The Trump Administration Is Ending Aid That It Says Saves Lives

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/02/trump-state-department-ending-aid-seven-african-countries/686106/

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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.

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