Power Africa, Ken Opalo, and MCC

Working through the three stages of (DOGE) grief

A few weeks ago, Cipher invited me to write about the dismantling of Power Africa. I wrote this, which came out a few days ago. It’s about how the program’s approach aligns with some of what the administration wants to do, and how they might build on it. It’s forward-looking and under no illusions that ‘Power Africa’ as originally branded or conceived will be coming back any time soon.

Soon after I finished writing it, DOGE announced its plan to close down the Millennium Challenge Corporation, triggering an awful sense of deja vu. Watching MCC be plunged into the uncertainty and crisis that USAID went through just a few months ago made me reflect on how my own emotions have shifted since February, and how that’s changed how I do my job. It also prompted me to think about my Cipher piece and a recent podcast conversation Rose and I had with Georgetown professor Ken Opalo in surprising new ways.

The three stages of DOGE-induced grief

Right now, many of us are in the awkward position of trying to influence, comment on, and mitigate the damage of Trump’s foreign policy while we ourselves are being deeply and directly impacted by it. When DOGE shutters a development agency, it’s naive to think we can just jump directly into objective questions of optimal institutional structure or efficiency. These are our friends, our colleagues. These are our former agencies, and the foundations of our careers. For most of us, it’s simply impossible to cleanly separate objective views on policy from our deeper emotional reactions–especially in the immediate aftermath of a DOGE announcement. I’m willing to bet many of us have cycled through the same basic three emotional responses:

1. Fight. Like many others, I spent several weeks in February and early-March in a state of frenetic, sleep-deprived activity. I called Congressional offices and private sector allies relentlessly, trying to rally anyone with leverage to stand up for USAID. Obviously this didn’t ultimately save the agency (... womp womp). But even so, there’s huge value in showing up, making noise, and turning out constituencies to say “stop! we care about this thing!” We can’t prove a counterfactual, but I firmly believe that public outcry over the end of humanitarian assistance absolutely influenced the administration’s ultimate decision to retain (some of) that work inside State. The fight matters.

2. Mourn. When USAID ultimately closed, my frantic urgency transformed into grief. I cried. I met up with former colleagues to reminisce and to laugh. In this stage, even the much-maligned Ronald Reagan Building–USAID’s headquarters until March–took on a kind of romantic afterglow.

3. Build. This is about turning to the future, whether that means trying to influence the current administration or the next. You can work to mitigate the damage now, or put your head down and work on reinventing American foreign policy down the road. Both are good, both are valuable. In either case, this stage requires jettisoning any ego or defensiveness around program names, institutional ownership, or credit. By the time I wrote the piece for Cipher, I was fully in the ‘Build’ stage. I don’t care if it’s called ‘Power Africa’, or if it falls under some new operational structure. I’m not going to waste time or energy pushing for it to be maintained or recreated in its old form. What matters to me is that we find ways to salvage some level of US leadership in global clean energy innovation and investment, and that we ultimately create something more ambitious and more effective. I’m focused on ways to try and make that happen.

Which phase are you in?

There’s no “right” place to be. We need some people to stay in ‘fight’ mode, to continuously call out shortsightedness, illegality, and cruelty. We need other people to work more quietly, finding alignment, cultivating allies, and proposing viable solutions.

This isn’t linear–or consistent. I spend most of my time in the ‘Build’ phase now, but not all of it. I have days where I’m energized to nudge policy even a quarter inch in the right direction. And others where I’m angry at allies for failing to fight hard enough, or overcome by despair because it feels like, regardless of what we do now, the US has lost too much credibility and trust.

Our own emotional state influences the ideas we generate and how we react to the ideas of others. If you’re not in the ‘Build’ phase, it can be painful to listen to people who are. I thought about this yesterday because Rose and I recently hosted Ken Opalo on our podcast. Ken has been writing with optimism–seemingly since the very first rumors of USAID’s impending demise–about the opportunities inherent in the agency’s destruction. (Read some of his great work here). I’ve always recognized the validity of his arguments. But his outlook sometimes felt jarring when I was still reeling over the destruction. Now, months later, I find his perspective illuminating and even empowering–and I’m able to hear much more of the nuance in his argument.

Similarly, in the early days of USAID’s dismantling, I felt very anxious writing about any need for ‘reform’ or any ‘opportunity’ to be gleaned from the disaster. I worried my USAID friends would take it as a slap in the face, or a dismissal of their pain. It’s like the days immediately following a natural disaster. Some people instinctively jump to seeing the opportunity to “build back better”. Others say “excuse me, my house just got destroyed – don’t talk to me about opportunity.” Neither of those responses is wrong.

What does this mean for MCC?

We don’t know what’s going to happen to MCC. DOGE’s announcement came as a surprise even to big parts of the National Security Council and the State Department. Perhaps MCC gets reinvented, or absorbed by another agency. Perhaps its focus narrows to a few sectors this administration deems “strategic”. These are all open questions, each of which could result in good (and not-so-good) outcomes. So this is not over.

A little unsolicited advice for anyone who values MCC:

• Fight. We still need to make the case for MCC and its unique approach. Make noise. Write about what the agency has accomplished and what it could do in the future. Reach out to Senators, like Risch and others, who’ve been longstanding MCC champions, even if they’ve been (disappointingly) quiet lately.

• Mourn. No matter what ultimately happens, the agency will never be exactly what it was. Take the time to grieve.

• Build. In the short-term, we need people thinking creatively about how the capacities and capabilities built into MCC align with current political realities and incentives. Aubrey Hruby laid out one potential vision here. And in the longer-term, we need people synthesizing what we’ve learned from MCC’s 20-year trajectory and figuring out how we can build on it in the future. This is part of why we just launched a Fellowship for someone with MCC expertise. The insights of people currently (or recently) inside the agency have immense value, and have to help shape US policy moving forward.

Think hard about what stage you’re in, and where you want to be. We’re in this for the long haul.