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Mail & Guardian
2 days ago
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Mozambican children die after US funding cuts: Who bears responsibility?
Sign outside the offices of an organisation in Mozambique that was defunded by USAid. Photos: Jesse Copelyn After the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) abruptly terminated billions of dollars' worth of overseas aid grants, the health system in central Mozambique was left in tatters. Earlier this year, I travelled to two badly hit provinces of the country to describe the toll. In In a In the midst of all this chaos, I was often curious to know from people on the ground who they held accountable for this situation and who they believed needed to solve the problem. My assumption was that they would call for the Mozambican government to help them out. I was surprised to find that in the affected villages I visited, this was far from anyone's expectation. For most, it was simply unthinkable that their government could do anything to save them. 'You mentioned the government,' one community leader said after I asked whether the state should intervene. 'But even these chairs we're sitting on are stamped with USAid logos. So what help can we expect from the government?' Sign on the back of a chair in an organisation in Mozambique. The more I learned about governance in Mozambique, the more understandable this attitude became. Throughout the country, core government functions have been outsourced to a combination of foreign governments, aid agencies, interstate bodies and private companies. For instance, many of the country's essential medicines are procured by a large international financing body, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Until January, the transportation of these medicines to hospitals was overwhelmingly financed by US aid agencies, as were the pay cheques of many health workers. Outside of the healthcare sector, the story is similar. The main highway I travelled on was built and paid for by Chinese corporations and banks. To keep hydrated I relied on bottled water supplied by private companies because the taps either didn't run or produced contaminated water. In many of the impoverished rural settlements, there was virtually no state infrastructure, and people received no financial support from the government. Instead, they primarily depended on aid organisations. The country's national budget has historically been heavily supplemented by foreign bodies, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Union, though much of this support was suspended in 2016-17. Even national defence has been partially outsourced. When Islamist militants began rampaging through the northern province of Cabo Delgado, the government struggled to contain it and contracted Russian and South African mercenary groups. When that failed, they authorised a military intervention by the Southern African Development Community and invited a parallel mission by the Rwanda Defence Forces. It is thus no surprise that Mozambicans have virtually no expectation that their government will come to the rescue when facing an emergency. Instead, they look outward. As one community leader in a rural village told me, 'Here, we depend on Trump.' Cash-strapped and corrupt Mozambique has The government is deeply cash-strapped. The South African government spends 10 times more per citizen than the Mozambican government does. A large chunk of its spending goes towards paying off debt. Mozambique simply doesn't have the money to build an effective health system, though had it spent its limited budget reserves more effectively over the years it could have developed a health system that was at least a bit more independent of donor support. Instead, the country's budgetary resources have often been wasted on corruption. Mozambique ranks 146th out of 180 in the world on One clear example of this is the As a result of those decisions, the country was swallowed by debt. And when the extent of the corruption was publicised in 2016, the IMF pulled its financial support for Mozambique. A The country's governance crisis is further demonstrated by the An ambulance parked in the grass in the Dondo district of Sofala Province. Even during the brief one-week period I spent in central Mozambique, signs of corruption and mismanagement filtered into my interactions with officials. For instance, before I embarked on a multi-day tour of one province, government officials told me that someone from the provincial health department would need to accompany me on my trip. This was apparently to make formal introductions to district-level officials that I hadn't asked to meet. For this apparently vital service, the man would need to be paid a per diem of roughly R500 a day for two days, they said. The civil servant in question was a very senior person in the provincial health department. Despite facing a collapsing health system in the wake of the US cuts, he was apparently ready to drop everything he had going for the rest of that week to follow me around. When I explained that I wouldn't pay a government official to stalk me, I was told that saying no wasn't an option. This is unfortunately the way things are done around these parts, said a local who helped arrange the tour. Neither GroundUp, Spotlight nor I paid the bribe. US responsibility Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that defenders of the current US government have often resorted to arguments about moral responsibility when justifying the decision to abruptly slash aid. It is reasonable to ask why the American taxpayer should bear any of the brunt of Mozambique's public health system when so many of its problems have been caused by the Mozambican government itself. But it's not so simple. The Moreover, Mozambique didn't develop its high level of dependency in isolation. For more than two decades, the US actively took responsibility for core functions of the country's health system. Until January, the US government continued to sign numerous contracts with local organisations, pledging millions of dollars to help run life-saving health programmes for years into the future. The health system was consequently built around these commitments. If the US was going to take that much responsibility for the wellbeing of some of the world's most vulnerable people, then it had a duty to at least provide notice before pulling the plug. Instead, it chose to slash the funds instantly, and in a manner that needlessly maximised damage and confusion. Stop-work orders were issued overnight, which required that people who were doing life-saving work down their tools immediately. Organisations decided to adhere to these instructions rigidly in the hope that their funding would be reinstated. At that point the Trump administration said it was only pausing aid funding pending a review, and no one wanted to give the reviewers a reason to terminate their programmes. The consequence was complete chaos. Orphaned children in extremely rural parts of Mozambique waited for their case workers to bring them their medicines, but often they simply never came. Many of these children had no idea why they had been abandoned. When certain case workers decided to defy the stop-work order and continue their work voluntarily, they had to do so in secret. To add fuel to the fire, the Trump administration routinely provided contradictory information to its former recipients and to the public. The initial executive order signed in January said all foreign development assistance would be suspended for 90 days, pending a review, and might be restored after this time. Then US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver stating that the suspension wouldn't apply to life-saving humanitarian services. He told the public that organisations providing these life-saving services could instantly resume their work under this order. Yet the organisations themselves received different instructions from their USAid officers. Rather than immediately continuing their work, they were told to submit revised budgets that only covered life-saving services and to wait for approval. Organisations rushed to submit these budgets by the deadline. But in the end, the green light never came and their funds remained frozen. This was not only the case in Mozambique; In the meantime, Rubio Later on, the organisations received explicit termination notices, ending their programmes. Despite this, US embassies and several large media outlets continued to reference Rubio's order as if it was actually implemented en masse. Even as I write this, the on-again, off-again US aid story is unfinished. This mixed messaging created an enormous amount of confusion for staff of these organisations and the recipients of their work, ultimately for no clear benefit to the American people. There was simply never any reason to act this callously toward health organisations to whom USAid had pledged its support. In contrast to the rampant corruption that has plagued the Mozambican government, these organisations were heavily audited to continue receiving funding. The work they were doing was clearly making a material difference to some of the poorest people on Earth. In the far-flung settlements that I visited, villagers told me about how their lives had been transformed by these organisations. Many were only put on life-saving HIV treatment because of them. Whatever arguments one may want to advance about the importance of self-sufficiency and national responsibility, none of this justifies the US government administering the aid cuts in such a callous and confusing manner. This story was originally published by
Daily Maverick
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Was Trump's Africa summit just outsourcing America's immigration problem?
The US president reportedly asked the five African nations at his summit to accept third-country asylum seekers. United States (US) President Donald Trump hosted a mini-summit with five African leaders in the White House last week. It was surprising that he met with African leaders at all, given his stance towards the continent. His choice of countries was also interesting — why Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Gabon? Trump told the delegates his administration was 'committed to strengthening our friendships in Africa through economic development efforts that benefit both the US and our partners. And we're shifting from aid to trade,' noting that he had just scrapped the US Agency for International Development (USAid). As to the five countries in attendance, he said they all had 'great land, great minerals, oil deposits', and that he wanted to discuss security. Trump encouraged the leaders to invest more in defence and to 'keep pursuing the fight against terrorism, which is a big problem in Africa'. 'Immigration will also be on the agenda, and I hope we can bring down the high rates of people overstaying visas, and also make progress on the Safe Third Country Agreements.' The supposed wealth of these five countries in critical minerals has been offered as the main reason for their invitation. Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani said his country had 'minerals, rare earths, rare minerals', including manganese, uranium and probably lithium, and was the second-largest African iron ore producer. Liberian President Joseph Boakai also said his country had many minerals and asked for US help in surveying them. Trump added an unintentional comic note by commending Boakai for his 'beautiful English'. He asked where Boakai had learnt to speak it — seemingly unaware that English is Liberia's official language. The country was, after all, founded in the 19th century by free slaves from the US. Critical minerals Gabon's President Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema also stressed that his country had oil and gas and critical minerals, including manganese, and invited the US to invest in processing it locally, including building the necessary electricity capacity. He said that if the US did not invest, others would. And he appealed to Trump to help Gabon stop maritime piracy in the Gulf of Guinea. Senegal's President Bassirou Diomaye Faye noted that the US was conducting a geological survey in Senegal to help assess the potential of minerals. He added that thanks to US companies, Senegal had discovered oil and about 950 billion cubic metres of gas. So critical and other minerals, and oil and gas, were clearly a factor in the choice of the five. So was security in a chronically insecure region. Some believe the US is looking for countries to host its military bases after Niger's junta forced out the US hub at Agadez. Trump also boasted about the recent US-brokered peace deal between the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. Most of the African leaders thanked him for this, urging him to fulfil his intention to likewise broker peace in Sudan and Libya. But was immigration to the US — a key domestic issue for Trump — the real heart of the matter? The Wall Street Journal reported that before the summit, the US administration sent the five countries requests to accept deportees from the US whose home countries refused them or were slow to take them back. According to an internal document seen by The Wall Street Journal, the African countries would have to agree not to return transferred asylum seekers 'to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made' on their claims for asylum in the US. This arrangement appears similar to that between the former Conservative United Kingdom (UK) government and Rwanda, but which was scrapped last year by the Labour government, which said the deal had not deterred migrants to the UK. Reports say America previously tried to persuade Nigeria to accept an agreement with Venezuelan deportees — but Abuja refused. This might suggest that Trump is turning to smaller, perhaps more pliable, countries to try to persuade them to accept asylum seekers or deportees. The Guardian reported on Wednesday that five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen — convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder — had arrived in Eswatini on a Safe Third Country deportation flight from the US. On 4 July, the US deported eight men convicted of violent crimes to South Sudan. It is unclear how the five African governments responded to Trump's request, and none mentioned it in the public part of the meeting. Two overlapping goals Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Research Officer Zenge Simakoloyi said Trump's summit seemed mainly to have two overlapping goals: to test the waters on processing asylum seekers offshore, and to diversify US critical mineral supply chains away from China. Nigeria's rejection of the Venezuelans suggested that externalising the US immigration problem would be difficult, he said. According to Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, ISS Migration Senior Research Consultant: 'There are no good precedents for outsourcing asylum processes.' She noted that the Australian effort to do so had cost at least A$1-billion annually since 2012, and had 'failed to achieve all its objectives, including stopping people smuggling'. Simakoloyi noted that countering China in African trade and mineral access was a hallmark of US foreign policy in Africa, as evidenced by the Lobito Corridor carrying minerals from Zambia and the DRC to be exported from Angola. He suggested Senegal's President Faye could serve the US as a diplomatic bridge to the Sahel's juntas, as Senegal had established a rapport with Mali and Burkina Faso's military governments. Trump's shift from aid to trade and investment in Africa is in principle a good idea, though the abrupt termination of aid has caused significant distress on the continent. (Unconfirmed reports this week suggest that Pepfar – the US programme against HIV/Aids — may be reinstated.) But how the US trades and invests in Africa will be critical. As Gabon's Nguema told Trump: 'We also want our raw materials to be processed locally in our country so that we can create value and to create jobs for youth so that they stop dying. They are crossing the sea, the ocean to go to other countries.' That would be a more constructive and ethical approach to relations than outsourcing the asylum process and dumping criminals from other countries onto Africa. DM
The Herald
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald
US aid workers 'lobbied for weeks' to save food stocks from destruction after Trump cuts
His administration announced plans to shut down USAid in January, leaving more than 60,000 tonnes of food aid stuck in stores around the world, Reuters reported in May. The food aid stuck in Dubai was fortified wheat biscuits, which are calorie-rich and typically deployed in crisis conditions where people lack cooking facilities, 'providing immediate nutrition for a child or adult', according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). The WFP says 319-million people face acute levels of food insecurity worldwide. Of those, 1.9-million people are gripped by catastrophic hunger and on the brink of famine, primarily in Gaza and Sudan. After Jeremy Lewin and Kenneth Jackson, operatives of the budget-slashing department of government efficiency were appointed acting deputy USAid administrators and began terminating food security programmes, USAid staff were barred from communicating with aid organisations asking to take the biscuits, two sources said. A state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was 'entirely false' that USAid staff were barred from communicating with aid groups, and that 'there was no direction given not to engage'. Reuters, however, reported that a January 25 email sent by Jackson emphasising a 'complete halt' to all foreign assistance banned USAid staff from any communications outside the agency unless approved by their front office. 'Failure to abide by this directive will result in disciplinary action,' said the memo reviewed by Reuters. US secretary of state Marco Rubio told legislators on May 21 no food aid would be wasted as USAid staff were waiting for Lewin to sign off on a deal to transfer the 622 tonnes of biscuits to the WFP for distribution before they began expiring in September.
TimesLIVE
6 days ago
- Business
- TimesLIVE
US aid workers 'lobbied for weeks' to save food stocks from destruction after Trump cuts
With 1,100 tonnes of emergency food rations nearing expiry in a US government warehouse in Dubai after President Donald Trump's aid freeze, it took a warning of 'wasted tax dollars' for a top US official to eventually agree to a deal for the supplies to be used, sources told Reuters. The deal saved 622 tonnes of the energy-dense biscuits in June — but 496 tonnes, worth $793,000 (R14.2m) before they expired this month, will be destroyed, according to two internal US Agency for International Development (USAid) memos reviewed by Reuters, dated May 5 and May 19, and four sources familiar with the matter. The wasted biscuits will be turned into landfill or incinerated in the UAE, two sources said. That will cost the US government an additional $100,000 (R1.8m), according to the May 5 memo verified by three sources familiar with the matter. The delays and waste are further examples of how the freeze and then cutbacks, which led to the firing of thousands of USAid employees and contractors, have thrown global humanitarian operations into chaos. A spokesperson for the state department, which is now responsible for US foreign aid, confirmed in an email that the biscuits would have to be destroyed. But they said the stocks were 'purchased as a contingency beyond projections' under the administration of former president Joe Biden, resulting in their expiration. Trump has said the US pays disproportionately for foreign aid and he wants other countries to shoulder more of the burden.
Daily Maverick
15-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Road ahead is steep but not insurmountable– SA's G20 can still deliver for debt and development
The global economy has slowed and become less supportive of developing countries. African countries may be forced to resort to international capital markets to fill the gap in their development financing needs. It is crunch time for South Africa to begin delivering on its ambitious G20 development finance agenda. The third of the four meetings this year of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors takes place on 17 and 18 July. A communiqué is expected to be issued, focusing on the development finance issues that South Africa prioritised at the beginning of its G20 presidency. The agenda includes politically and economically complicated topics such as sovereign debt and the cost of capital and climate finance, which are issues that are high on the global policy agenda. At the recent African Union Conference on Debt held in Togo in May, African leaders, among other matters, called for the reform of the G20 common framework and for a 'new debt doctrine'. The Compromiso de Sevilla, the outcome document from the recently concluded UN-sponsored Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), also acknowledged the need for a more development-oriented debt architecture. Unfortunately, the international economic environment in which South Africa needs to deliver on this agenda has become significantly more complex and challenging. The global economy has slowed and become less supportive of developing countries. The World Bank recently reduced its estimate of global growth from about 2.8% to 2.3% and forecast that average global growth in the first seven years of the 2020s would be the slowest of any decade since the 1960s. Its chief economist declared that ' outside of Asia, the developing world is becoming a development-free zone '. Some G20 participating states have become less supportive of developing countries. For example, the US and the UK, among other countries, have significantly cut their official development assistance, with the US going as far as eliminating USAid, its main aid agency. US President Donald Trump's administration also pulled out of FfD4 and has given mixed signals on his participation in the G20 summit in November. He has even opposed the theme for South Africa's G20 presidency – Solidarity, Equality, Sustainability. These developments aggravate Africa's development challenges. Currently, Africa has an annual financing gap of around $900-billion to $1.3-trillion for Agenda 2063 and the SDGs. While domestic resources should be the major source of each country's financing for these needs, they are unlikely to be enough in the short to medium term. Unfortunately, the amount of funding from official sources such as donor governments and the multilateral development banks (MDBs) will not be sufficient to plug this hole. Therefore, African countries may be forced to resort to international capital markets to fill the gap in their development financing needs. The financing these markets offer is expensive, involves exchange rate risks and is pro-cyclical. In addition, evidence suggests that African countries are charged much higher interest rates than countries in other regions with comparable credit ratings. The resulting 'African premium' costs African countries $74.5-billion per year in excess interest payments, according to a UNDP report. The reasons for this premium are still up for debate. It has been attributed to credit rating bias, lack of quality data, a lack of sound fiscal and public finance management by African governments, and to the fact that many African countries are new to international markets, having only started issuing international bonds between 2007 and 2020. Meanwhile, as African countries continue to deal with these tough conditions on the international capital markets, efforts to address their existing debt burden remain painfully slow. The current approach to sovereign debt restructuring uses the common framework developed by the G20 to deal with the obligations to all official and commercial creditors of low-income countries. Unfortunately, this framework has failed to deliver adequate outcomes for African countries. South Africa's G20 presidency provides the next opportunity to address this challenge. As South Africa commences the last half of its G20 Presidency, we suggest that it prioritise the following issues on the development finance agenda: South Africa must champion the Borrowers' Forum This forum, promoted in the outcome document from FfD4, would facilitate the exchange of ideas, information and peer learning among sovereign borrowers. If supported by a permanent secretariat, as proposed in the Report of the UNSG's Expert Group on Debt, the forum could become the repository of information about sovereign borrowing and the source of technical support and capacity building for debtor countries. South Africa should advocate for the G20 to actively support the creation of the forum as soon as possible. It should also work with the African Union and African G20 guest countries to take the first actions to operationalise a regional borrowers forum in Africa. Improving sovereign debt architecture South Africa, as co-chair of the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR), must use it as a tool to promote the improvement of the sovereign debt architecture. The FfD4 Compromiso calls for the creation of a working group to propose a set of principles for responsible sovereign borrowing and lending that can make sovereign debt transactions and the international debt architecture more effective, efficient and more supportive of optimal development outcomes. The GSDR was established as an informal G20-linked forum, chaired by the G20 presidency, the IMF and the World Bank. It brings together a diverse array of creditors, debtors and other stakeholders to discuss how to make the sovereign debt process work better for all stakeholders. South Africa should convene a meeting of the GSDR to begin discussing the framework for promoting responsible sovereign borrowing and lending, including the planning and management of such transactions and their outcomes. Panel of technical experts South Africa must advocate for the G20 to appoint a panel of technical experts to study the barriers to affordable, adequate and predictable flows of development finance to African sovereigns and make recommendations on what the G20 can do to remedy this situation. This can complement the work of the African Experts Panel, which has a broader mandate of 'exploring and defining strategies that advance Africa's collective developmental interests'. South Africa's G20 presidency should not be the end of this year's advocacy for a new and more developmentally responsible debt architecture. These actions should also be promoted at the World Social Summit and the COP30 in Brazil. DM Daniel D Bradlow is a part-time G20 Senior Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), where his research focuses on the finance track of the G20 and related Think20 issues.
