<
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/02/trump-state-department-ending-aid-seven-african-countries/686106/>
"A year after the Trump administration began the dismantlement of USAID, it is
initiating a new round of significant cuts to foreign assistance. This time,
programs that survived the initial purge precisely because they were judged to
be lifesaving are slated for cancellation.
According to an internal State Department email obtained by
The Atlantic, the
administration will soon end all of the humanitarian funding it is currently
providing as part of a “responsible exit” from seven African nations, and
redirect funding in nine others. Aid programs in all of these countries had
previously been up for renewal from now through the end of September but will
instead be allowed to expire. Each of them is classified as lifesaving
according to the Trump administration’s standards.
The administration had already canceled the entire aid packages of two nations,
Afghanistan and Yemen, where the State Department said terrorists were
diverting resources. The new email, sent on February 12 to officials in the
State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, makes no such claims about the
seven countries now losing all U.S. humanitarian aid: Burkina Faso, Cameroon,
Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Instead, according to the email,
these projects are being canceled because “there is no strong nexus between the
humanitarian response and U.S. national interests.” (The nine countries
eligible for redirected funding are Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Uganda, South
Sudan, and Sudan.)
A spokesperson for the State Department told me in an email that “as USAID
winds down, the State Department is responsibly moving programming onto new
mechanisms” with “longer periods of performance and updated award and oversight
terms.” The State Department has recently begun signing health-financing
agreements with some African governments—including Cameroon and Malawi, as well
as five of the nine countries eligible for redirected funding—that will go into
effect later this year. These agreements focus on strengthening health systems
and containing infectious diseases but don’t seem to address the hunger or
displacement crises that aid groups are fighting in these countries. The
department’s internal email notes that aid projects in the nine eligible
countries will be able to receive U.S. assistance via a United Nations program.
But aid groups in at least one of those countries have already lost their U.S.
funding, and much remains unknown about if and when additional support might
come. The State Department spokesperson, who did not provide their name,
offered no further specifics when asked.
As I wrote earlier this month, under Donald Trump, the U.S. has adopted an
“America First” approach to foreign aid, in which many humanitarian projects
are selected based not on need but on what the administration might receive in
return. This latest aid purge appears to be following that pattern. Across the
seven countries barred from U.S. aid, at least 6.2 million people are facing
“extreme or catastrophic conditions,” according to the UN. But they have little
to offer the U.S. in return for help. In other cases, the State Department has
restored or offered aid in exchange for desirable mineral rights, or as payment
for agreeing to accept U.S. deportees. Six of the seven countries mine
comparatively few minerals that the Trump administration needs to fuel the AI
boom. And only one, Cameroon, appears to have accepted a handful of deportees."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
