ZAGREB, Croatia, June 5 (IPS) – In the hard-to-reach rural community of West Pokot, Kenya, 156 young women crossed a threshold that once seemed out of reach. Their graduation from HER Lab, a workforce skills programme for marginalized rural young women, was more than a ceremony. It demonstrated the power of targeted investment, trusted local partnerships and women’s economic empowerment.
All graduates are the first in their families to complete post-secondary education and training. They are now equipped to earn, lead and build dignified futures in communities where opportunity has long been scarce. Yet even as we celebrate this success, grassroots progress like this is increasingly at risk — not because the model is flawed, but because European and global policy is drifting away from the approaches that make such outcomes possible.
The EU’s budget crossroads
The European Union faces a critical moment as it negotiates its post-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). While the European Commission has described the draft as its “most ambitious ever”, rising debt repayments and interest costs mean that, in real terms, funding for external action and development is stagnating or declining.
The new MFF prioritises competitiveness, industrial policy and defence. These priorities are understandable in a volatile geopolitical context, but they risk coming at the expense of development cooperation, Official Development Assistance (ODA), and gender-focused programmes — particularly those supporting Africa.
This is not abstract. Cohesion and Common Agricultural Policy budgets are shrinking, while development funding is increasingly consolidated into broader external action instruments. Member states have warned that any real increase is marginal and that adjustment costs will fall on the most vulnerable, within and beyond Europe.
Strategic partnerships: promise and pitfall
The Global Gateway Initiative, launched to mobilise up to €300 billion by 2027, with half for Africa, was presented as a new partnership model. Yet it has generated concern among civil society and parliamentarians.
Its focus on “bankable” projects and private sector-led delivery risks sidelining the actors best placed to deliver inclusive development: local communities, women’s organisations and grassroots NGOs. Civil society engagement remains inconsistent, funding flows lack transparency, and safeguards to ensure gender equality as a core objective are weak.
Strategic partnerships may therefore displace direct support for proven grassroots models, undermining the local capacity and social trust Europe claims to champion.
A global aid crisis
This policy drift comes at a dangerous moment. In 2025, global aid fell by a record margin following a 9% decline in 2024. France cut ODA by 11%, Germany by 17%, the UK reduced bilateral aid to Africa by 12%, and the United States slashed overseas aid contracts by more than 90%.
The consequences are immediate. Programmes supporting girls’ education, health services and women’s economic empowerment across Africa are being scaled back or closed.
The EU, long a champion of gender equality and development, cannot afford to follow this path. Grassroots gains are under threat. Since 2013, the Global Give Back Circle’s HER Lab programme alone has transitioned more than 800 rural young women in Kenya, into employment, entrepreneurship or further education. These are not isolated successes, but foundations of resilient societies and credible European engagement.
This is not an isolated case. The Women Action Foundation (WAF) has enabled women’s economic participation by addressing a critical but often overlooked barrier in Kenya: childcare. By establishing community-run childcare hubs alongside skills training and livelihood support, WAF has enabled women in low-income communities to enter work, launch micro-enterprises and sustain economic independence — demonstrating again that locally designed solutions can deliver high impact with modest resources.
Responsibility and opportunity
Europe’s global credibility rests on aligning values with action. As negotiations on the post-2027 MFF intensify, the EU must decide whether to uphold its commitment to development cooperation and gender equality or allow them to be diluted within broader strategic priorities.
HER Lab shows what works. Graduates are launching businesses, saving collectively, and mentoring others, with 74 per cent moving into employment, entrepreneurship or further education and unemployment falling sharply after programme completion. These are not abstract gains, but measurable outcomes.
The Global Gateway can still play a vital role if it moves beyond large scale infrastructure and meaningfully integrates grassroots, locally led and gender-focused partnerships. To remain credible, the EU must ring-fence funding for development cooperation and gender equality, make civil society co-designers of programmes, and insist on transparent impact reporting.
Beyond its own budget, it should also use its diplomatic influence to help reverse the global aid decline and mobilise private and impact investment behind women’s empowerment.
A beacon worth protecting
The graduation ceremony in West Pokot shows what is possible when civil society and local partners work directly with communities. Locally led, women-centred programmes deliver lasting impact, often with modest resources but deep social trust.
Europe’s promise to marginalised women is not made in communiqués, but in the funding and partnership decisions taken now. Investing in African women through proven, grassroots-led models strengthens communities, builds resilience from the ground up, and underpins the credibility the European Union seeks to project as a global actor.
If Europe is serious about matching its values with action, it must choose to support and scale what works. That means protecting funding for development cooperation and gender equality, and ensuring that grassroots organisations are partners of choice, not afterthoughts, in EU external action.
Neven Mimica is a Croatian politician and diplomat who served as European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development from 2014 to 2019. He previously was Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia.
IPS UN Bureau
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