After the United States shocked the world by suspending global health aid in late 2025 and experts said it would lead to 700,000 more deaths each year, mostly children, Washington began proposing unusual bilateral health agreements to developing countries, angering officials and health workers alike.<\/p>\n
Critics say the deals struck with mostly African countries smack of “exploitation”, while at least two countries in desperate need of health aid have opposed them.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n In November, the US contacted Zimbabwean officials and promised more than $300 million in funding in exchange for sensitive health data, which Harare felt was “unsustainable” and immediately pulled out, according to memos leaked in recent weeks.<\/p>\n Around the same time, the US publicly announced $1 billion in funding for neighboring Zambia pending negotiations. However, according to statements by officials in early March, Lusaka also called “problematic” clauses in the US proposal demanding access to the country’s minerals and has since requested a review.<\/p>\n However, several other countries such as Nigeria and Kenya have signed the health agreement. The agreed terms remain unclear as the agreements have not been published in full.<\/p>\n The demand for data or minerals in exchange for health aid is unprecedented in the history of the US, which is Africa’s largest provider of health aid. Policy experts said linking significant funding to sensitive national assets could have negative consequences for African countries and the United States itself.<\/p>\n \u201cSupporting global health has clear benefits for the United States in terms of preventing pandemics that could also affect Americans,\u201d Sarang Shidore, Africa director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US think tank, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n “Linking such aid to payments in the extraction of critical minerals smacks of exploitative practices. The foreign aid sector is in dire need of reform, but this is not the way to do it.”<\/p>\n African countries have long depended on US funding to pay many of their health bills. African countries receive $5.4 billion in U.S. aid in 2024, largely spent on humanitarian, health, and disaster needs.<\/p>\n So when President Donald Trump’s administration suddenly cut funding and dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in January 2025, the impact was felt in Africa and around the world. Boston University’s ImpactCounter aid funding tracker revealed that 518,428 children and 263,915 adults have died from manageable diseases like HIV and tuberculosis since the shock of the cuts. Nearly 10 million new cases of malaria were also reported.<\/p>\n Washington has argued that aid cuts are consistent with its America First agenda, according to which foreign aid should directly serve US national interests. This stance supports the long-held views of some economists that aid is often ineffective and leads to excessive dependency.<\/p>\n Instead, Washington is now focusing on government-to-government deals.<\/p>\n Details of what deals are being agreed have begun to filter through leaks in recent weeks. The unusual secrecy surrounding the negotiations is itself a subject of controversy: health NGOs and civil society groups in Africa said it left them out of important negotiations, making it harder to plan their programs or track government funding.<\/p>\n The deals typically require governments to take an increasing share of their own health budgets over the next four to five years in a co-financing arrangement.<\/p>\n Some analysts see this as a positive step towards reducing over-reliance on foreign funding and forcing governments to prioritize health expenditure in their budgets, something campaigners have long demanded. In early 2001, African countries pledged at an African Union meeting to allocate 15 percent of their budgets to health care, but most currently meet half the limit.<\/p>\n However, Washington is seeking to leverage its aid for data, rare earth elements and other minerals, causing widespread outrage in some countries.<\/p>\n In the case of Zambia, the US reportedly asked the major copper, cobalt and lithium producer for access to its critical minerals in exchange for $1 billion over five years on the condition that Zambia would provide the assistance with $340m in new health funding. The US also sought a unilateral data-sharing agreement for 10 years.<\/p>\n While Zambian officials did not immediately sign on, an internal memo prepared for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington would only “secure our priorities by publicly demonstrating a willingness to seek widespread support from Zambia”, The New York Times reported.<\/p>\n According to a draft proposal seen by Reuters news agency, if Lusaka fails to sign an agreement by this Wednesday, Washington will end talks, and US aid funding to the country will be cut off.<\/p>\n This could mean that Zambia is still set to lose what remains of funding from the PEPFAR program, the US government’s flagship global health initiative, which has helped countries around the world fight HIV.<\/p>\n Lusaka relies on PEPFAR for more than 80 percent of its HIV funding, which provides free treatment to 1.3 million people, or about 6 percent of the population. Although Zambia received $367m from the program in 2025, the halt in funding has severely disrupted medicine distribution across the country.<\/p>\n Reuben Silungwe, a Zambian development analyst who focuses on HIV, said the US terms focus on mining, which represents 70 percent of Zambia’s export revenues, as a way to help finance it would undermine the country’s long-term financial independence.<\/p>\n Lusaka has adopted a “strategic and pragmatic approach” that could still secure US funding, he said, but Zambia has also allowed itself to be caught on the backfoot.<\/p>\n “The issue is not about getting aid. It requires a transition to sustainable, domestically funded systems while maintaining life-saving services,” Silungwe said, highlighting a common failure among African countries to deliver on their health care promises.<\/p>\n Zimbabwe is so far the only known country to walk away from the talks after the US reportedly asked Harare to share epidemiological data and biological samples that could be used for research and commercial purposes.<\/p>\n A government spokesman told reporters that Washington has made these demands but is not prepared to share the benefits such as vaccines and treatments that could be developed from such contributions.<\/p>\n While some have hailed Zimbabwe’s move as a positive step, others, including the country’s doctors’ union, are urging Harare to find a middle ground and avoid further setbacks to ongoing HIV funding from the US.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kenya, which in September became the first country to sign an aid deal with the Trump administration, was sued over the move.<\/p>\n A court suspended any part of a $2.5 billion deal that could violate data privacy after a consumer rights lobbying group alleged the transfer of personal data of millions of Kenyans to the US. Kenyan officials insist the deal was drawn up with “strict adherence to due process”, but the claim is hard to verify because details have not been made public.<\/p>\n More than a dozen countries across Africa have signed memoranda of understanding with Washington through the end of 2025, according to tracking by the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations. They are: Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Botswana, Ethiopia, Guinea, Angola, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Malawi, Mozambique, Burundi, Eswatini and Madagascar.<\/span><\/p>\n Rwanda, Uganda and Liberia have also reportedly signed the new agreement.<\/p>\n Outside Africa, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador have done the same.<\/p>\n In most cases it is not clear what the US will get in return.<\/p>\n It is clear that compared to prior Trump-era aid budgets, countries are receiving much less. Senegal alone received a total of $200 million in aid from Washington in 2024, about half of which was spent on health. The country is expected to receive less than $100 million over the next five years.<\/p>\n “It’s a good idea to reduce the foreign aid complex that the United States has built up over decades,” said Shidor of the Quincy Institute, noting how the money often ends up flowing to Western advisers.<\/p>\n But, he added, global public health is one of the few areas where significant foreign aid continues to make sense.<\/p>\n “This is a major human concern and is literally a matter of life and death,” Shidore said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After the United States shocked the world by suspending global health aid in late 2025 and experts said it would lead to 700,000 more deaths each year, mostly children, Washington began proposing unusual bilateral health agreements to developing countries, angering officials and health workers alike. Critics say the deals struck with mostly African countries smack<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[3506,1799,573,947,13622,667,2968,615],"class_list":{"0":"post-33900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bible-news","8":"tag-african","9":"tag-aid","10":"tag-countries","11":"tag-deals","12":"tag-exploiting","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-minerals","15":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33900"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33902,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33900\/revisions\/33902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christiancorner.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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