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The United States has closed down the US Agency of International Development and is withdrawing from multilateral agencies, while funding for women’s rights from both the United Nations and Europe is declining. These shifts are reshaping the liberal, rights-based norms that have long influenced women’s rights mobilization globally since the end of World War II. However, there is limited understanding of how these changes in international funding are affecting the capacity, priorities, and strategies of civil society and women’s rights organizations in aid-dependent contexts such as Tanzania. This study asks whether declining donor support constrains activism or whether it creates opportunities for new, more locally grounded forms of mobilization. It also examines whether it forced the government to seek new mechanisms to fill the gap left by these cuts. This study seeks to address this question by examining how women’s rights organizations and the Tanzanian government are adapting to shifting funding landscapes and whether these changes are creating opportunities for alternative solutions.Dr Aili Mari Tripp is Vilas Research Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Tripp’s research has focused on gender/women and politics, women’s movements in Africa, transnational feminism, and authoritarian politics in Africa. Tripp recently published a book on Why African Autocracies Promote Women Leaders (Oxford University Press, 2025). She is presently finishing another book on War, the End of Empire, and the Expansion of Women’s Political Citizenship.

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