The Future of Aid is Entrepreneurial and Efficient

10 hours ago7 min read5 comments

Earlier this year, as the U. S.government was cutting billions in foreign aid, a quiet revolution was unfolding in the world of humanitarian assistance. A refugee education program named Yeti Confetti achieved something remarkable, transforming a single grant into a lifeline that scaled from serving just 35 students to over 1,400 in Lebanon and New York City, with plans to double that number imminently.This narrative of growth amidst austerity was mirrored by Rocket Learning, an education technology platform in India, which now reaches three million children across ten states and territories at the staggering cost of just $1. 50 per child per year—a fraction of what traditional early childhood programs require.This stark dichotomy was the undercurrent of conversations during the United Nations General Assembly week in September 2025, where senior leaders from established development agencies grappled with an existential crisis precipitated by deep, worldwide cuts in international aid, while the practitioners on the ground, the true doers, had already pivoted, too consumed with the urgent work of delivery and scale to dwell on the crumbling old guard. The decades-long development of humanitarian infrastructure has undeniably cultivated profound expertise and delivered crucial services to communities in desperate need, and that legacy matters.The challenge, however, lies not with the people or their hard-won knowledge, but with the antiquated operating system itself—a system engineered for an era with more money than innovation, now hopelessly ill-suited for a reality where the inverse is true. The suffocating layers of oversight, risk-averse annual funding cycles, and a labyrinth of intermediaries have created a machinery that simply cannot move at the speed or cost-efficiency this moment of crisis demands.Consider the sobering data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which estimated that 305 million people worldwide would need humanitarian assistance by 2025; yet, by November 2024, less than half of the requested $50 billion had materialized. As climate disasters accelerate, conflicts persist, and displacement numbers swell, the chasm between need and allocated resources grows ever wider, forcing a fundamental question: when the gap is this vast, shouldn’t the entire calculation change? This necessary evolution isn’t about discarding institutional knowledge but about radically restructuring who holds resources and how they flow.It demands that multilateral agencies recognize their greatest value may lie in directly platforming proven solutions rather than doggedly implementing them or hiring yet more intermediaries. It calls for foundations to embrace risk, treating innovation not as a peripheral experiment but as a core strategic imperative.The solution to a problem the traditional sector has wrestled with for years—how to reach more people, faster, with less money—is already being built by a generation of entrepreneurs who never waited for perfect conditions or for permission. Take Kate Kallot’s Amini in Africa, a data platform tackling the continent’s critical data scarcity by providing hyper-accurate, granular information localized to smallholder farms, now benefitting 7.5 million people across 25 countries and forging partnerships with the governments of Barbados, Côte d’Ivoire, and Sierra Leone. Rocket Learning, as mentioned, became the Indian government’s technical partner for 230,000 rural childcare centers, with students scoring 30% higher, and detailed economic analyses reveal a breathtaking benefit-to-cost ratio of $1,274 per child.The solutions that truly work share a common DNA: they are cheaper, leveraging technology to achieve reach without the burden of decreasing marginal costs; they are faster, built on organizational structures designed for agility; and they are sustainable, generating their own revenue, creating jobs, and outlasting any single, fickle funding cycle. Directing resources to these entrepreneurs does introduce different risks, and the safeguarding protocols of the old system exist for good reason.But we must be brutally honest about the risk inherent in the status quo: the risk of reaching fewer people, taking far longer, at a prohibitively higher cost per beneficiary. The bottleneck is no longer a shortage of ideas; it is the sclerotic infrastructure connecting local entrepreneurs—who are addressing the pressing challenges of their communities with breathtaking ingenuity—to the resources and scale they need.To accelerate impact, we need a new playbook: early and direct capital, where leverage is highest, rather than demanding years of pilot data; bespoke support from seasoned operators who have built successful ventures, not another theoretical workshop on ‘Theory of Change’; networks for scale that connect proven solutions to government partners and private sector distribution channels, as many brilliant entrepreneurs lack the relationships with decision-makers who control access to millions; patient growth capital that aligns with the multi-year timeline of building sustainable, scalable organizations, not the one-year grant cycle; and a validation infrastructure that allows development agencies to shift from primary implementers to credible validators and amplifiers, using their institutional heft to assess, endorse, and help scale entrepreneur-led solutions that meet rigorous standards. For funders, this is not mere charity; it is the ultimate leverage.It means backing solutions that become self-sustaining, building systems resilient to the whims of any administration’s foreign policy, reaching exponentially more people for a fraction of the traditional cost, and moving meaningfully toward the aid independence that nations across the Global South are so clearly hungry for. The future of global development is not a distant promise discussed in boardrooms; it is happening right now in the hands of entrepreneurs in Tripoli, Kolkata, Mombasa, and Ho Chi Minh City, who saw that the old system couldn’t move fast enough and simply decided to build something that would.This transition asks people to reimagine systems they have spent entire careers building, and that is not easy. The expertise and relationships forged over decades are invaluable assets.The critical question is how to channel those assets toward what is demonstrably working on the ground. The terrain has already shifted beneath our feet.The doers never stopped moving. It is time we joined them.

#foreign aid

#humanitarian assistance

#innovation

#entrepreneurs

#development

#funding

#featured

#global challenges

#efficiency

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