2.3: The United States Government and Funding for Africa-Based Projects
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IMPORTANT UPDATE: At the beginning of 2025, the Trump Administration dismantled the United States Agency for International Development. At the time of this writing (June 2025), only 14% of USAID projects are still receiving funding. Additionally, USAID has been absorbed by the U.S. Department of State, which means that funding mechanisms and priorities will likely change in the coming months. We are leaving this lesson in place because some of the information is still relevant (e.g., the existence of grants.gov) and because we don't know what international programs will remain. For example, it is possible that maternal health and some HIV funding will continue, and the application processes may remain similar to what they were pre-February 2025.
Organizations Based Outside of the United States Can Apply for U.S. Government Funding
The United States government (USG) awards grants to organizations based in the United States as well as in other countries. Grants for projects located within the United States are limited to organizations located in the United States. For projects located outside of the United States, the U.S. government frequently opens up the eligibility to include organizations located in the country where the project will take place; with some funding opportunities, there may be few, if any, geographic limitations in terms of where the applicant organization can be based. For organizations based in Africa, this means that if your organization has the right qualifications, it could receive a grant from the U.S. government to conduct a project in your home country.
The U.S. government posts funding opportunities on a website called Grants.gov (www.grants.gov). The site is free to access, and you can register to receive funding opportunity announcements and updates. You can also track pending funding opportunities on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) site (www.usaid.gov) through its business forecast.
What Kinds of Projects Does the US Government Fund through Grants?
The U.S. government funds a wide variety of projects through grants and cooperative agreements. Spending just a few minutes on grants.gov will give you an idea of the range of projects sponsored by the U.S. government, which include projects to strengthen and improve the following sectors, among others:
Civil Society
Education
Energy
Environment
Equality
Health
Agriculture
The U.S. government supports projects to expand access to HIV treatment and prevention, increase girls' access to education, improve farming techniques for smallholder farmers, reduce maternal mortality, invest in renewable energy, and provide support to civil society to protect human rights and increase gender equality. In almost any area of life, from access to clean water to reducing disease to increasing education, the U.S. government has a presence, and there are few countries in the world where you will not find some level of funding from the United States.
Funding priorities change over time, depending on current events and crises created by natural events or human actions. U.S. funding priorities—and funding levels for international development work—can also shift dramatically depending on the interests of the current occupant of the White House. Because funding levels and priorities can shift from year to year, if you are interested in receiving funding from the U.S. government, it is important to monitor grants.gov and the websites of agencies that fund projects in developing countries such as the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Priority Countries
While the United States funds various projects in Africa, it prioritizes funding in areas such as maternal and child health and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).
A priority list for maternal child health can be found on USAID's website. To see where USAID has been active in addressing climate change, view the map found at https://www.climatelinks.org/where-we-work#/countries/map.
To learn about USAID's interests in your country, a good resource is to look at USAID's Country Development Cooperation Strategy document for your country and your country's page on the USAID website. You can find the list of countries where USAID works here: https://www.usaid.gov/where-we-work/africa
In addition to the USAID website, you may also want to look at the U.S. agency that funds projects relevant to your area of focus. As an example, if your organization focuses on agriculture, in addition to USAID's website, you would also want to look at the U.S. Department of Agriculture site.
How Hard Is It to Receive a USG Grant or Cooperative Agreement?
It is not easy to win a grant or cooperative agreement from a U.S. government agency.
Winning an award from the USG is not easy for any organization, including U.S.-based organizations. USG funding is generally most appropriate and accessible for larger, more sophisticated organizations that have the capacity to bid on and implement complex projects with large budgets.
Even for organizations with past experience with large awards, either as a lead organization or as a "sub" (i.e., subaward), the odds of winning an award will be less than 30 percent in most cases. If your organization has no history of winning or participating in a project funded by the U.S. government or other major donor, the odds will be even lower.
If your organization lacks experience with large awards, the best strategy is to partner with a more experienced organization to submit a grant application. In deciding which organizations to fund, the USG (and other grantmaking entities) carefully scrutinizes the past experience and administrative capacity of potential grantees. If they lack confidence that your organization can handle large sums of money responsibly, implement the project in a professional manner, and communicate with them effectively, they are unlikely to fund you.
Because you need to convince potential donors that you have the capacity to manage a grant, before you plan to submit a grant application, you need to build your organization's internal systems, including financial, human resources, and programmatic, as well as its expertise and reputation for excellence.
None of this can happen overnight, so if you want to secure grants from foreign aid organizations like the US Agency for International Development, you need to have a plan for how you will develop your systems and gain experience.
What You Need to Do Before You Apply for a USG Grant
Before you can apply for funding from the US government, your organization must do three things:
Obtain an identification number
Organizations based in the United States require a CAGE Code, while non-U.S. based organizations require an NCAGE Code
Register for System for Award Management (SAM). SAM is used by U.S. federal agencies to manage federal awards. An entity must have a DUNS number and CAGE or NCAGE code to register for SAM.
Completing the registration process can take a couple of weeks. To learn more about the registration process, you can find information on grants.gov as well as on the USAID website.
For more information on how to work with USAID and the registration process, please see the link below to a USAID training series.
Resources: