Publication Date
Fall 2025
Abstract
This study examines the consequences of the United States’ 2025 dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USIAD) and its effects on Moroccan nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). While debates within the United States increasingly frame foreign aid as wasteful or misaligned with domestic priorities, USAID has historically served as a core instrument of U.S. geopolitical strategy and a central source of financial, technical, and institutional support for local civil society abroad. The research investigates how long-term donor-recipient relationships shape organizational vulnerability and resilience when a dominant donor abruptly withdraws. Based on qualitative fieldwork conducted in Morocco in 2025, the study finds that USAID’s withdrawal generated both immediate and systemic organizational shock. NGOs heavily reliant on USAID experienced severe staffing losses, program suspension, administrative disorientation, and diminished community services. Beyond financial dependence, USAID had become deeply embedded in partner organizations’ monitoring practices, professional skillsets, and cognitive frameworks, producing an epistemic and institutional dependency. The effects also extend beyond NGOs to UN agencies and multilateral programs that relied on pooled USAID funding, illustrating the systemic reach of donor retrenchment. At the same time, the study reveals emerging forms of local resilience. These findings highlight the political fragility of development assistance, the strategic costs of abrupt aid withdrawal, and the need to rethink civil society sustainability amid volatile geopolitical landscapes.
Disciplines
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Prince, Elsie, "Embedded Aid and Organizational Vulnerability: USAID’s Withdrawal and Moroccan Civil Society" (2025). Morocco: Human Rights, Social Justice, and Cultural Transformation. 12.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/mor2/12