Three weeks into Donald Trump’s second presidency of the United States, the global aid sector is in disarray as Washington reviews its foreign aid policy to ensure it aligns with the America First agenda. Funds have been frozen or slashed while the USAID agency is being dismantled.
“We were caught off guard. This is a big, big blow for us. No funds from the United States government means 40 percent of our budget gone,” said Donald Makwakwa, executive director of the Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM).
“It means that a quarter of our staff had to stop work immediately, thousands of people seeking health care had to be sent back.”
Malawi is one of the numerous countries hard hit by Trump's decision to slash foreign aid when he took office in January.
The United States is the world's largest donor, contributing $63 billion (60 billion euros) in 2023. An amount which represents around one percent of its federal budget.
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“President Trump is no longer going to dole out money with no return for the American people,” the State Department outlined.
Trump ordered all foreign assistance to be paused for 90 days while being reviewed to ensure they align with his America First agenda.
“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.”
An immediate stop-work order fell on 24 January for all recipients of US foreign aid. Exceptions include "life saving humanitarian aid", emergency food aid and military funding for Israel and Egypt.
"The order said stop everything you are doing globally right now. No matter the human consequences," former USAID administrator, Samantha Power, told Stephen Colbert on the Late Show in Washington.
"We have stories of kids who were going in for their TB medicine. The first three kids in a long, long line waiting in the hot sun got the TB medicine. Everybody else was told to go home."
USAID vilified
Last Sunday, Trump said that USAID, the US agency for international development, is “run by radical lunatics and we’re getting them out”.
The Trump administration argues that USAID programmes are “illegal, immoral and wasteful”.
South African tech billionaire, Elon Musk, who heads the department of government efficiency (Doge) – created by Trump to streamline the government – described USAID as “a criminal organisation”, “a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America", adding that it is “time for it to die”.
Musk said on 3 February on a live X spaces conversation with US Senator Joni Ernst and Republican politician, Vivek Ramaswamy that USAID has got to go.
“In regard with the USAID, he [Trump] agreed that we should shut it down. I actually checked with him a few times: are you sure?” Musk said on X, adding that the president replied: “Yes!”
Nearly 60 senior executives at USAID were placed on administrative leave effective immediately, on 27 January. They were instructed not to enter USAID premises or access its systems. Hundreds of contractors for agency were fired at the end of January, hundreds more are being furloughed
The administration’s objective is to move what is left of USAID – until recently, an independent agency – into the Department of State so that it is answerable to elected representatives of the public.
On Monday, during a visit to San Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that he is now the acting director of USAID.
“USAID is involved in programs that run counter to what we’re trying to do in our national strategy with that country or with that region. That cannot continue,” Rubio said.
Pete Marocco, the Department of State’s head of foreign assistance, has been placed in charge and will review all the work done by the agency.
Democrats fight back
Meanwhile, in Washington, Democrats from both Senate and Congress were denied entry to the USAID headquarters. They addressed a crowd of employees and public protesting outside the building on Monday.
“Musk and his acolytes at Doge have thrown the agency into chaos through a concerted campaign of harassment and intimidation of its employees. This is a case of the very worst amongst us attacking the very best of us,” said Congressman Don Beyer.
“What Trump and Musk have done is not only wrong, it is illegal. USAID was established by an act of Congress and can only be disbanded by an act of Congress.”
Established by President John Kennedy in 1961, USAID employs 10,000 people with two thirds stationed outside the US.
In 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service, the agency managed over $40 billion (38 billion euros), providing assistance to some 130 countries, much of it spent on health programmes. The top five recipients were Ukraine, Ethiopia, Jordan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.
USAID's website has been pulled down and its X account no longer exists.
"There is now so many inventions about USAID. The people doing the distortion have taken down the website where we list all of our programmes and projects. So, it's not even possible for people to fact-check against this misinformation that is being put out," Power said.
Effects on the ground
“In many countries where we operate, the US is our only support. In Afghanistan, over nine million people will no longer receive health and protection services,” said Klaus Simoni Pedersen, chief of public funding and financing for the UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency.
“We will have to suspend 600 mobile clinics and immediately terminate the contracts of 1,700 female health workers,” he told RFI.
Funding for UNFPA comes from the US State Department and USAID. In 2024, the US provided an estimated $285 million (272 million euros) to UNFPA, which is17 percent of its total budget.
“We do not have the money to cover the expenses borne by US funds. Very little we can actually do for the women and girls depending on these programmes,” Simoni Pedersen added.
USAID having been reduced to a skeleton agency, it is very challenging for the various organisations to get answers.
“There are few people to talk to, most of them have left or have been sacked,” declared Simoni Pedersen. “So, we don’t clearly know what, for example, the waiver for life saving humanitarian assistance entails. We are, however, sending waiver requests because we consider that our work in preventing maternal deaths is life saving.”
In Malawi, the FPAM family planning had no time to look for alternative solutions because the US decision was so sudden.
“Nobody anticipated the immediate stop-work order or the 90-day foreign aid freeze.,” Makwakwa told RFI.
With no clarity on what the aid suspension entails, he does not know whether the staff currently at home are to be sacked or not, how they are going to be paid while at the same time having to observe the labour laws of Malawi.
Wake-up call for Africa
Kenya’s former president, Uhurru Kenyatta reacted to the American aid freeze while attending the East Africa region global health security summit in Mombasa last week.
“I saw some people the other day crying [because] Trump is not giving us anymore money. Why are you crying? It is not your government, it is not your country! He has no reason to give you anything. You don’t pay taxes in America. This is a wake-up call to say what are we going to do to help ourselves,” Kenyatta said.
He insisted that Trump's stance was an opportunity for African leaders to support their population and use the continent’s resources for the right things instead of the wrong things.
Serah Melaba, chief impact officer at Nairobi-based NGO, Tiko, said that African governments must and can step in to fill in the gap left by US aid withdrawal.
“They owe it to their citizens,” she told RFI. “This crisis gives us an opportunity to work with our governments and rethink co-financing. We need to think outside the box.
“Either we put the money together and re-think how we can finance domestically or risk millions of girls becoming pregnant before the age of 18, continuous rise in HIV infection and rampant sexual violence.”
Tiko is not impacted by Trump’s foreign aid policy as it is does not receive funds from the US government.
Tiko works in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Nigeria in providing sexual and reproductive health services to more than one million marginalised girls.
Europe’s response
“We are happy to note that France has been a champion of our work and we hope that we can continue to rely on its support,” Simoni Pedersen said.
“The United Nations member states attending UNFPA’s executive board meeting, last Friday, came out in full force to express their support.”
However, Europe’s political and economic landscape has changed since Trump’s first mandate in 2017.
Last year, the right-wing government in the Netherlands announced that it will cut development aid by more than two thirds. Germany will cut its humanitarian aid budget. France said it will reduce its global development assistance.
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“We expect the US to enact a legislation to defund us. We don’t know when it will happen exactly, maybe in three months. This is when we think other governments and partners might step up but not before,” Simoni Pedersen added.
The European Union, another major supplier of foreign aid, is closely watching what is unfolding in the aid sector.
“Our position remains firm. We will not retreat from our humanitarian commitments as we believe that our aid saves lives and alleviates suffering around the world,” a European Commission spokesperson told RFI.
“In the face of increasingly severe and widespread crises, we have allocated this year a budget of 1,9 billion euros for humanitarian aid.”
The decisions of the Trump administration during its opening days should come as no surprise since they are detailed in Project 2025, a conservative blueprint – its latest version released in 2023 – detailing the agenda of the next Republican president.
Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership calls, for example, for “an immediate freeze on all … foreign assistance … pending a review to ensure that such efforts comport with the new administration’s policies".
