1 week Ago By The Telegraph
Crowds of brightly-clothed women emerge each morning from the warren of shelters in Adré camp to queue outside the World Food Programme compound. Piled up inside and ready to be handed out to these refugees from Sudan’s civil war are sacks of peas and sorghum which are their main defence against starvation. Each sack is emblazoned with the American flag.
A procession of heavily laden WFP lorries meanwhile labours its way across a dry river bed a few miles away, carrying similar sacks from Chad into Sudan. Several lorries bear not only WFP banners, but also the stars and stripes. For a country often criticised as insular, American largesse to countries like Chad and Sudan, and indeed much of Africa, has been vast and is the mainstay of international aid.
The United States government in 2024 provided £640m to the UN’s humanitarian emergency plan for Sudan – some 45 per cent of the funding. The next largest donor, the European Union, gave a distant 11 per cent. The US also gave 58 per cent (£62m) of all funding to a separate emergency plan for Sudanese refugees who had fled into neighbouring countries, and then 43 per cent of funding (£254m) to another humanitarian response plan for Chad itself.
All that has been thrown up in the air after Donald Trump’s decision to pause United States aid funding and to take an axe to the USAid agency which has been the main conduit of the world’s aid superpower. The 90-day review period announced soon after Mr Trump took office has now been extended by another month. Much of the outcome is still unclear, aid agencies told the Telegraph.
Many aid programmes across the world have been shut down and billions remain in limbo. Even those who have been told they will keep all, or the majority, of their funding say the process has been marred by damaging bureaucratic chaos and u-turns. Even if the taps remain on, they say a temporary pause in funding has thrown operations into disarray.
Moreover, most believe they could have had only a temporary reprieve and more cuts are now inevitable. America is not the only donor cutting back. Britain, France, Germany and the Netherlands are also trimming their budgets.
“The mood is very grim. Everyone is laying people off, no one can plan. It’s been chaos,” said one senior international official.
The mood has been made bleaker still by signs Mr Trump is now going to scale back America’s involvement in Africa significantly. A draft executive order published by the New York Times last week proposed cutting almost all the State Department’s Africa operations and shutting down embassies and consulates across the continent. Marco Rubio, secretary of state, called the report “fake news”, but he did announce a significant streamlining of America’s diplomatic establishment, trimming 132 of 734 offices.
Elon Musk’s government efficiency drive has said it will also gut another US agency called the Millennium Challenge Corporation that has invested billions in African infrastructure. Senior sources familiar with State Department decisions insisted to the Telegraph that the great majority of America’s humanitarian funding to Chad and Sudan would remain after Mr Rubio gave a waiver to “life-saving” aid. Aid to Chad will fall by approximately 10 per cent, while aid to Sudan will fall by around $100m, they said.
Yet a current UN tally of funding received so far in 2025 already shows a significant dip compared to 2024. For example, after giving £640m towards humanitarian aid in Sudan in 2024, the figure has been £139m in the first third of 2025. The WFP got a huge £236m from Washington to feed Sudan in 2024, and so far in 2025, that has fallen to around £38m.
“We are not making predictions about what we will get this year,” said one source. Aid agencies working in Chad and Sudan are reluctant to criticise Washington’s spending shake-up publicly for fear of attracting Mr Trump’s ire. Another senior aid figure described weeks of disarray after the initial US announcement that foreign aid was being paused.
The source said that, after the initial executive order given in late January, they had been told to stop work only to later be given a partial waiver. That was then followed by the cancellation of their contract, which was finally reinstated. The source said: “We have had to let people go, bring them back on again, then let them go again.
It’s been on and off again. It’s impossible to plan. “We hope that the review is the end of it, but we just don’t know.
No one is confident that we won’t just get another termination in six months.” The 750,000 refugees who have fled from Sudan into Chad are largely reliant on international aid. There is almost no work to be had.
Most of those who fled are destitute and regular distributions of food are the only way they can eat. This southeastern corner of Chad where they have taken shelter is also one of the country’s most sparsely populated and underdeveloped areas. Government services here were always meagre and now they are overwhelmed.
Aid has stepped in to run healthcare and education for both residents and new arrivals. Adré‘s hospital has paediatric and maternity wards run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and is the only such facility nearby. Children on the wards last week had malnutrition, tuberculosis, meningitis and anaemia.
MSF does not itself accept US government money, so has not been hit by Trump’s cuts, but the charity said reductions would have a significant effect overall. Liz Harding, head of advocacy and campaigning at MSF UK, said: “In Eastern Chad, the gap between growing needs and resources available to address them is widening at an alarming rate.” She said lives would be lost without sustained funding for healthcare, sanitation and nutrition.
“Any cuts of aid will have a devastating impact on people who are already struggling to survive.” At nearby Aboutengue camp, Plan International runs schools for the children, but the buildings were set up under emergency conditions, and two years later, they need putting on a more lasting footing. Wind whips through holes in the flimsy tarpaulin walls.
The camps now also need secondary schools, not just primary schools. Senior aid figures admit that America’s help has not always worked as intended. Large aid budgets have at times created dependency, and allowed host governments to shirk their responsibilities.
There is waste and there are inefficiencies. “I go into some of these agencies and they look like Toyota Landcruiser dealerships – they’ve got so many shiny vehicles,” said one source. The security costs alone for one senior official to visit aid projects in Port Sudan were quoted as $500,000 for six hours.
As a result, some argue that cuts could prompt the aid agencies into improving their efficiency, collaboration and effectiveness. Whatever happens, they are clear that if America cuts heavily, no one else can make up the shortfall. “Not a hope,” said an official from one donor, when asked if they could step up.
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