World Tour: A pause in foreign aid

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: a World Tour special report.

Days after President Donald Trump assumed office, the State Department froze U-S funding for nearly all foreign aid programs.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: The 90-day pause has halted several ongoing projects and left some global aid groups uncertain of the way forward.

Here’s WORLD’s Africa Reporter Onize Oduah with the story.

ONIZE ODUAH: Late in December, Adeboro Odunlami started researching for her upcoming gig as a research consultant.

The project involved studying how human rights are respected online across dozens of countries and then pushing for policy changes to address the issues. Odunlami’s part of the project focused on Nigeria.

ADEBORO ODUNLAMI: Even though I hadn't signed a contract, I already started gathering my data. Right? Gathering, doing my research, like underground base research. If I started following the news more closely to gather data on what I will impute in the research.

But shortly after she formally began in January, Odunlami received a stop-work notice last week.

ODUNLAMI: I think my element of shock might have come from not knowing that this organization that I was working with, um, was actually you maybe like had been U.S. funded.

The U.S. is the world’s single-largest provider of foreign aid and development assistance. The U.S. disbursed $72 billion in foreign support in 2023.

The funding freeze had a nearly immediate impact on ongoing global projects, from Odunlami’s research to a crisis hotline supporting veterans in Ukraine. Seven refugee hospitals in the conflict-hit Burma have also closed down—citing the freeze.

KHATAZA GONDWE: There's a very real chance that some of the people who are receiving this assistance prior to the 90 days will not be alive by the end of it, because they depend on that to live.

Khataza Gondwe is the team lead for Africa and Middle East at Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

GONDWE: I'm also aware that the money from the US, and particularly USAID, which seems to be in the crosshairs of this, um, has helped to pay for school lunches. Um, it supported girls education and it strengthened um, health systems, as I said earlier. And it also helps small farmers.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio later announced some waivers/exceptions to the funding freeze. It excludes some life-saving aid like an emergency food program in Sudan and eventually extended to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — or PEPFAR. The program is credited with saving some 25 million people globally across 55 countries.

Some aid groups have said the exemptions don’t extend to funding for clean water, sanitation, and healthcare. Last week, an early warning system for predicting famine globally also went offline.

Gondwe said a crucial part of the U.S. funds include its global soft power influence.

GONDWE: When programs for not just HIV, etc., but also human rights and religious freedom and democracy are imperiled, this actually undermines, um, the US's security itself and even the, you know, as sort of bad actors continue to be bad actors, and continue possibly to repress even more than they did before. And also, the bad actors are gaining ground in countries where they would not have ordinarily had an influence, because they're stepping in to fill a void that the US would be leaving.

President Donald Trump said the suspension will allow his administration time to review all the humanitarian, education, development, and security programs that the U.S. funds.

The current administration has also accused the U.S. Agency for International Development—or USAID—of funding so-called “woke programs” globally. The waivers also don’t extend to programs that cover abortion, family planning, or diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The future of US-AID is still uncertain beyond the 90-day pause. The agency’s website went offline over the weekend. Employees also received orders to stay out of the Washington headquarters on Monday.

Meanwhile, the State Department is also under the spotlight for alleged waste.

U.S. Republican Representative Brian Mast chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee which provides oversight of the State Department.

He says less than 30 cents of every dollar earmarked for aid through the State Department actually goes toward aid, like food and medicine. He appeared this weekend on CBS’s Face the Nation.

BRIAN MAST: Let's list them off. Half a million dollars to expand atheism in Nepal, $50,000 to do, let's see, a transgender opera in Colombia. $47,000 to do an LGBTQ trans comic book in Peru. $20,000 a pop to do drag shows in Ecuador.

Back in Nigeria, State Minister for Health Dr. Isiaq Salako said the paused aid serves as a wake-up call for the country to restrategize. He said authorities plan to increase domestic funding for the country’s health sector.

Odunlami agrees.

ODUNLAMI: Everybody should sit up. At the end of the day, we have a government that is supposed to take care of the HIV patients and all the other things that UK aid, USA, and Canada aid are doing. I also think that the global South should see … countries in the global South, especially in Africa, should see and begin to prioritize their own people as well.

It’s still uncertain whether many of the programs might return after the 90 days. In the meantime, Odunlami sees this season as providing a challenge for Christians in Nigeria.

ODUNLAMI: If you consider yourself a good person in the land, take this foreign policy change as an opportunity, not as something to always just like, complain about and lament over. But it's an opportunity for you to step in, right? A gap has been created, and you can step in at like the most local level.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Onize Oduah in Abuja, Nigeria.

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