AID is Dead, Kid
They murdered USAID on a Friday eve. Quietly. Like it owed them money.
No press release. A shrug from the Hill. A smirk from the Valley.
Chainsaw said it was time to “innovate compassion.” Lit up a blunt. Launched a satellite (it blew). Called it justice.
Lil’ R stood along. Eyes polished marble. Quote “aid was too slow for freedom.” Way too woke. Lunatics running the asylum. Where’s the ROI?
Old hands saw it coming. Smelled the money. The politics. Tried to fight. Briefings. Statistics. Reports. Warnings.
Nobody read them.
Chainsaw brought in his people. Nerds at the gate. Patagonia vests. Stale burnt hair cologne. Deregulating saviours. The Bobs. The Office on ketamine.
Eyes red from all-nighters. Microdosing. Eighth revision pitch decks. Fast talkers. Wise slogans. Gamifying democracy. Decentralizing hunger. Ethical capitalism. Refugee camps the new test markets.
Lil’ R nodded along. Sound bites practiced before the mirror. “Need a new moral architecture.” Awesome slogans. Realignment. Moral. Scalable. Viral.
Vaccines replaced with apps. Paper outdated. Schoolbooks swapped for “learning NFTs”. Poor people should “own their own data.”
Villages in Congo. Dark. Cloud support gone. Education for disabled kids. Stopped. Mpox global emergency. Perhaps.
Drones to deliver antibiotics? Dropped a crate of branded merch instead. T-shirts with QR codes. Codes to nowhere.
Citizens get sick. People die. User metrics are up.
Chainsaw tweeted a meme. Lil’ R went on cable. “Legacy institutions can’t keep up,” he said. The anchor nodded. Lifeless eyes.
Aid workers fired. Others quit in droves. The old pros. The lifers. Speaking six languages. Knew the smell of cholera. Achieved reforms. Instilled hope.
Replaced by influencers.
The future. No plans. Just platforms.
Left a dismantled logo. A hashtag. Vanished website. Dissipated success stories.
Investors waiting to monetize misery. Buying up “AidTech Futures”. Whatever the hell they are. No policy. Just vibes.
Meanwhile subsidies thrive. Oil patch. The agri boys. Big pharma.
They didn’t just dismantle USAID. They salted the ground.
Somewhere, the lights went out.
Did anybody notice?
Steven Kelly has led performance improvement initiatives for 40+ years across commercial and government sectors. He founded KNO Worldwide in 1979 and later launched consulting firms in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He holds a B.S. in Political Science, an M.A. in Management, and completed PhD coursework (ABD) in International Relations. He’s worked in 30 countries for USAID. World Bank, EU Leonardo and KPMG. A Certified Performance Technologist since 2003, Steven has co-authored a book on Performance Assessment, along with numerous international development articles in professional journals and economic publications.