USAID: What is the government agency and how is its closure affecting the globe?
USAID aims to assist countries recovering from disaster and contributes a significant proportion of the world's aid budget. But the Trump administration has effectively shut it down. What impact has this caused?
Thursday 13 March 2025 10:44, UK
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the centre of political turmoil since the Trump administration announced it wanted to shut it down.
The move all but ends a six-decade mission to shore up American security by fighting starvation, funding education and working to end epidemics - as part of Elon Musk's plan to shrink the size of the federal government.
The billionaire, who is heading up a review of the government as part of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said at the beginning of the year he had spoken with President Donald Trump, who agreed the whole agency should be closed.
Around 83% of programmes run by USAID have now been axed, as part of the government's six-week purge of programmes, secretary of state Marco Rubio announced on 10 March.
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He said 5,200 of the agency's 6,200 programmes were eliminated because they "spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States".
The remaining aid programmes are now due to be managed by the State Department, Mr Rubio said.
The move has prompted fierce criticism from Democrats and led to federal judge Amir H Ali ruling Mr Trump had overstepped his authority in shutting down most foreign assistance.
He said the government could not ignore the estimated $60bn (£46bn) in foreign assistance funding that was given to USAID and State by Congress - which under the US Constitution has authority to spend money.
Here we look at what USAID is, what it funded and how the decision to shut it down is already affecting the globe.
What is USAID?
The US aid and development agency was established in 1961 to implement the Foreign Assistance Act.
Its aim is to assist countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty and engaging in democratic reforms, according to the US government website.
It oversees humanitarian, development and security programmes in an estimated 120 countries.
More than 10,000 people have been employed by the agency, a third of whom work overseas, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Most projects that the agency oversees are implemented through grants, a formal agreement or contracts.
What does it fund?
The agency is the world's largest single donor to programmes around the world.
In 2023, the US gave $72bn (£58bn) of assistance on everything from women's health in conflict zones to access to clean water, HIV and AIDS treatments, energy security and anti-corruption work.
In addition to directly funding programmes, it is also a "back donor" to a series of agencies, Sky News' international correspondent John Sparks said.
This includes the United Nations World Food Programme and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), also known as the UN Refugee Agency, which helps asylum seekers and refugees fleeing violence or persecution find a safe place to live.
In 2024, 42% of all humanitarian aid tracked by the United Nations was provided by USAID.
The year before, the top five recipients of USAID-managed funds were Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Yemen.
In recent years, USAID has also provided significant humanitarian development and economic support to Ukraine, after Russia's invasion in 2022, and to Gaza after tensions between Hamas and Israel escalated in 2023.
USAID was also one of three US government agencies to set up the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in 2005.
This helps to assist countries in West and North Africa tackle terrorist threats and prevent the spread of violent extremism.
They do this by equipping security forces but also supporting youth employment, strengthening local governance and improving health and education services in the most vulnerable regions.
How the shut down is already affecting the globe
The widespread nature of the agency means that shutting it down is absolutely massive - and effects are already being felt.
Last year, USAID gave $32bn (£24bn) in aid to 165 countries. Ukraine was by far the top recipient country, receiving $5.4bn (£4.1bn).
In Ukraine alone, the impact of cuts have affected programmes from repair work, subsidising school employee salaries and assisting internally displaced people.
"Unfortunately, due to the suspension of USAID funding, more than half of our projects were stopped," Yuriy Antoshchuk, co-founder of Unity Foundation, a group working to rebuild communities in Kherson, told Sky News.
In Africa, US-supplied ammunition to use against HIV, malaria, TB and other diseases is running out.
Kenya specifically received $850m (£658m) in aid a year, which has now suddenly stopped.
Speaking to Sky's international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn, Martha, a healthcare manager in Nairobi, said the move was so sudden and meant households had no warning.
"We expect more death. We expect more children to die before the age of five. We expect more death for children living with HIV and it is going to be bad," Martha said, adding that more than 20,000 children who use her organisation's services will be affected.
A now-closed USAID-funded sexual health clinic in Johannesburg, South Africa, is also causing confusion and concern among locals who do not know where they will now get their usual care.
A HIV-positive sex worker shared her patient transfer letter from the same closed clinic with Sky News' Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir, and said with panic that she is still waiting to be registered at an alternative facility.
South Africa is home to one of the world's worst HIV/AIDS epidemics. At least 8.5 million people here are living with HIV - a quarter of all cases worldwide.
Widespread, free access to antiretroviral treatment in southern Africa was propelled by the introduction of George W Bush's US President Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in 2003 - considered one of the most successful foreign aid programmes in history.
But the programme has now been halted.
Food deliveries to a sprawling camp of over 20,000 people outside the Tigray region in Ethiopia have also been stopped in their tracks.
During the 2020-2022 civil war, which killed hundreds of thousands, the Ethiopian government restricted the flow of aid to the rebellious region of Tigray.
The region's 2.4 million people became dependent on humanitarian grain, most of it provided by the US.
In addition to life-saving food, $1.8bn (£1.3bn) of US funding was spent more widely on HIV medications, vaccines, literacy programmes and jobs creation, for Ethiopia's 125 million people.
A group of more than 80 Afghan women who fled the Taliban regime to study in Oman have said they are at risk of imminent deportation after their US-funded scholarship was cancelled.
In a letter to aid groups, obtained by Sky News' US partner network, NBC News, the women said the situation is "catastrophic" after the scholarship programme administered by USAID at the Middle East College of Oman had been terminated.
"Being sent back to Afghanistan would mean the permanent loss of our education and exposure to severe risks, including oppression, insecurity, and a future without opportunities. This is a life-or-death situation for many of us," the letter said.
"Please don't let our dreams be shattered and the Taliban decide our fate. We have fought very hard to get out of their hands, we won't be living any more if we have to go back to Afghanistan."
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Employee backlash
More than 1,000 USAID employees and contractors have already been fired or furloughed due to the cuts.
Many were notified via email that the department would shut down and two top security chiefs at USAID were placed on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Mr Musk's government-inspection teams, a current and a former US official told The Associated Press.
The remaining staff were also allegedly ordered to shred large volumes of records, according to a court filing brought by government employee unions on Tuesday.
USAID's acting executive secretary Erica Carr reportedly told employees via email to come to the agency's office for "clearing classified safes and personnel documents".
"Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break," Carr wrote in the email, which was included in the court filing.
The email did not give details about what documents were to be shredded.
The unions argue the directive "suggests a rapid destruction of agency records on a large scale" that both violates federal record-keeping law and could destroy evidence in their case, which seeks to undo the dismantling of USAID.
White House Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly called the reports of shredding "fake news hysteria" adding the
documents were "old, mostly courtesy content (content from other agencies), and the originals still exist on classified computer systems".
Legal action
In a separate lawsuit, a number of aid organisations accused Mr Trump of exceeding his authority under federal law and the US Constitution by effectively dismantling an independent federal agency and cancelling spending authorised by Congress.
Judge Amir Ali ruled on 6 March that the Trump administration must make some payments to foreign aid contractors and grant recipients by 10 March, adding he would issue a further order with more details on when USAID must make further payments for past work.
One of the plaintiffs is US-based intermediary company Chemonics, which claimed in an initial court filing it was owed $110.3m (£85m) in outstanding invoices for work performed in 2024.
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A source familiar with USAID's programmes told Sky News only around $6m (£4.6m) of this had been given to Chemonics before Judge Ali's deadline.
Sky News asked the State Department when it planned to pay, but it declined to comment on the ongoing legal dispute.
Judge Ali's ruling came shortly after the US Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration's bid to freeze funding that flowed through USAID.