Donald Trump’s USAID shutdown stops relief for Ethiopia’s displaced: ‘We will just die in silence’
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the country’s foreign aid agency, USAID, has hit aid organisations’ relief operations in Ethiopia’s Tigray, which witnessed a two-year-long civil war between the federal government and the Tigray’s People’s Liberation Front.
An Ethiopian woman scoops up portions of wheat to be allocated to each waiting family after it was distributed by the Relief Society of Tigray in the town of Agula, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. (AP file image)
The East African country has been the biggest beneficiary of US aid in sub-Saharan Africa, receiving $1.8 billion in the 2023 financial year. The funds were spent to provide HIV medications, vaccines, literacy programs and job creation for about one million refugees displaced by the civil war, AP reported.
A majority of these relief programmes have been stopped as the Trump administration sent USAID’s staff on administrative leave for a 90-day review of the agency’s operations amid Elon Musk’s allegations of excessive expenditure by the federal government.
The crackdown by the Trump-Musk duo has led to suspension of food grain deliveries to over 20,000 displaced people living outside Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele. The US embassy in Ethiopia did not respond to requests for comments when contacted by AP.
“We will just die in silence,” said Tsege, one of the 2.4 million people in Tigray.
Emergency food deliveries were exempted by Trump’s executive order, but issues persist with the USAID payment system as it remains non-functional, the report said. This critical issue has affected Ethiopian aid organisations who have secured a waiver to continue providing US grain to the displaced.
A consortium of agencies has stopped distributing US provided grains to over one million Ethiopians as they cannot pay for fuel, trucks and drivers to distribute existing stockpiles. These include 5,000 metric tons of sorghum, enough to feed 300,000 people for a month, which is rotting inside a godown in Mekele.
Teklewoini Assefa, head of the Relief Society of Tigray, said the critical problem was with the payment system, “This is just one warehouse. There are several others across the region. This will create malnutrition, disease. If this situation continues, what follows? Death.”
Aid workers also warned that disrupted operations will worsen levels of child malnutrition which stood at 21% in some regions in 2024. Levels above 15% are classified by the World Health Organization as an emergency.
Counselling and physiotherapy sessions for women raped during the conflict have also been suspended. The US-based Center for Victims of Torture, which was involved in such assistance schemes, furloughed its staff after it received a stop-work order from the Trump administration in February.
“This sudden disruption is having a huge impact on the healing of traumatized people,” said Yohannes Fisseha, a CVT manager.
Yirga Gebregziabher, the Tigray branch manager of an Ethiopian organization called OSSHD, said the image of America as the “protector of rights” has been broken. “If there was a process, maybe the shock would have been less. But there was no consultation, no engagement,” he added.
