Africa food security programme to lose $40m in USAID funding

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Africa food security programme to lose $40m in USAID funding

7:16 CAT | 23 Apr 2025

File photo: Reuters

An Africa-based food security NGO said Wednesday it had lost $40 million in grants following aid cuts by US President Donald Trump.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) is a Kenya-based organisation working with smallholder farmers in 12 countries to improve agricultural practices, raise incomes and promote sustainable development.

It is one of many agencies caught in the crosshairs of funding cuts by Trump, who signed an executive order freezing all foreign aid for three months shortly after his inauguration in January.

AGRA president Alice Ruhweza told AFP that cuts to US foreign aid would significantly hit the organisation, which has been operating since 2011.

“Reduced resources from USAID means that all that groundwork… will be affected,” she said, adding that other major funders from Europeans countries were also cutting back.

“We’re getting a lot of these messages all the time: ‘Sorry, we are reducing (funding),” she said.

But Ruhweza said the aid cut by US was a “wake-up call” for African countries to invest in agriculture, describing it as its “engine of economic growth”.

“If we invest our resources well, we probably don’t need aid,” she added.

The lost $40 million AGRA was part of a larger $100 million grant from USAID.

This week, the United Nations World Food Programme said it was suspending aid for 650,000 malnourished women and children in Ethiopia because of a lack of funding.

The UN agency warned they were among 3.6 million people in Ethiopia who would no longer have access to food aid in the coming weeks without urgent new funding.

Last week, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said development assistance had already been dropping worldwide before the USAID cuts.

Aid fell by 7.1 percent between 2023 and 2024, it said — the first decline in six years, as multiple countries slashed their budgets.

Source: AFP