Opinion: The global health aid architecture is collapsing. The faith economy isn’t
The Trump administration announced nearly $2 billion for faith-based groups, the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to such organizations in over two decades. The bulk ($1.4 billion) funds health services, including an $850 million award to World Vision supporting 2,500 faith-based hospitals and clinics across 17 countries. The author, a public health professional, sees this as a signal that while the old aid architecture is collapsing, the 'faith economy' is not — but the bigger opportunity lies in treating faith as a source of capital, not just a delivery mechanism.
By 'faith economy,' the author means capital generated, governed, and invested through religious obligations, institutions, and financial systems. Governments have long relied on faith-based groups to deliver services, but have not built the financial infrastructure to receive, aggregate, and deploy the capital that faith itself produces. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, faith-based providers deliver an estimated 30–40% of health care, yet the capital from religious giving sits outside official development assistance accounting, which only measures donor government spending.
Islamic finance illustrates the scale: zakat, a recurring annual obligation of generally 2.5% of qualifying wealth, is estimated to generate $200 billion to $1 trillion annually. The author draws on personal experience — building a campaign around religious leaders during Libya's revolution and, in 2022, realizing that no coordinated mechanism directed zakat into maternal and newborn health. In OIC countries, maternal mortality is more than 50% higher than the global average (299 vs. 197 deaths per 100,000 live births).
To address this gap, the author created For Mama, now Every Pregnancy, described as the first zakat-approved Muslim collaborative dedicated to maternal and newborn health; it raised $13 million in its first campaign. The piece argues that building financial infrastructure to harness faith-based capital could complement and partially replace collapsing traditional aid flows.