OPINION — A recent survey of African youth challenges conventional wisdom on foreign aid. Policymakers should take heed of their views as they design the future of U.S. foreign assistance to increase effectiveness and American soft power on the continent.

We ask a lot of our aid to Africa. Over the years, it has saved countless lives from HIV/AIDS and malaria, fed the hungry, stopped pandemics, and increased farmers’ yields. We take it for granted that our good intentions are appreciated by Africans, augmenting American soft power and influence.

Yet, what if those assumptions don’t hold? What if our aid simply did not have the positive reception we thought it did? Today, in the wake of USAID’s shutdown, the entire architecture of foreign aid is under review, with many studies, commissions, and proposals underway. Now would be the time to dig deeper to understand what Africans want from aid. Doing so would help us be more effective and relevant, with the added benefit of increasing American soft power.

In August, the Ichikowitz Family Foundation of South Africa conducted its fourth iteration of the African Youth Survey, the most extensive continent-wide survey of African youth. This year’s survey included questions specifically about USAID cuts, and its findings blow up any illusions we might have had about young Africans feeling hopeless over USAID’s departure.

After 21 years with USAID in places like Uganda and South Sudan, where my focus was out-of-school youth, and a tour as mission director to Somalia that was canceled by USAID’s shutdown, I thought I understood how African youth viewed us. I was wrong. Three findings in particular challenged my preconceptions and provide important lessons as we design the future of U.S. foreign assistance.

Less Than Half Will Miss USAID

The survey was conducted in places that had enormous USAID programs, like Nigeria, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and many others. Yet, only 46% of respondents thought USAID cuts would have a negative impact. Fully 26% saw a positive impact, 16% saw no impact, and 11% did not know.

However, the researchers also commented, “Just over a quarter (26%) take a more optimistic view, believing the closure will force leaders to confront domestic challenges directly.”

This idea was certainly borne out during my Africa tours with USAID. Often, the U.S. budget for health far exceeded the country’s national budget for the sector, allowing the country to direct spending elsewhere, such as Russian-made fighter jets, as happened in Uganda in 2011.

The lesson: Our foreign assistance should be part of a larger bilateral partnership with mutual accountability, where the country must increase its own domestic spending on the sector in tandem with our assistance.

China Is Viewed More Positively Than the U.S., Despite Flaws

When asked about the influence of China and the U.S. on their countries, again, the results are surprising. China is fully ten percentage points ahead of the U.S. regarding whether the influence is positive (95% for China, 85% for the U.S.).

Is this a reaction to the Trump administration? In 2024, results for the same question were similar, with China slightly ahead. However, positive responses for the U.S. actually went up during Trump’s tenure (from 79% in 2024 to 85% in 2026).

Key to this finding is a related one in the 2026 report: 58% of respondents thought that the U.S. would disregard international law to gain access to natural resources. Recent actions like the capture of Nicolás Maduro and asserting ownership over Venezuela’s oil showed a disregard for international law. Respondents may be surmising that the same could apply to African natural resources.

What is astounding about China’s strength on this question is the abundance of evidence that China is highly transactional with its aid recipients, often leaving them indebted and in weaker positions. That was certainly the case with South Sudan’s “Oil for Roads” deal, widely disparaged by locals and diplomats when I served there.

Why aren’t widely known stories like this one reflected in the responses? Emmanuel Kwezi Tabaro, an analyst of the 2026 survey, explained:

“Young Africans are not uninterested in geopolitics, but they appear far more concerned with the practical realities that shape daily life: jobs, infrastructure, economic opportunity and the cost of living. When they think about international partnerships, many are asking less about ideology and more about whether those partnerships will improve their prospects.”

China is seen as meeting youth where they are, which leads to the third finding.

The lesson: With huge youth populations in Africa, increase programs specifically for youth that prepare them for jobs, like training and leadership programs, and adulthood, such as family planning.

It’s the Economy, Stupid

Actually, it’s about jobs. When asked about the biggest threats to African communities, 54% of respondents said unemployment and poverty, not violent crime (20%), gangs (17%), or terrorism (16%). When asked what government priorities should be to improve security, 56% of respondents said job creation for young people, far ahead of military investment (35%) or improvements to policing (29%).

Why are questions about threats and security coming back to jobs? Jihane Cherif, another analyst of the 2026 survey, answered:

“A young person who cannot find work, cannot afford to eat, and cannot see a way forward within the system does not feel protected by a well-equipped police force. They feel abandoned by it.”

The lesson: As in the World Bank’s new strategy, keep a laser focus on the bottom line of job creation for the millions of youth entering the workforce each year.

The Bottom Line

In the great power competition being played out in Africa, we cannot take for granted that our generous assistance will lead to increased positive views of the U.S. This survey shows a rising generation of savvy youth that sees the whole picture of U.S. policy, questions rhetoric, and asks fair questions about the impacts on their lives of billions of dollars of assistance. Hearing their concerns will result not only in more effective aid programs, but also in increased American influence across the continent.

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An investment in reliable automation is also an investment in the people who administer these vital benefits every day.

© AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough

TL;DR

• Circle Foundation has announced grants supporting digital-payment projects at the United Nations Development Programme and World Food Programme.
• The initiatives will examine how regulated payment stablecoins can improve the speed, cost and transparency of aid distribution.
• WFP plans to test two to three payment corridors over three years, while UNDP will build a Digital Asset Innovation Pool.

Circle’s philanthropic arm is putting money behind an experiment with unusually real-world consequences: whether stablecoins can make humanitarian aid easier to deliver.

Circle Foundation has announced separate initiatives supporting the United Nations Development Programme and World Food Programme as both organizations expand their work around digital payments.

The projects are not simply about sending USDC from one wallet to another.

They are designed to test whether digital payment infrastructure can work inside the governance, compliance and local financial systems required for large-scale international aid.

UNDP Wants To Turn Small Pilots Into Repeatable Infrastructure

UNDP plans to establish a Digital Asset Innovation Pool using support from Circle Foundation.

The goal is to help country offices take lessons from earlier digital-payment pilots and use them across a wider range of development programs.

Previous work has included projects in countries such as Syria, Haiti, Guatemala and Gambia.

The new program is intended to address the less glamorous parts of deploying digital payments at scale: regulatory requirements, operating procedures, beneficiary protection and integration with local financial systems.

UNDP is not replacing traditional banking channels.

The initiative is intended to add another option where digital infrastructure can improve delivery.

WFP Will Test Payment Corridors Over Three Years

The World Food Programme initiative focuses more directly on humanitarian payments.

Circle Foundation funding will support the governance, risk management, compliance, reconciliation and technical systems needed to test stablecoin-based transfers.

WFP plans to evaluate two to three payment corridors connecting its systems with local financial-service providers and markets over the next three years.

The idea is straightforward.

Aid organizations often need to move money into countries where banking infrastructure can be slow, expensive or difficult to access.

Stablecoins can settle quickly and operate across borders.

The difficult part is making that speed compatible with beneficiary protection, sanctions controls, local regulation and the practical reality of converting digital value into something people can actually spend.

That is what these programs are intended to test.

Circle Foundation itself is supported through Circle Internet Group’s commitment of 1% of its equity.

The announcement does not mean the United Nations is replacing its payment systems with USDC.

It does mean regulated stablecoins are moving into another serious trial environment.

If they can reduce the cost and delay involved in getting aid to recipients, that is a much more consequential use case than making crypto trading faster.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

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The Gates Foundation is pledging to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on artificial intelligence for health workers, farmers and teachers, largely in the world’s poorest countries, funding AI tools for people the market would otherwise overlook.

The bet is that AI can help reaccelerate the world’s progress against child mortality, poverty and disease, which has slowed sharply as governments cut global health funding.

The Seattle-based foundation’s new financial commitment, released Monday evening in conjunction with its 10th annual Goalkeepers Report, illustrates the double-edged sword of AI at a moment when the U.S. in particular is preoccupied with what the technology might damage or destroy.

Bill Gates, who issued his own AI warnings in an essay three weeks ago, writes in the new report that the risks “are real and deserve serious attention.” He adds, “AI could be a great equalizer — or widen the gap. This is not a long-range prediction. It’s a present-tense choice.”

In this case, Gates writes, he’s focusing on “the possibility that AI, if shaped well, could expand who has access to solutions, opportunities, and knowledge that has too often been out of reach.”

The window is short, he writes: “I believe that the decisions made in the next 12 to 18 months — about how AI is built, funded, and deployed — will determine whether this technology primarily benefits the people who already have the most or reaches those who have the least.”

Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman, in an interview with GeekWire, called the $1 billion a “down payment,” saying he expects the figure to grow significantly after the first two years.

For this first installment, 40% of the money will go to education, 40% to health care, 10% to agriculture and 10% to digital infrastructure, including datasets in languages the models don’t handle, according to the foundation.

More than 90% of the data used to train early large language models came from English-language sources, according to the report. Leading AI speech recognition systems make errors less than 6% of the time in English and more than 60% of the time in Yoruba, a West African language spoken by tens of millions of people, for example.

Most people in Africa use feature phones rather than smartphones, Suzman said, so the tools have to work by voice. That means collecting recordings of speech, not just written text, in local accents and including children’s voices. He said the foundation works with Google and Microsoft on AI language initiatives.

Winding down: Gates announced in May 2025 that he would give away virtually all his wealth and close the foundation in 2045, which requires doubling its spending over those 20 years. The foundation had previously planned to close 20 years after his death.

As part of that plan, the foundation will need to give away $200 billion before it shuts down. Its budgeted payout is $9 billion this year, the largest in its history. Suzman said the $1 billion over two years comes out of its core budget.

Goals for its final two decades include cutting preventable child deaths in half again, eradicating polio and malaria, and bringing tuberculosis and HIV under control.

The report’s data section shows how far off the pace the world is. Child mortality, neonatal mortality and HIV are all projected to miss their 2030 targets. HIV incidence is on track to fall only to 0.22 new cases per 1,000 people, more than 10 times the target of 0.02.

Early AI results: The report makes the case that AI could change those trajectories. It points to a number of tools already in use in different settings:

• Penda Health, a network of affordable clinics in Nairobi, Kenya, where an AI tool built into patient records has raised diagnostic accuracy by 16 percentage points.
• In the U.S., seventh graders using a tool called Kiddom Atlas across 21 middle schools gained the equivalent of six extra months of learning in a single year.
• In India, the state of Maharashtra runs a free AI advisory service called MahaVISTAAR that has signed up more than 740,000 farmers, with 70,000 more joining every month.

The foundation has supported all three, according to the report’s endnotes. The endnotes also cite OpenAI’s account of its work with Penda Health on the clinical copilot.

One caveat: the evidence behind the examples is early. Suzman said the education work is “still on a relatively small scale,” and pointed to agriculture as the area already operating at size.

Suzman said the foundation spent years experimenting with AI without committing at this scale, wary of getting ahead of what the technology could actually deliver in its areas. Progress in the models over the past year, and results from early investments, convinced him otherwise.

“We now can state with a pretty high degree of confidence there are real deliverables that we can see across health, across education, across agricultural development,” he said.

What AI won’t fix: Asked whether AI can substitute for the money the U.S. and other governments have cut from global health, Suzman said: “Sadly, no.” The cuts run to “tens of billions of dollars,” he said, and they are hitting basic services now. He cited the purchase of bed nets and antiretroviral drugs, and care for mothers before and after birth.

“That’s affecting families right now with a real impact,” he said. “Ideally, you combine the two [AI and aid funding], and that’s how you get hugely accelerated progress.”

Suzman said the foundation will keep pressing the U.S. to remain a leader in global health. Despite the cuts, he said, it has been encouraging to see the country stay a partner in programs such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and he noted that Congress has moved to fund these areas more fully than the administration has.

“We believe that currently reflects the U.S. public’s broad view and support for these areas, when you can see the concrete results,” he said.

The Epstein review: Asked how the scrutiny of Gates’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein has affected the foundation’s work, Suzman pointed to the external review the foundation released in July.

Conducted by the law firm WilmerHale, it found no evidence that Epstein received foundation money or that the foundation knew of his crimes. It counted roughly 30 meetings from 2011 to 2014, involving Gates and nine other foundation leaders and staff, and found that staff had repeatedly raised concerns about associating with him.

The board adopted the recommendations that followed, among them centralized vetting of brokers and co-funders and tougher conflict-of-interest rules.

Suzman expressed optimism that the review has cleared the way for the foundation to keep working across the full range of governmental and philanthropic partnerships. “Hopefully it’s full speed ahead,” he said, “and with these AI shifts, that’s more important than ever.”

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