Nigeria, Uganda secure new funding to replace USAID
Nigeria and Uganda have begun charting new paths to secure funding to replace the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiative, which has currently been suspended by the Trump administration.
Nigerian lawmakers approved a 54.99 trillion naira ($36.6 billion) budget for 2025, surpassing the proposal submitted by President Bola Tinubu, the parliamentary speaker announced on Thursday.
In this budget, the government made a $200 million provision to fill gaps created as a result of the aid suspension to the Nigerian health sector, Reuters reported.
The move aims to sustain critical healthcare programs in Africa’s most populous country amid growing uncertainty over the future of USAID, the world’s largest aid donor.
The funding freeze has already impacted key public health initiatives, including contact tracing and international traveller screenings, an American official told CBS News last week.
Meanwhile, Uganda is receiving an additional $2 million from the World Health Organization (WHO) to strengthen its response to the country’s latest Ebola outbreak.
CEO of Bond, a UK-based network of international development organisations, Romilly Greenhill warned that the U.S. cuts could weaken global health security and called on the international community to step in and support affected programs, Semafor reports.
