WashingtonAbolishing the US foreign aid agency raised Africa conflict probability 6.5 percent, a Science study found.
The study linked the 2025 closure to 10.6% more conflict events and 9.3% more battle fatalities in high-aid regions.
Tracking models project 9 million preventable deaths by 2030 from the cuts, a February study estimated.
Sources: 404 Media
THE ORIGIN
USAID was created by John F. Kennedy in 1961, consolidating Marshall Plan-era aid programs into one civilian agency. Its founding logic was Cold War: development assistance as a counter to Soviet influence in newly decolonized states. Conflict prevention was always a stated co-benefit of the spending, not just a humanitarian one.
WHAT 'HIGH-AID REGIONS' MEANS
USAID spending in Africa concentrated in a handful of fragile states — South Sudan, Somalia, DRC, Ethiopia, Sudan. These places host the agency's largest food security, health, and stabilization programs, often running parallel to or substituting for state services in areas the central government cannot reach.
THE CAUSAL CHANNELS
Aid suppresses conflict through several documented mechanisms: food assistance reduces the recruitment pool for armed groups, health programs preserve state legitimacy in remote areas, and cash transfers raise the opportunity cost of joining an insurgency. Removing the inputs reverses each channel within months, not years.
THE BUDGETARY SCALE
Despite its political prominence, USAID's full budget was roughly $40 billion — under 1% of US federal spending and a rounding error against the Pentagon's $850 billion. The savings from abolition are small; the geopolitical and humanitarian footprint removed is not.
THE PEPFAR PRECEDENT
The largest single USAID-administered program is PEPFAR — the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — launched by George W. Bush in 2003. It is credited with averting roughly 25 million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Antiretroviral interruption causes viral rebound within weeks, which is why mortality projections from 2025 cuts compound so quickly.
THE COUNTERFACTUAL QUESTION
The 6.5% increase is a causal estimate, not a correlation — researchers use the abrupt January 2025 stop-work order as a natural experiment, comparing high-exposure districts to low-exposure ones in the same country. The design isolates the aid shock from broader trends like climate stress or commodity prices.