For decades, Subsahar Africa has been a unique focus of the American side of help. The continent has received more than $ 8 billion a year, money used to eat starved children, supplying medicines for rescue and providing war humanitarian aid.
In several short weeks, President Trump and billionaire born in South Africa Elon Musk burned much of this job on the basis, promising to fully expel the US Agency for International Aid.
“Close it!” Mr. Trump wrote on social networks on Friday, accusing the agency of indefinite corruption and fraud.
Federal judge on Friday stoppedFor now, some elements of trying to Mr Trump close the agency. However, the speed and shock of the administration’s actions have already led to a confusion, fear, and even paranoia in the USAIDs offices across Africa, a top recipient of the agency financing. Workers were fired or massively.
As the true ladder appears, the African governments are wondering how to fill the holes that have remained in vital services, such as health care and education, which have been funded by the United States until recent weeks. Groups for the help and bodies of the United Nations that feed starved or refugee houses recorded their budgets half or worse.
The far maximum price is paid by ordinary Africans, of whom millions rely on American assistance for their survival. But the consequences also echo in the assistance sector, which, for the better or worse, was a pillar of Western engagement with Africa for more than six decades. With a USAID collapse, the whole model is badly earthquake.
“This is dramatic and consequently, and it is hard to imagine that it rowing it,” said Mutiga Mutiga, director of the Africa program in the international crisis group. Mr. Mutiga described the collapse of the agency as “part of the breakdown of the order after the Cold War.”
“Once the primacy of the West was taken” in Africa, he said. “No longer.”
Experts say that the sudden cancellation of the agency will cost many lives by creating huge shortcomings in public services, especially in healthcare, where USAID has inserted most of its resources.
In Kenya alone, at least 40,000 healthcare professionals will lose their jobs, USAID officials say. On Friday, several UN agencies depending on US financing have begun to share some of their staff. The United States also provides most of the funds for two large refugee camps in northern Kenya, which houses 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.
The Ministry of Health in Ethiopia has dismissed 5,000 healthcare professionals who have been employed under US funding, according to an official notification received by the New York Times.
“We are in disbelief,” said Medhanye Alem of the Torture Center, who survived from trauma associated with conflict at nine centers in northern Ethiopia, and everything is now closed.
Out of over 10,000 USAID employees around the world, only 300 will remain under the changes that were transferred to the staff on Thursday night. Will only remain 12 In Africa.
The most cost -effective challenge for many governments is not to replace US members or money, but to save health systems built by America, which quickly falls apart on Earth, said Ken O. Opalo, a Kenyan political scientist at Georgetown University in Washington.
Kenya, for example, has enough drugs to treat people with HIV for more than a year, said Mr. Opalo. “But nurses and doctors for treatment are released and clinics close.”
The wider economic shocks are also probably in some of the worst countries in the world.
US assistance consists of 15 percent of economic production in South Sudan, 6 percent in Somalia and 4 percent in the Central African Republic, said Charlie Robertson, an economist who specializes in Africa. “We could see how management effectively stopped in several countries, unless others became replaced by the hole they left now,” he said.
Whether USAID is really dead, I can still determine the Congress and US courts, where supporters have filed a number of legal challenges. But Trump’s administration seems to be determined to move faster than its challengers.
While Mr. Musk and his team commanded Washington agencies, closing the headquarters and discharging or suspending 94 percent of their staff, huge help in Africa stopped.
In the main centers in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal, US help officers were shocked when Mr. Musk found “criminals” and then ordered them to return to the United States, according to eight employees or contractors Everyone talked about this state of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
On Friday, Trump’s administration administration has given all employees of the USAID for 30 days to pack their bags and return home, causing discomfort among the families who are now facing the appearance of bringing children from school in the short term. If the federal judgment that now re -examines this directive does not cancel, it will have to return a little.
Several USAID officials noted that Google’s artificial intelligence system, twins, was recently activated on their internal communication systems and that the internal video calls were carried out on the Google Platform at once set up for automatic recording.
Officials said they were worried that the Mr. Musk team could use AI to monitor their conversations to throw out disagreement or for an excerpt of clips of a conversation that could be armed for the discretion of the agency.
Colleagues at the agency turned into a signal, an encrypted message exchange application, this week to unofficially share information. People are driven by fear, one of them said.
Private, even High Officers of USAIDs agree that an agency needs an overhaul. In the interviews, there have been a few recognized the need to simplify his bureaucracy, and even questioned the help system that relies so much on US performers and encourages the harmful culture of addiction among African governments.
The announcement of Marc Rubioa, the Secretary of State and the acting head of the USAID chief, that employees in the ambulance and assistance will be exempted from reducing the administration. But, the officials said, it turned out to be mostly miraga. Despite the promises of renunciation, many thought it was impossible to get one.
Worst of all, many said, they were Damage delivered by Mr. Musk And the White House, which portrayed the agency as a rogue, a criminal agency led by Strongthrift officials, dealing with their personal programs. Such attacks were false and deeply hurt to Americans who sought to alleviate human suffering around the world, several people said.
In Nairobi, where USAID has about 250 Kenyans and 50 American staff members, several Kenyac spoke this week at a tense town hall.
They were worried that a conversation in the White House widespread corruption within the agency could cause other Kenyans to believe that they also benefited from fraud, said an official who attended the meeting.
Like Americans present at the City Hall, the Kenyans worried that they would be discharged. But there was one big difference between the two groups, the official noted: while the Kenyans were worried about life, Americans were worried about their country.
