humanitarian programming space in January 2025, the Mission was the country’s largest international development funder, outstripping all other bilateral organisations, including the European Union (EU).

The USAID was on record classifying Nigeria as “the single most important strategic partner for the United States in Africa.” Its annual official assistance to Nigeria between 2002 and 2024 increased from US$90 million in 2002 to US$942,178,693.00 million in 2024. In the 9 years between 2015 and 2024, health and humanitarian assistance sectors in Nigeria were the main recipients of USAID’s funding. It obligated $2.54 billion to Nigeria’s humanitarian sector between 2020 and 2024 and over $2.8 billion to Nigeria’s health sector to combat diseases like HIV/AIDS (via PEPFAR), malaria and tuberculosis. In the education sector, $75 million was obligated between 2014 and 2017. Between 2002 and 2024, USAID’s support for Nigeria’s education sector hovered below US$50 million per annum, increasing significantly in 2023.

As a strategic partner, from as early as 2020, the USAID Nigeria Mission began rolling out a new localisation policy to disproportionately support local Nigerian civil society organisations. Before the January 2025 close-out, the Mission set the target of allocating 25 per cent of its funding directly to local organisations and to shifting 50 per cent of its programming control to local actors by 2030.

With the January 2025 exit from Nigeria’s funding space, development analysts have been studying the impact of USAID’s defunding on Nigeria’s development and humanitarian programming and its implications for Nigerian non-governmental organisations coping strategies and resilience.

The MacArthur Foundation leads the way with high-level dialogues on civil society organisations (CSO) resilience, while The Aid Report, an initiative of Devex funded by the Gates Foundation, is documenting gaps and losses to the country and the Nigerian third sector. Most recently, on June 9, the European Union think tanks – the Katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund – in partnership with the Misereor Gmeinsam Global Gerecht – hosted a webinar to examine: The Dangerous Gap: Impact of Global Neglect of Women’s Health, with insights from Nigeria.

New US funding for health and humanitarian work in Nigeria

The launch of two big funding opportunities for development work in Nigeria promised new hope to fill the gaps left by USAID’s exit and piqued the interest of thousands of Nigerian CSOs.   Thousands of CSOs mobilised, held meetings, formed consortia and strategised on how to use technical and tactical approaches to impress the two new funders of their great work, impact and community reach in proposals. The two new Funds – the Levers for Change and the Project Resource Optimisation (PRO) – used different approaches to select partners for funding programs in Nigeria.

Levers of Change launched a global call for applications in 2024 called Action for Women’s Health with a US$250,000 investment from Pivotal, a group of organisations founded by Melinda French Gates. On the other hand, PRO used a matchmaking approach to link programmes losing USAID funding with private donors.  Levers focused on maternal health while PRO aimed to fund cost-effective health and humanitarian programmes that lost US funding.

Who got what?

On November 12, 2025, Levers announced its list of 83 awardee organisations – eight of which were programming in women’s health in Nigeria – Lifebox; MMV Medicines for Malaria Venture; GEANCO Foundation; Direct Relief; We Care Solar; International Rescue Committee; Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and  Tiko (Triggerise South Africa NPC).

All grantees were global organisations; none was a Nigerian CSO. Winning grants, which included Nigeria as a programming country, were multi-country grants, with an average of eight countries covered per grant, which included Nigeria. Some winning grants such as the CHAII covered 16 countries, including Nigeria, while Direct Relief grant aimed to cover 15 countries, also including Nigeria. Only one grantee – GEANCO Foundation – aimed to focus only on Nigeria as a single country.

According to Urgent & Vetted Listv4-Airtable, PRO, which described its grant making mechanism as rolling, awarded $25,070,778.00 for humanitarian programming between 2025 and 2026. All grantees were global; no Nigerian CSO was awarded grants, and the PRO grant review process did not seem to include a requirement of partnering with local organisations. The total global grantees funded by PRO to programme in Nigeria were Action Against Hunger (ACF), which awarded $6,550,000.00; Helen Keller International awarded $4,500,000.00; JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc awarded $3,465,000.00; Kybele Worldwide awarded $ 3,200,000.00; Maisha Meds awarded $3,000,000.00; Mercy Corps awarded 1,988,663.00; Dimagi, Inc awarded $1,500,000.00 and Save the Children Federation Inc awarded $867,115.00.

The results of awards made under these two-funding mechanisms point to a new reality where multi-country coverage is related inversely to localisation and where risk aversion in grant making may well lead to safe but not necessarily the most impactful and sustainable bets in partner selection. Despite these missed opportunities for Nigerian CSOs, some partners such as the Norwegian Refugee Council and the EU CSO-BRIDGE project implemented by International IDEAS continue to support localisation and local Nigerian CSO capacity strengthening.

In addition, development partners such as Ford, MacArthur Foundation and OSF are pooling resources to position and strengthen local CSOs for resilience and sustainability in this new post-USAID world. The evidence from the localisation initiatives will no doubt pool in more resources to localisation as an important but under-funded area of development.

Walker (PhD) is the executive director, development Research and Projects Centre (dRPC)

UPDATE NEWS:

Nigerians can now invest ₦2.5 million on premium domains and profit about ₦17-₦25 million. All earnings paid in US Dollars. Rather than wonder,

click here to find out how it works.