US President Donald Trump’s freeze on foreign aid is likely to create a vacuum in Africa that China can exploit, but diplomatic analysts say it may not be an easy win for Beijing.
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The United States has provided billions of dollars in foreign aid to life-saving programmes in Africa for decades – and in the process bought itself strong influence. But that was before Trump’s decision to overhaul the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and suspend foreign aid.
Across Africa, thousands of workers in the US-funded healthcare programmes are now being placed on unpaid leave.
In Kenya, more than 30,000 healthcare workers, including doctors and nurses that work under US President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) – a programme credited with saving more than 25 million lives – are facing job losses.
Pepfar aims to reduce the spread of HIV and Aids in more than 50 countries by providing millions of dollars for prevention, treatment and research.
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Charlie Robertson, an emerging markets economist and author of The Time-Travelling Economist, said Trump’s suspension of foreign aid was a “huge gift to China”.