Global Fund Plans to Cut $1.4 Billion From Grants It Has Already Awarded
10 July 2025
Amid concerns about whether donors will fulfill their funding pledges, the Global Fund is slashing allocations to its current grant cycle and asking countries to revise those grants.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria confirmed it is cutting $1.43 billion in funding already allocated for its current funding cycle. This represents around 11% of the funding originally committed for the fund’s seventh cycle, which runs from 2024 until 2026.
Country teams are now scrambling to reprioritize and revise their grants as a result of the cuts, which are as high as 16% in some places. While the Global Fund has assured countries it is maintaining support for lifesaving services, including treatment for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, advocates said community-based organizations remain worried they might face a repeat of the uncertainty and upheaval that occurred as Washington froze funding and then dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development earlier this year.
“This is the largest and fastest reprogramming the Global Fund has ever had to do,” Fionnuala Murphy, the head of global advocacy for Frontline AIDS, told Devex. Even as she praised the Global Fund for emphasizing the importance of community involvement, she cautioned that “in situations where information is not flowing as clearly as it should, community-led organizations, which are literally fighting for their lives and the lives of the communities they serve, are going to find that very concerning.”
The cuts were caused by the failure of donors to meet their pledged contributions.
“Given the rapidly evolving changes in our donor landscape, the prospects for full conversion of Seventh Replenishment pledges remain highly uncertain,” a Global Fund spokesperson wrote to Devex in an email. “While we continue to pursue full pledge conversion, we still face the risk of a significant gap between current grant commitments and available resources.”
In particular, sources said the Global Fund’s decision was motivated by uncertainty around whether the United States, which pledged up to $6 billion during this funding cycle, would make good on that commitment.
The U.S. Congress obligated $1.65 billion for each of the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years. But the Trump administration’s 2026 budget request does not include an explicit allocation to the Global Fund. It does allow for some flexibility to allocate money through the American First Opportunity Fund or the Global Health Programs account. And while the United States had been willing to fund up to one-third of Global Fund activities in the past, the Trump administration has said it is only willing to pay for one-fifth going forward.
Katy Kydd Wright, the director of the Global Fund Advocates Network, told Devex that the decision by the Global Fund was “a bit exceptional. At this stage, though, it’s the responsible thing to do from the Global Fund’s perspective, because if they don’t have the money, they can’t give the money to people for the work they’re doing.”
The Global Fund received $15.7 billion in pledges to support its seventh funding cycle, which was below the $18 billion target the organization had set. The fund is now in the midst of its eighth replenishment campaign to pay for grants to support programs from 2027 to 2029. It is again looking to raise $18 billion.
The recently announced cuts are not uniform: South Africa, which is among the countries with the highest burden of HIV, faces a 16% reduction to its allocations, while South Sudan is set for only a 5% cutback. But the vast majority of more than 100 countries are slated for cuts of 10% or more.
The Global Fund spokesperson said that the reduced country allocations were determined by taking a percentage of each country’s “unexecuted funds” as of June 30. Some countries then received a limited amount of funding back following a case-by-case review.
It comes at a moment when countries have grown increasingly dependent on Global Fund grants, following the elimination of USAID and the retreat of donors like the United Kingdom. While the Global Fund has committed to preserving all lifesaving services, the cuts to the grants mean that what is left will have to stretch even further.
The Global Fund has explained that lifesaving services include “treatment continuity and care for HIV; diagnosis and treatment for TB; and case management for malaria,” among other priorities that will differ within countries.
“The commodities that are so essential to people affected by the disease, those ones are maintained,” Samuel Hackman, the executive secretary of Ghana’s Global Fund Country Coordinating Mechanism, or CCM, told Devex.
But he said the cuts will still be felt. Ghana is facing a 7% cut to its funding, from $248 million to $229.7 million. The proposed reductions will affect monitoring activities, program management, and some training, Hackman said, as well as funds to travel domestically and internationally to meetings and conferences.
“With what is left we have to come up with the best implementation arrangement and plans to be able to derive the maximum impact for all,” he said.
Ida Savadogo, the coordinator of the Global Fund’s Francophone Africa Regional Learning Hub, told Devex there are concerns across the region about the impact of proposed cuts to funding for rent and utilities.
“If organizations don’t have means to pay their rents, they cannot be maintained,” she told Devex.
The CCM and principal recipients of those funds are continuing to work with Global Fund officials to arrive at a finalized grant revision by the end of September, according to a timeline released by the fund. The CCM is expected to consult with the affected communities and civil society members during this period, in order to inform the negotiations.
While the new country funding allocations are set, the Global Fund spokesperson wrote that “countries retain flexibility to move funds across grants within these country allocations.”
Hackman said that in the documentation the CCM has received, the Global Fund broke programs down into four categories: maintained, paused, stopped, and maintained with efficiency. The latter category comes with reductions, he said, which officials are supposed to accommodate for as they reshape those programs.
To save money, the Global Fund has urged countries to take steps such as ending suboptimal treatments, shifting to lower-cost testing options, and pausing the purchase of expensive new equipment or vehicles. It has also encouraged countries to use this opportunity to consider what could be financed domestically.
Kinz ul Eman, the CEO of the Dopasi Foundation, told Devex she is particularly worried that this reprioritization process might lead to a decline in funding for community-based efforts, either because they lose Global Fund support or because governments shift funding away from those activities to fill other gaps created by the retrenchment. Advocates expressed specific concerns about the need to protect vulnerable populations, including sex workers and gay men, who might be discriminated against or criminalized by some governments.
Savadogo said her organization has been working with community-led groups in the region, including from those vulnerable communities, to make sure they are integrated into the revision efforts.
“I think communities are organizing themselves so that when the CCM puts the revisions on the table, they can really react if they are satisfied or not,” she told Devex.
Still, Murphy is waiting for greater clarity as the revision process continues.
“We’ll only know what the full impact of the cuts is and how effective that advocacy for community engagement has been when we get to October,” she said.
At the same time, she said it was important to remember what instigated these cuts.
“What the situation shows us is how fragile the response is when we don’t have sustained commitment from donors,” Murphy said. “We really, really need donors to continue to support the Global Fund.”
By Andrew Green
Source: Devex
