Secretary of State Marco Rubio is moving to overhaul how the United States delivers foreign aid, shifting billions of dollars away from what he has called the costly and inefficient "NGO industrial complex."
Instead, Rubio is highlighting a new model of directing funds to partner governments aligned with President Donald Trump's America First agenda.
Rubio argued that for decades, billions in U.S. foreign aid — particularly in global health — has been funneled through layers of nongovernmental organizations that absorb large portions of taxpayer dollars to cover overhead and administrative costs, while delivering limited results.
"What we learned over time is that oftentimes what would happen is we would go to a country and say, 'We're going to help you,' and then we'd drive over to Northern Virginia, find an NGO, give them all the money, and tell them to run that country's healthcare program," he said last month.
According to Rubio, by the time funds passed through the NGO layers, only a fraction ever reached patients.
"That NGO would then take some percentage of that money for overhead and administrative costs," he said.
"By the time it got down to it, only a percentage of the overall money ever actually reached the people we were trying to help. This makes no sense."
Rubio unveiled the new approach on Dec. 4 with a five-year, $2.5 billion agreement with Kenya, marking the first major example of the administration's new foreign aid model. Under the deal, aid funds will be delivered directly to the Kenyan government rather than through U.S.-based or international NGOs.
"That is the model that we are breaking," Rubio said. "We are not doing this anymore. We are not going to spend billions of dollars funding the NGO industrial complex while close and important partners like Kenya either have no role to play or are sidelined."
As part of the agreement, Kenya has committed to increasing its own healthcare spending by $850 million over the next five years, reinforcing Rubio's emphasis on accountability and shared responsibility.
"So why are we hiring American and international NGOs to go into other countries and run healthcare systems that are parallel and sometimes in conflict with the host country's systems?" he said.
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