For decades, sub-Saharan Africa was a singular focus of American foreign aid. The continent received over $ 8 billion a year, money that was used to feed hungry children, provide rescue drugs and provide humanitarian assistance in war.
In a few weeks, President Trump and the South African billionaire Elon Musk have burned most of that work on the ground, swearing to completely gut the US agency for international development completely.
“Close it!” On Friday he wrote Trump on social media, accusing the corruption and fraud agency not specified.
On Friday, a federal judge has stopped, for now, some elements of Mr. Trump’s attempt to close the agency. But the speed and shock of the actions of the Administration have already led to the confusion, fear and even paranoia in the USAID offices throughout Africa, a recipient of the funding of the agencies. The workers were fired or theft en masse.
As the real scale of relapses is displayed, African governments wonder how to fill the holes left in vital services, such as health care and education, which until the last few weeks have been financed by the United States. The groups of aid and the United Nations organs that feed the hungry or house refugees have seen their budgets cut in half or worse.
By far the largest price is paid by ordinary Africans, millions of which rely on American aid for their survival. But the consequences are also reverbing in a sector of aid which, for better or for worse, was a pillar of western commitment with Africa for over six decades. With the collapse of Usaid, the entire model is seriously shaken.
“This is dramatic and consequential, and it is difficult to imagine to reintegrate,” said Murithi Mutiga, director of the Africa program at the International Crisis Group. Mr. Mutiga described the collapse of the agency as “part of the decay of the order of the Cold Post War”.
“Once, the primacy of the West was hired” in Africa, he said. “No more.”
Experts say that the abrupt ruin of the agency will cost many lives by creating huge gaps in public services, in particular in health care, where Usaid has paid most of its resources.
Only in Kenya, at least 40,000 health workers will lose their jobs, USAID officials say. On Friday, several United Nations agencies that depend on American funding have started to pass the part of their staff. The United States also provide most of the funding for two large refugee camps in northern Kenya which host 700,000 people from at least 19 countries.
The Ministry of Health of Ethiopia fired 5,000 health workers who had been recruited under American funding, according to an official notification obtained by the New York Times.
“We are incredulous,” said Medhanye Alem of the Center for Vivals of Torture, which deals with the trauma survivors linked to the conflict in nine centers in northern Ethiopia, all closed now.
Over 10,000 Usaid employees worldwide barely 300 will remain under changes transmitted to the staff on Thursday evening. Only 12 will remain in Africa.
The most urgent challenge for many governments is not to replace staff members or American money, but to save the health systems built in America who are quickly crumbling on the ground, said Ken O. Opalo, a Kenyan politician at the Georgetown University of Washington.
Kenya, for example, has enough drugs to treat people with HIV for over a year, said Opalo. “But the nurses and doctors to treat them are left to go and the clinics are closing.”
The largest economic shocks are probably also in some of the most fragile countries in the world.
American Aid represents 15 percent of economic production in South Sudan, 6 % in Somalia and 4 % in the Republic of Central Africa, said Charlie Robertson, an economist specialized in Africa. “We could see governance effectively cease in some countries, unless others take a step forward to replace the hole left by the United States,” he said.
The fact that Usaid is truly dead can still be determined by the US congress and courts, where supporters have presented a series of legal challenges. But the Trump administration seems determined to move faster than its challengers.
Since Mr. Musk and his team commanded the agency’s operations in Washington, closing the headquarters and firing or suspending 94 percent of his staff, his vast machinery for aid in Africa have shivered.
In the main hubs in Kenya, South Africa and Senegal, the officials of American aid were shocked in finding themselves “criminal” by Mr. Musk, so they ordered to return to the United States, according to eight employees or Usaid contractors who all spoke on the condition of anonymous for fear of retaliation.
On Friday, the Trump administration gave all the members of the USAID staff 30 days to pack and return home, causing turmoil among the families who now face the prospect of bringing children out of the school with short notice. If the federal court that is now reviewing this directive does not overturn it, few will have a job to return to.
Several Usaid officials noticed that the artificial intelligence system of Google, Gemini, had recently been activated on their internal communication systems and that the internal video calls conducted on the Google platform were suddenly set to record automatically.
A Google spokesman said that Gemini was launched on January 15 for all business users, who can give up the function.
Other Usaid officials said they were worried that Mr. Musk’s team could use the IA to monitor their conversations to reduce dissidents or to extract fragments of conversations that could be boldly to discredit the agency.
The colleagues of the agency turned to Signal, a encrypted messaging app, this week to share information in an unofficial way. People are guided by fear, said one of them.
In private, Usaid officials also agree that the agency needs a review. In interviews, many have recognized the need to simplify its bureaucracy and have even questioned a help system that is so strongly based on American contractors and promotes a harmful culture of dependence between African governments.
The announcements of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and the head of the USAID acting, that emergency and life -saving aid would have been exempt from the administration cuts were initially welcomed by employees. But, the officials said, a mirage turned out to be largely. Despite the promise of exemptions, many have found impossible to get one.
Worse still, many said, were the widths delivered by Mr. Musk and the White House who played the agency as a rogue criminal agency managed by shopping officials who pursue their personal agendas. These attacks were false and deeply painful for Americans who tried to relieve human suffering all over the world, said several people.
In Nairobi, where Usaid has about 250 members of the Kenyan staff and 50 Americans, several Kenioti spoke in a town tense this week.
They feared that talking to the White House of the widespread corruption inside the agency could induce the other Kenians to believe that they too had benefited from the fraud, said an official who participated in the meeting.
Like the Americans present at the Town Hall, the Keniotes took care to be fired. But there was a big difference between the two groups, observed the official: while the Kenyes were anxious about their means of subsistence, the Americans were worried about their country.