For decades, all Sahara Africa was the only center of US foreign aid. The continent received more than 8 billion in a year, the amount used to feed hungry children, supply life -saving drugs and provide humanitarian aid at the time of war.
Within a few weeks, President Trump and South Africa’s billionaire Elon Musk have burned most of the work on the ground, and has pledged to fully gut the US agency for international aid. –
“Stop it!” Mr Trump on Friday wrote on social media accusing the agency of illegal corruption and fraud.
On Friday, a federal judge stopped some of the elements trying to close Mr Trump’s agency. But before the pace and trauma of the administration’s actions, the USAID’s offices in Africa have led to confusion, fear and even paralysis, which is a top recipient of agencies financing. The laborers were being fired or Mrs.
Since the actual measure of conclusions is visible, African governments are wondering how to fill the sects found in important services like health care and education, which provides financial support through the United States for recent weeks. Didn’t Rescue groups and UN agencies who eat food or home refugees have seen their budget half or even worse.
So far, the biggest price is being paid by ordinary Africans, of which millions rely on US aid for their survival. But the results are also stuck in a relief sector, which has been a pillar of Western engagement with Africa for more than six decades, for better or worse. With the end of USAID, the whole model is badly shaken.
“This is dramatic and fruitful, and it is difficult to imagine its restoration,” said Africa’s program director Murthy Matiga in the international crisis group. Mr Matiga described the end of the agency as a “part of the aftermath of the Cold War”.
“Once, the priority of the West was assumed in Africa,” he said. “And no.”
Experts say the sudden failure of the agency will spend a lot of lives in public services, especially in health care, where USAID has contributed most of its resources.
USAID officials say only at least 40,000 health care workers in Kenya will lose their jobs. On Friday, several UN agencies that rely on US funds began to slip parts. The United States also provides most of the funds for two major refugee camps in the northern Kenya, with 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.
According to an official notification obtained by the New York Times, the Ethiopian Ministry of Health has fired 5,000 health care professionals who were recruited under the US Fund.
“We are in disbelief,”, “we are in disbelief,”, who treats people who are traumatic in Northern Ethiopia’s nine centers in Northern Ethiopia centers. Does it, now it is closed.
Of the more than 10,000 USAID employees around the world on Thursday night, will barely be under the changes made to 300 staff. Only 12 will remain In Africa
Ken Opalo, a political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington, said the most important challenge for many governments is not to change US staff members or money, but to save the US -built health system Who are fast falling to the ground.
Mr Opalo said that Kenya has enough medicines to treat HIV people for more than a year. “But the nurses and doctors are being allowed to treat, and the clinics are closing.”
There are also wider economic shocks in the world’s most critical countries.
Charlie Robertson, a economist in Africa, said that US aid in South Sudan accounts for 15 % of economic production in South Sudan, 6 % in Somalia and 4 % in the Central African Republic. “We can see that in some countries the governance ends effectively, unless other people go ahead to change America’s hole,” he said.
Whether the USAID has really died, it can still be determined by the Congress and the US courts, where supporters have filed a lawsuit for legal challenges. But the Trump administration is determined to move forward faster than its challengers.
Since Mr Musk and his team have commanded the agency’s operations in Washington, which has closed its headquarters and sacked or suspended 94 % of its staff, its extensive relief machinery in Africa was stopped. Is
In the major centers in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal, US aid officials were surprised by Mr Musk’s label “criminals”, then ordered to return to the United States, eight USAID employees or According to the contractors, everyone who spoke on this condition. Anonymity for fear of retaliation.
On Friday, the Trump administration gave 30 days to all USAID staff members to pack their bags and come home, which caused a riot in the families that have encountered the children. On the short notice they are likely to get out of school. If the Federal Court, which is now reviewing this directive, does not end it, very few people will get jobs to return.
Several USAID officials noted that Google’s artificial intelligence system, Gemini was recently activated on his internal communications system, and internal video calls made on Google Platform suddenly recording suddenly. Get ready
Officials said they feared that Mr Musk’s team could use AI to use their conversation to eliminate voters, or to quote pieces of conversation that could be surrendered to defame the agency. –
The agency’s colleagues have turned the signal, an encrypted messaging app to share unofficial information this week. One of them said that people are driven by fear.
Privately, even senior USAID officials agree that the agency needs rehabilitation. In interviews, many acknowledged the need to smooth their bureaucracy, and even questioned a relief system that relies so much on US contractors and promotes a harmful culture of dependence in African governments –
Announcements by the Secretary of the State and USAID, Marco Rubio, that emergency eating and drinking aid will be exempted from the administration’s deductions, which were launched by the employees. But, officials said, this widely came out. Despite the promise of discounts, many people have found it impossible to get one.
The worst, many people said Broad Sides provided by Mr. Musk And the White House, which presents the agency as a bully, as a criminal agency, follows its personal agendas through Split Fit officials. Many people said such attacks were false and deeply painful to Americans who tried to relieve human suffering worldwide.
In Nairobi, where USAID has about 250 250 Kenya and 50 US staff members, spoke in several Town Hall in Kenya this week.
An official attending the meeting said that Kenya, a conversation at the White House, widespread corruption within the agency, could also convince other Kenya that they too had taken advantage of fraud.
Like the Americans in the Town Hall, Kenya fears that they will be fired. But there was a big difference between the two groups, the official noted: While Kenya was anxious for his livelihood, the Americans were upset with their country.
