For decades, sub-Saharan Africa has been a singular focus of American foreign aid. The continent received more than $8 billion a year. It was used to feed hungry children, provide life-saving medicines, and provide humanitarian assistance during the war.
In a few weeks, President Trump and South Africa-born billionaire Elon Musk have vowed to burn much of his work on the ground and completely block US international aid agencies.
“Close!” Trump wrote on social media Friday, accusing him of unspecified corruption and fraud.
A federal judge on Friday has stopped several elements of Trump's attempt to shut down agency for now. But the speed and shock of the administration's actions have led to confusion, fear and even delusions in USAID offices across Africa, already the top recipients of agency fundraising. Workers were either fired or attacked in large numbers.
When we see the true scale of fallout, African governments are wondering how to fill the gaps left in the vital services that have been funded by the US until recent weeks. Salvation groups and UN agencies are national groups feeding hungry or home refugees, and have seen budget cuts by more than half.
The largest prices are paid by ordinary Africans, many of which rely on American aid for their survival. However, the results have echoed across the aid sector, for more than 60 years, which has been a pillar of Western engagement with Africa, for better or worse. The collapse of USAID has caused the entire model to be shaken badly.
“This is dramatic and consequential, and it's hard to imagine rowing it,” said Murithi Mutiga, director of Africa programmes for International Crisis Group. Mutiga described the collapse of the institution as “part of the elucidation of the post-Cold War order.”
“Western advantage was once envisioned,” he said. “No more.”
Experts say a sudden revocation of agents will cost many lives, especially in healthcare, where USAID has put a lot of its resources into, creating a big gap in public services.
In Kenya alone, at least 40,000 healthcare workers will lose their jobs, USAID officials say. On Friday, several UN agencies that rely on American funds began to strike some of their staff. The US also provides most funding to two large refugee camps in northern Kenya, which house 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.
According to an official notice obtained by The New York Times, Ethiopia's Ministry of Health has fired 5,000 health professionals hired under US funds.
“We're incredible,” said Medanie Alem, a torture victims centre that deals with survivors of conflict-related trauma at nine centres in northern Ethiopia.
Of the over 10,000 USAID employees worldwide, there are fewer than 300 under the changes that were told to staff on Thursday night. Only 12 people remain in Africa.
The most pressing challenge for many governments is not to replace American staff and money, but to save the healthcare system built in America, which is rapidly collapsed on the ground, according to Kenya, Georgetown University in Washington. said Ken O. Opalo, a political scientist.
For example, Kenya has enough medications to treat HIV patients for more than a year, Opalo said. “But the nurses and doctors who treat them have been left and the clinics are closed.”
Also, broader economic shocks are possible in some of the world's most vulnerable countries.
American aid accounts for 15% of South Sudan's economic output, with 6% in Somalia and 4% in the Central African Republic, said Charlie Robertson, an economist specializing in Africa. “A few countries could effectively halt governance unless other countries step up to replace the holes left by the US,” he said.
Whether USAID is truly dead or not may still be decided by Congress and US courts. However, the Trump administration appears to be determined to move faster than the challenger.
A huge number of African aid machines have been halted as Musk and his team led the agency's business in Washington, closing its headquarters and looting or halting 94% of its staff.
In major hubs in Kenya in South Africa, South Africa and Senegal, American aid officials were shocked to be labelled “criminals” by Musk and then ordered back to the US. Being anonymous for fear of retaliation.
On Friday, the Trump administration packed all USAID staff 30 days of bags and went home, causing confusion among families, and now faced the prospect of pulling their children out of school in a short period of time. If the federal court currently reviewing the order does not overturn it, few people have a job to return to.
Several USAID officials have said that Google's artificial intelligence system Gemini has recently been activated on the internal communications system, and that internal video calls made on the Google platform are suddenly automatically recorded. I paid attention to this.
Officials said Musk's team could use AI to monitor conversations and pull out snippets of conversations that have been weaponized to drive out ferret opponents and trust the agency. He said he was worried.
My agency colleagues became Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to share information informally this week. People are driven by fear, one of them said.
In private, even senior USAID officials agree that the agency needs an overhaul. In interviews, some recognized the need to streamline their bureaucracy, and even questioned aid systems that rely heavily on American contractors, fostering a detrimental culture of dependence among African governments. Ta.
The announcement by Secretary of State and USAID representative Marco Rubio was first welcomed by employees to exempt emergency food and life-saving assistance from the administration's cuts. However, officials said it turned out to be primarily mi-killer. Despite the promise of exemption, many feel it is impossible to get it.
At its worst, many said Musk and the White House were broadside depicting agents as fraudulent. Such attacks were false and deeply hurtful to Americans who tried to alleviate the suffering of humans around the world, several people said.
In Nairobi, where USAID has around 250 Kenyans and 50 American staff, several Kenyans spoke at the nervous city hall this week.
They are worried that other Kenyans will believe they too have benefited from the fraud in the story of widespread corruption within the agency, officials at the meeting said. .
Like the Americans who attended the City Hall, Kenyans were worried that they were about to be fired. However, there was one major difference between the two groups. Officials pointed out. Kenyans were worried about their livelihoods, while Americans were worried about their country.
