From fighting disease to protecting the Amazon rainforest, USAID has big impact across the globe

The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn criticism and raised questions about the influence billionaire ally Elon Musk wields over the federal government.

The United States is the world’s largest source of foreign assistance by far, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets. While aid to Africa dwarfs the roughly $2 billion that Latin America receives annually, the Western Hemisphere has long been a spending priority of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Then-President Kennedy established the agency known as USAID during the Cold War. Today, supporters argue that U.S. assistance in other countries helps counter Russian and Chinese influence. Critics say the programs are wasteful and promote a liberal agenda.

Here is a look at some of USAID’s impact around the world:

Protecting the Amazon rainforest and fighting cocaine in South America

USAID has been key in providing humanitarian assistance in Colombia, conservation efforts in the Brazilian Amazon and coca eradication in Peru. Recent USAID money has also supported emergency humanitarian aid to more than 2.8 million Venezuelans who fled economic crisis.

In 2024, the agency transferred some $45 million to the U.N. World Food Program, mostly to assist Venezuelans.

In Brazil, USAID’s largest initiative is the Partnership for the Conservation of Amazon Biodiversity, which focuses on conservation and improving livelihoods for Indigenous peoples and other rainforest communities.

Over in Peru, part of USAID’s $135 million funding in 2024 was dedicated to financing cocaine-production alternatives such as coffee and cacao. The humanitarian agency has been seeking to curb production of the drug since the early 1980s.

Disease response, girls’ education and free school lunches in Africa

Last year, the U.S. gave the sub-Saharan region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance. But since Trump’s announcement, HIV patients in Africa found locked doors at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic.

Known as one of the world’s most successful foreign aid program, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, largely in Africa.

“The world is baffled,” said Aaron Motsoaledi, the health minister of South Africa, the country with the most people living with HIV, after the U.S. freeze on aid.

Motsoaledi says the U.S. funds nearly 20% of the $2.3 billion needed each year to run South Africa’s HIV/AIDS program through PEPFAR, and now the biggest response to a single disease in history is under threat.

Meanwhile, without U.S. aid, other groups can’t give volunteers allowances for food and public transportation as they do outreach to keep girls in school and out of early marriages.

In civil-war-torn Sudan, which is grappling with cholera, malaria and measles, the aid freeze means 600,000 people will be at risk of catching and spreading those diseases, said an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

A busy shelter left without a doctor in Mexico

In the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, the Peace Oasis of the Holy Spirit Amparito shelter is one of several beneficiaries of U.S. humanitarian assistance to those fleeing persecution, crisis or violence.

However, under the funding freeze, the charitable organization that runs the shelter had to cut its only doctor as well as a social worker and child psychologist. The shelter has since appealed to the Mexican government for alternate funding for programs managed by the United Nations to pay for flights and bus rides to Mexico’s border with Guatemala for migrants who want to return home.

“The crisis is only going to worsen,” the shelter said in a statement.

Wartime help in Ukraine

U.S. funding amid Russia’s war on Ukraine has helped to pay for fuel for evacuation vehicles, salaries for aid workers, legal and psychological support, and tickets to help evacuees reach safer locations.

That includes the cost of using a concert hall in eastern Ukraine as a temporary center for civilians fleeing the relentless Russian bombardment. That shelter is now in peril because 60% of the costs — equivalent of $7,000 a month to run — were being covered by the U.S.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his government expects $300 million to $400 million in aid to be cut. Most of that was for the energy sector that has been targeted by Russia.

Kruesi writes for the Associated Press.