Jeremiah A Carew argues that USAID fell because of poor storytelling rather than poor work (How misconceptions and woeful PR allowed Musk to shred USAID so easily, 1 September). Having spent decades in a recipient nation working at the final point of delivery, I see a different lesson. The primary problem was not the story USAID told, but the architecture behind it.
Aid money passes through a heavy supply chain: from prime contractors down through international and local NGOs, with administrative costs absorbed at every layer. Meanwhile, project success is too often measured by easy outputs, such as workshop attendance, rather than long-term systemic impact. There is also a quiet truth: aid workers, including local consultants like myself, often benefit when projects extend, creating incentives to prolong processes rather than complete them.
Comparing USAID to Nasa is equally unhelpful. Nasa delivers visible, binary moments of engineering triumph. Aid involves slow, complex and contested social change shaped by local politics. No amount of polished marketing can package that like a rocket launch.
USAID’s closure was abrupt, but no PR campaign will bring it back. The real lesson for the broader aid sector is to focus less on telling a better story and more on structural reform: shortening the supply chain and funding local actors directly, as some Nordic donors already do, measuring genuine outcomes, and rewarding work that truly finishes.
Monica Kappiantari
Development specialist, Jakarta, Indonesia
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