The News
The Trump administration plans to provide $93 million in new food aid to 13 countries, including 12 African nations, a State Department spokesperson confirmed to Semafor.
The aid will be focused on treating nearly 1 million children suffering from malnutrition in Haiti, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, Madagascar, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, and Chad, according to State.
It follows the Trump administration’s hollowing-out of the US Agency for International Development, which had played a key role in disbursing assistance across Africa. In 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa received around 40% of the USAID budget — second to only Ukraine.
The cuts to USAID, which managed upwards of $35 billion in spending during fiscal 2024, have sparked widespread concern about negative impacts on food security and overall development in Africa.
Analysts have found that countries like the DR Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Sudan received over one-fifth of their total development assistance from the now-defunct US agency, Semafor reported back in February.
The $93 million in aid will be used by UNICEF to transport and distribute ready-to-use therapeutic food, which is designed for children suffering from severe malnutrition.
The food packages are from US producers, and the entirety of the US government’s “prepositioned stock” will be distributed through this initiative, according to the State Department spokesperson.
The aid will also be used to produce more ready-to-use therapeutic food; the program is slated to run until June.
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President Donald Trump told African nations in July that he hoped to shift his foreign assistance approach “from aid to trade.” It’s part of the administration’s broader shift on foreign policy: as it shuttered USAID earlier this year, officials decried the agency’s “charity-based foreign aid model,” The Associated Press noted.
Sub-Saharan Africa received roughly $12.7 billion in US aid in 2024, The New York Times reported. In the DR Congo alone that year, the US allocated $910 million through a USAID-run humanitarian program.
Notable
- There’s skepticism that the Trump administration’s prior freezing of foreign assistance will result in a meaningful change to China’s approach in Africa, Semafor reported in March.