Almost immediately after taking office, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order abruptly suspending funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provided African countries with more than $11 billion total in 2023, primarily for humanitarian assistance and health programs. The impact will be nothing short of devastating.
In Ethiopia, where an estimated 16 million people depend on food aid, the United States has been a dominant humanitarian donor. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, a country in the midst of devastating conflict, depends on the United States for about 70 percent of its aid. In Sudan, where a brutal war has led to catastrophic destruction of the country’s hospitals, the United States accounted for 45 percent of global relief funds in 2024, and in South Sudan, USAID funding alone made up about 15 percent of the country’s GDP.
Trump has claimed—without evidence—that USAID was being run by “radical lunatics.” Elon Musk posted on X that “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die,” although he has yet to produce any evidence of malfeasance, let alone criminality.
It is difficult to reconcile these claims with the critical work performed by USAID, which led the international effort to bring the Ebola epidemic under control in West Africa a decade ago and has saved millions of lives in Africa through HIV prevention and treatment.
The fallout from Trump’s Executive Order has been rapid and widespread, with the issuance of stop-work orders for thousands of health care workers, shortages of HIV medication, and the closure of dedicated HIV clinics. There are also concerns that efforts to control mpox (previously called monkeypox), cholera, and the Marburg virus are now in jeopardy.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that disease in Africa could spiral out of control, leading to an estimated two-to-four million deaths annually and a dramatic increase in poverty, unless funding shortfalls are addressed urgently.
Food security is also at risk following the funding halt at USAID. In Sudan, for instance, critical food distribution operations have been severely disrupted, exposing millions to the risk of starvation.
Another Trump Executive Order, withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), threatens to exacerbate Africa’s health crises given the major role WHO plays on the continent. The United States had been the largest financial contributor to WHO.
Subsequent to Trump’s executive order on USAID, waivers have been issued by the State Department allowing the temporary resumption of “life-saving humanitarian assistance.” But in many cases it’s too late to prevent human suffering with health clinics closed, employees fired and general confusion regarding the scope of the waiver.
USAID had also engaged in work to promote democracy, social justice, and economic growth, as well as to support victims of sexual abuse and improve agricultural productivity—functions that will no longer exist. Gone too will be the soft power that came with USAID, which has been an important avenue for the development of diplomatic relationships across Africa at a time when China and Russia are expanding their presence on the continent. And by helping to reduce poverty, USAID played a key role in combating the spread of extremists and the risk of terrorism.
USAID accounted for less than 1 percent of the United States’ federal budget. To make this cut, the Trump Administration appears willing to risk massive human suffering in Africa and dispose of an important source of soft power for the United States.
There will be additional costs to the United States as well. Eliminating USAID threatens to wipe out an estimated 52,000 American jobs, and American farmers would lose significant contacts for the sale of agricultural products. U.S.-funded food aid comprised of American commodities has amounted to around $2 billion in recent years.
The impacts of the Trump Administration’s policies are reverberating throughout the continent.
In Kenya, protests have once again broken out in recent weeks over the abductions of Kenyans involved in the anti-corruption movement against the government of President William Ruto.
As of the end of January, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights had recorded sixty-three cases of extrajudicial killings and eighty-nine enforced disappearances, with twenty-nine people still missing.
The United States’ response to the reported abuse of human rights in Kenya has been muted at best. From the Trump Administration, there has been only silence, as the number of abductions grows and the bodies of murdered activists are discovered. There are compelling reasons to believe that this silence has become the official U.S. policy. Noosim Naimasiah, senior researcher at the Rift Valley Institute, an independent research organization working in eastern and central Africa, argues that the United States’ approach to Kenya is blatantly self-serving.
“Given increasing anxieties over competition with Russia and China for influence in Africa, the United States has clearly turned a blind eye to atrocities in Kenya to safeguard its gateway into East Africa,” Naimasiah says in an interview. She emphasizes the important role Kenya plays as a strategic partner to the United States in the fight against terrorism in Somalia.
Naimasiah worries that closing USAID may contribute to further civil unrest. “Unemployment was a major catalyst for Kenya’s protests last year,” she notes, “and the suspension of USAID funding will seriously exacerbate those issues.”
Meanwhile, in South Africa, the Trump Administration claims a new law regarding land expropriation is a human rights violation because it enables the government to take land from white South Africans without compensation and therefore discriminates by race. In response to this supposed violation, Trump issued an Executive Order that promotes the resettlement of white South Africans in the United States and terminates all U.S. aid and assistance to South Africa.
The South African government, in response, challenged the premise of Trump’s Executive Order, citing that it “lacks factual accuracy.” The new law, while allowing for expropriation, requires the government to first attempt to acquire the property on reasonable terms. Organizations representing the farming industry have labelled claims of race-based land seizure as false; groups representing Afrikaners have rejected Trump’s offer of resettlement.
The uncontested rationale for Trump’s actions is the desire to hold South Africa to account for the case it has brought in the International Court of Justice alleging that Israel, a critical U.S. ally in the Middle East, has committed genocide in Gaza.
Trump’s Executive Order also aligns with Elon Musk’s accusations that South Africa discriminates against whites. Musk, now a central figure in the Trump Administration, has objected to Black ownership requirements in South Africa that are frustrating efforts to receive a license for Starlink, his satellite internet business.
One of the most concerning recent developments in Africa is the deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where longstanding tensions between the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 and the DRC military and its allies escalated dramatically in January, resulting in an estimated 7,000 deaths and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
M23 now controls Goma, the largest city in eastern DRC with a population of two million, and is advancing further into DRC territory. A rebel leader has threatened to take the DRC’s capital city, Kinshasa.
At the heart of the conflict are vast reserves of minerals in the DRC, which rebel groups have been smuggling into Rwanda for sale on the international market. There have been reports of extreme human rights violations, prompting United Nations officials to warn that the conflict could expand to encompass more countries in the region.
The DRC’s position is that Western powers should be doing more to resolve the conflict by taking stronger action against Rwanda. In recent weeks, violent protests erupted outside multiple U.S. embassy buildings in Kinshasa and U.S. citizens have been advised to leave the country.
The new U.S. administration has done little to address the growing crisis. Trump has acknowledged that it is “a very serious problem.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called for “an immediate ceasefire” and for “all parties to respect sovereign territorial integrity.” The U.S. Department of Treasury has also imposed relatively limited sanctions very recently, targeting a Rwandan government minister and a spokesperson for M23. The DRC are still calling for a more robust response.
The unwillingness of the current Trump Administration to take stronger action against Rwanda most likely reflects the significant contributions Rwanda makes to U.S.-aligned security efforts in Africa. In Mozambique, Rwanda has committed thousands of soldiers to the fight against Islamic State insurgents. Concerns regarding ISIS in Mozambique remain significant and the United States has been focused on promoting peace and stability in the region.
To be fair, the Trump Administration is not alone in showing complacency towards the current high-risk situation in the DRC—no Western government has yet come forward with decisive steps to stem the escalating conflict.
But Trump’s America First agenda has certainly limited the tools America has at its disposal to convince Rwanda to step back. By threatening to terminate USAID, Trump has lost the ability to specifically target Rwanda with the threat of reduced funds—a threat that proved effective against Rwanda back in 2012, when M23 launched its first major attack.
Trump and his America First agenda also bear significant responsibility for the fractures emerging in the international world order, which may embolden the sort of imperialistic moves we are seeing by Rwanda. So far, in Trump’s second term, we have witnessed American threats to the territorial integrity of Denmark, Canada, and Panama, as well as a U.S. response to the war in Ukraine that is widely regarded as very favorable to Russia.
The Trump Administration’s actions in Africa, so early in his second term, demonstrate that the America First agenda is being pursued far more aggressively than expected and with blatant disregard for core American values, including humanitarianism, the promotion of democracy, and the rule of law—foreign policy guided by a moral compass.
This is not to say that prior U.S. administrations were faultless in upholding core American values in Africa. Kasmuel McOure, a leading figure in Kenya’s protests, highlights clear examples of “blatant hypocrisy” in Biden’s foreign policy, not just in Kenya but in sending aid to the repressive regime in Equatorial Guinea and making deals with Niger’s junta, all in the name of maintaining U.S. influence in Africa.
But the Trump Administration has reached new lows, with no bottom in sight.
“At this point, we can’t even call it hypocrisy anymore,” says Naimasiah. “To be hypocritical, Trump would need to at least pretend that he cares.”
In the longer term, there may be a silver lining for Africa. The America First agenda could be the catalyst needed for African countries to wean themselves from foreign aid and strengthen regional cooperation. What is certain, though, is that Trump’s actions so far will cause significant, unnecessary human suffering and erode the United States’ standing in Africa—and we’re barely a month into his term.