Just two weeks ago, there were tens of thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers in Africa. Soon, there will be only 12, the New York Times reported Saturday.
Worldwide, the agency’s workforce has been whittled down to just 300.
The drastic action, which took just days to unfurl, came after President Donald Trump issued an executive order to reevaluate foreign aid. It threatens a catastrophic international crisis, experts told the Times.
“We are in disbelief,” Medhanye Alem, who works for the Center for Victims of Torture in Ethiopia, said.
Sub-Saharan Africa received more than $8 billion a year in U.S. foreign aid, money that fed starving children, provided lifesaving care and humanitarian assistance.
But Trump wants that to end.
“CLOSE IT DOWN!” he posted on social media Friday, along with claims of fraud and waste in the agency. Its headquarters in D.C. has already been shuttered — though that is being challenged in court.
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“The speed and shock of the administration’s actions have already led to confusion, fear and even paranoia at USAID offices across Africa,” the Times reported.
And governments are scrambling to figure out how to step into the gaping hole that’s been left.
“The consequences are also reverberating across an aid sector that, for better or worse, has been a pillar of Western engagement with Africa for over six decades. With the collapse of USAID, that entire model is badly shaken,” the Times reported.
“This is dramatic and consequential, and it’s hard to imagine rowing it back,” Murithi Mutiga, a program director at the International Crisis Group, told the Times.
“Once, the primacy of the West was assumed” in Africa, he said. “No more.”
As well as staff, the future of huge refugee camps, health care centers and programs — which relied heavily on American money — faces destruction.
In Kenya, a stockpile of drugs for HIV will last a year, the report said. But there are no health workers to administer them.
And in some African nations, Trump’s move could result in anarchy, experts said.
“We could see governance effectively cease in a few countries, unless others step up to replace the hole left by the U.S.,” said Charlie Robertson, an economist who specializes in Africa.