Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Welcome to Moral Money. I’m back to my old stomping grounds while Simon is away this week, and today I have an item on foreign aid in the Trump era.For more than a decade, some of Silicon Valley’s biggest entrepreneurs have argued for more science-driven, cost-effective approaches to charitable giving — especially when fighting disease and extreme poverty. Tech founders have backed initiatives ranging from providing medicine to prevent Malaria to cash transfers encouraging childhood vaccination.But Silicon Valley has been going through a Maga makeover. As today’s story shows, the fast-evolving consensus on these issues among America’s tech elites — and Tesla’s Elon Musk in particular — could have implications for critical US foreign aid.Thanks for reading.foreign aid GiveDirectly hit by US government aid cuts Elon Musk’s cuts to the US Agency for International Development have hit a Silicon Valley darling that combats global poverty with the explicit goal of avoiding corruption — one that Musk himself had previously backed. GiveDirectly will this year miss out on $20mn that it had expected from USAID, the group said, as a result of cuts championed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) that the Tesla chief leads.Musk’s foundation donated millions to GiveDirectly as recently as 2023, filings show. In 2021 the entrepreneur said he personally donated to the group after it authorised payments in Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency Musk launched. The gift totalled about $10,000, according to GiveDirectly. The group’s model, which gives unconditional cash transfers to vetted recipients, has been popular in Silicon Valley, where it has received donations from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai.A primary goal for GiveDirectly, launched in 2008 by a group of economics graduate students at Harvard and MIT, is to avoid the corruption that has beset many government aid programmes, its founders say. It also seeks to circumvent the overhead costs of private philanthropy, where fundraising can require charities to spend money on large workforces and champagne-soaked galas.Several of GiveDirectly’s programmes in African countries have become casualties of the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn cuts to the foreign aid budget, which Musk said targeted widespread fraud in US aid spending.With the $20mn GiveDirectly had expected from USAID this year, the group had planned to support people fleeing conflict zones and to combat the growth of violent extremism. One such programme, which it has now suspended, provided cash transfers to young people in northern Mozambique to help them start businesses — and provide an alternative to joining armed groups.“Even compared to training and entrepreneurship programmes, cash transfers are more successful at helping people set up their own businesses,” said GiveDirectly’s Yolande Wright, who managed the USAID partnership. “Young people have great ideas. They know what works in their local communities, but what they’re short of is the capital to make a make an investment.”Earlier this month, GiveDirectly launched a campaign aimed at making up for lost American aid, and has so far raised about $500,000, which it said would allow it to proceed with some of its planned programming.Some of those funds will support individuals in Mozambique who were displaced by a December cyclone that affected more than 90,000 children, according to Unicef.GiveDirectly hopes to raise the rest of the shortfall from private donors. However, philanthropic groups have also cut back, Wright said, so even raising private donations, she said, was “pretty tricky”. (Lee Harris) Smart readsBlame game UBS blamed its acquisition of rival Credit Suisse for why it pushed back its net zero target by a decade.Gridlock Audi is reviewing its plan to stop introducing new petrol models from next year amid a “delayed transition” to electric vehicles.Tesla tumble Hedge fund short sellers have made $16.2bn betting against Tesla’s shares as the carmaker’s value has halved over the past three months.
