The United States Government intends to provide $93 million in food aid to South Sudan, 11 other African countries, and Haiti, the State Department said on Thursday.
The aid aims at treating nearly 1 million children struggling with malnutrition in South Sudan, Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Madagascar, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Kenya, Chad, and Haiti.
The new development follows the Trump administration’s cutting of all USAID overseas roles in a dramatic restructuring. The dramatic reduction of funding to USAID, which had a budget of over $35 billion in 2024, raised concerns about the negative impacts on food security and development in Africa.
Several African countries received a big part of their development assistance from the now-defunct USAID.
The $93 million in aid will be used by UNICEF to transport and distribute ready-to-use therapeutic food, which is designed for children suffering from severe malnutrition.
The food packages are from US producers, and the entirety of the US government’s “prepositioned stock” will be distributed through this initiative, according to the State Department. The aid will also be used to produce more ready-to-use therapeutic food; the program is slated to run until June.
In July, President Donald Trump told African nations that he plans to shift his foreign assistance approach “from aid to trade.” It is part of the administration’s broader shift in foreign policy: as it shuttered USAID earlier this year, officials decried the agency’s “charity-based foreign aid model,” The Associated Press noted.
Sub-Saharan Africa received roughly $12.7 billion in US aid in 2024, The New York Times reported. In the DR Congo alone that year, the US allocated $910 million through a USAID-run humanitarian program.