US aid cuts strain African health

The United States' withdrawal from key aid programs has put healthcare in Africa and the global south under growing strain, according to a new report by the Accra Reset.

What triggered the crisis

The Trump administration's cuts to the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, combined with the Covid-nineteen pandemic and rising costs of living globally, have brought new urgency to healthcare reform in the region.

Africa's vaccine production gap

Ghana's president John Dramani Mahama and the Accra Reset cite a key statistic: Africa produces less than one percent of its vaccines while carrying about twenty-five percent of the global disease burden.

Nigeria absorbs health workers

When the Trump administration dissolved USAID, Nigeria was forced to absorb twenty-eight thousand health workers previously employed by the agency at a cost of two hundred million dollars.

Dramatic funding collapse

External financing for health in Africa contracted by close to seventy percent between twenty twenty-one and twenty twenty-five, forcing African countries historically dependent on aid to adapt quickly to severe budget shortfalls.

South Africa's HIV crisis

The withdrawal of US Emergency Plan for Aids Relief funding for South Africa, which provided over four hundred million dollars annually, led to HIV clinics closing and left one point four million people living with HIV facing uncertainty about treatment.

Ghana's specific losses

At the World Health Assembly in May, Mahama said Ghana lost seventy-eight million dollars after the closure of USAID programs which affected maternal healthcare, the treatment of malaria, nutrition and HIV and Aids interventions.

A call for African leadership

Mahama argues that donor dependency is not sustainable and calls for countries to take greater ownership of their health futures. The Accra Reset's latest report, published on Monday, pushes for African-led solutions with reformed international support.

“The Accra Reset is not an argument for traditional donors to do less on global health. It is an argument for doing it differently and doing it better.”