African church organizations 'devastated' amid USAID shutdown, call for dialogue on program cuts

NAIROBI, Kenya (OSV News) -- As the United States paused foreign assistance to countries across the world, confusion, panic and desperation has gripped many organizations that benefit from the funds, including church-based groups.

Be it clinics for antiretroviral treatment, rural community water projects or even remote or city slum schools feeding programs, Catholic organizations were direct or indirect beneficiaries of the support delivered through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"It is devastating on all levels, from the church to the community," Gabriel Njiru, director of Caritas in the Diocese of Garissa in Kenya, told OSV News. "The stop order came without any notice and we could not continue the work with the communities."

Njiru had to stop midway a small water project the agency was implementing in the northeastern Kenyan diocese. The project aimed at giving the communities water for domestic use as well as enabling them to run a small irrigation scheme.

"The people on the ground had to pack and go home," he said.

Africa was to date the largest regional recipient of the U.S aid each year, administered through the State Department and the USAID. In the past decade, it has averaged around $8 billion annually. In 2023, the U.S. provided as much as $15.7 billion, with three quarters channeled through USAID. The agency provided assistance to 130 countries in 2023, with five out of the 10 biggest recipients in the world being in Africa: Ethiopia, Congo, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria.

USAID in Africa supported projects in a multitude of areas, including health, education, economic growth, human rights and democracy, with HIV/AIDS assistance being the largest in the non-humanitarian aid category.

Many programs in these areas largely remain disrupted, but local humanitarian aid experts say the situation in the HIV/AIDS programs area is desperate.

The 90-day pause in aid delivery for spending review initially included the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, although the government later allowed a limited waiver for life-saving HIV treatment services. According to Doctors Without Borders, "PEPFAR support has helped save more than 25 million lives and encouraged the fight against HIV to be a truly global one" -- with the majority of beneficiaries in Africa.

Still, things are far from normal for the organizations whose work with HIV/AIDS held hope for completely erasing the disease from the face of the earth. Officials in church-based humanitarian organizations are not making demands, they say, but asking for dialogue and discussions with the Trump administration so that the changes are carried out in a "humane way," with everything from salaries, work spaces and supplies uncertain at the moment.

"The feeling expressed is that of alarm, confusion, feeling stuck, panic and desperation," said Pascalia Sergon, the development and programs officer at the African Jesuit AIDS Network, or AJAN.

The network -- through 21 centers in 17 countries in Africa -- coordinates the efforts of the Society of Jesus in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

A few of the Jesuits centers receive the funding directly from the U.S. government, according to Sergon, but the majority collaborate with the U.S agency-funded organizations in a dynamic network of services that enables the beneficiaries to receive combined services.

"The new policy on funding has broken the cycle where these organizations or government institutions were fully funded by USAID," said Sergon. "The big concern is where will all these people go. Where will AJAN refer them to? Where will other services be procured from?"

Alphas Okeyo Otieno, an official at the Oyugis Integrated Project, an HIV/AIDS outreach in Western Kenya, said they were already feeling the impact of the halt of aid. Brothers from the Congregation of Our Lady Mother of Mercy have been running the project since 2002.

Oyugis project, named after the town its based in, provides adults and children infected or affected through family members by HIV/AIDS with drugs, and nutritional support. The project currently supports 2,800 people.

"We were fully dependent on the U.S funding for the drugs and payment of personnel. If the suspension continues, it will be difficult for us since we cannot afford the drugs," Otieno told OSV.

According to Father David Osaka, the priest in charge of family life in the Kenyan Archdiocese of Kisumu, the U.S funds were being used to pay support for staff working with people living with HIV.

"I don't think the government will be able to cope," he said "If drugs are not available, there will be deaths. These are people struggling to put food on the table. They cannot also take the drugs on an empty stomach."

Immediate results of the pause, according to the Jesuits' network, include broken health systems, leading to the suspension of mobile medical clinics and grounding of community health workers. Soon, the organization fears, there will be no supplies of medicine, with hospitals labs running out of stock and communities receiving incomplete services because the majority of the intervening partners are closed.

The network fears long-term effects such as more cases of deaths due to lack of antiretroviral drugs, increase of infections across the generations, more AIDS orphans, and a spike in poverty.

Meanwhile, officials say while they cannot stop the U.S from signing more policies affecting foreign aid, they cannot allow the work with the needy communities to sink.

"This can be an opportunity to work against corruption in our institutions and countries, so that we direct resources to important sectors like health," Sergon said.