Policy Briefs
Executive summary:
In pursuit of his ‘America First’ strategic vision, President Donald Trump, after his inauguration in January 2025, announced the cancellation of 83% of the United States’ foreign aid contracts, reducing the total number of contracts from about 5,200 to only about 1,000. This led to the shutdown of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (Schreiber, 2025).
The states and economies of the Lake Chad Basin (LCB) have been major recipients of USAID aid, owing to their fragility and the prevalence of humanitarian crises in that area. This policy brief examines the impact of USAID’s aid cuts in the LCB, as one of the areas that has been hardest hit by the recent reductions in funding. The brief makes use of data generated from key informant interviews (KIIs). The interviews were conducted with selected leaders and key stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the Lake Chad area, with a focus on Borno State in Nigeria and the Far North Region in Cameroon. Five organisations were purposively selected in each of the countries, bringing the number of interviews conducted to ten.
The results were synchronised with textual insights and documentary evidence arising from desk research, based on credible documentary, media, and online sources. The outcome of this process allowed us to form a coherent empirical narrative, which is presented in this brief.
Authors: Dr AI Chukwuma OKOLI, Dr Freedom Chukwudi ONUOHA and Dr Saheed Babajide OWONIKOKO
