New sources of development funding for Nigerian CSOs in a post-USAID world, By Judith-Ann Walker

USAID’s Exit from Nigeria

Prior to USAID’s exit from the Nigerian development and humanitarian programming space in January 2025, the Mission was the country’s largest international development funder, outstripping all other bilaterals including the European Union. USAID was on record classifying Nigeria as “the single most important strategic partner for the United States in Africa”(https://2021-2025.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/ICS_AF_Nigeria_Public.pdf) USAID’s annual official assistance to Nigeria between 2002 to 2024 increased from US$90m in 2002, to US$942,178,693.00 million in 2024. In the 9 years between 2015 to 2024, health and humanitarian assistance sectors in Nigeria were the main recipients of USAID’s funding. USAID 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, $75million was obligated between 2014 and 2017 (https:/policycommons.net/artifacts/18356672/education-overview-activities/19257144/). Between 2002 to 2024, USAID’s support for Nigeria’s education sector hovered below US$50m 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% 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 NGOs coping strategies and resilience. MacArthur Foundation leads the way with high-level dialogues on 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, 9th June, European Union think tanks – the katholischer Deutscher Frauenbund in partnership with the misereor Gmeinsam Global Gerecht hosted a webinar to examine – The Dangerous Gap: The Impact of Global Neglect of Women’s Health with insights from Nigeria.

New US funding for health and humanitarian work in Nigeria – 2026

The launch of two big funding opportunities for development work in Nigeria promised new hope to fill the gaps left by USAID’ exist and piqued the interest of thousands of Nigerian CSOs.   Thousands of Nigerian CSOs mobilized, 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 organizations founded by Melinda French Gates. On the other hand, the PRO used a matchmaking approach to link programs losing USAID funding with private donors.  Levers focused on maternal health while PRO aimed to fund cost-effective health and humanitarian programs that lost US funding.

Who got what? – Grants Awarded

On 12 November, 2025, Levers announced its list of 83 awardee organisations – 8 of which were organisations programming in women’s health in Nigeria – (1) Lifebox; (2) MMV Medicines for Malaria Venture; (3) GEANCO Foundation; (4) Direct Relief; (5) We Care Solar; (6) International Rescue Committee; (7) Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI); and (8) Tiko (aka Triggerise South Africa NPC). All grantees were global organisations; none were Nigerian CSOs. Winning grants which included Nigeria as a programming country, were multi-country grants, with an average of eight countries covered per grants which included Nigeria. Some winning grants such as the CHAII covering 16 countries including Nigeria while Direct Relief grant aimed to cover 15 countries including Nigeria. Only one grantee GEANCO Foundation – aimed to focus only on Nigeria as a single country.

PRO, which described its grant making mechanism as rolling, awarded $25,070,778.00 for humanitarian programming between 2025-2026. 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.

Table 1: PRO grants awarded for humanitarian work in Nigeria 2025-2026

Source: Urgent & Vetted List: Urgent & Vetted List v4 – Airtable

Implications for Nigerian NGO funding in a post-USAID world

The results of awards made under these two-funding mechanism point to a new reality where multi-country coverage is related inversely to localization 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.

Judith-Ann Walker is Executive Director of development Research and Projects Center (dRPC).