After the U.S. stopped funding the World Food Program, rations in the third-largest refugee camp located in Kakuma, Kenya, dropped to historic lows.Â
And without USAID funding to help buy food for refugees, WFP rushed to prioritize families by need, determining that only half the population would receive food. They began to starve, and many â mostly children â died because their malnourished bodies couldnât fight off infections, ProPublica found while reporting in the camp.
Mothers had to choose which of their kids to feed. Young men took to the streets in protests, some of which devolved into violent riots. Pregnant women with life-threatening anemia were so desperate for calories that they ate mud. Out of options and mortally afraid, refugees began fleeing the camp by foot and in overcramped cars, threatening a new migration crisis on the continent. They said theyâd rather risk being shot or dying on the perilous route than slowly starving in Kakuma.
For months, U.S. government and humanitarian officials warned Washington that the cutoff had led to increasingly dire circumstances. They begged Trumpâs political advisers to renew WFPâs grant and give the money it needed to avert disaster. The embassy in Nairobi sent at least eight cables to the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, explaining the situation on the ground and projecting mass hunger, violence and regional instability. But for months, they failed to act.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, facing pressure from lawmakers and humanitarian groups, nevertheless publicly asserted that the agencyâs mass cuts had spared food programs â even as the administration failed to fund WFP in Kenya behind the scenes.
In response to questions, a senior State Department official said the Office of Management and Budget, not USAID or the State Department, has ultimate authority to approve new foreign aid money. They said they worked closely with OMB to review all of the funding requests. âIn order to make an obligation like that,â the official said, âyou need to have apportioned funds from OMB.âÂ
The official insisted that no one had died as a result of foreign aid cuts. The official also said that the U.S. still gives WFP hundreds of millions a year and the administration is shifting to investments that will better serve both the U.S. and key allies like Kenya over time.Â
Rubio did not respond to requests for comment.Â
*Do you have any information about foreign aid, the State Department or the government officials leading U.S. foreign policy? If so, please reach out to Brett Murphy on Signal at +1 508-523-5195 or Anna Maria Barry-Jester on Signal at +1 408-504-8131.*
Why wouldnât China fill in? Free soft power right?
I tend to favor soft power, so I wouldn’t have ended foreign aid, but shouldn’t the UN handle things like this? Since, there is no shortage of entities who want to dump food in Gaza, this should be a slam dunk. Instead, the US is blamed for something the US shouldn’t have to do in the first place.
Ahh, I get it. Fabricate a famine in Gaza to make the Jews look bad, and ignore the suffering that Jews had nothing to do with (I’m sure we’ll get blamed for it somehow anyway).
Why should the US assist a Kenya that cosies up to China? The US has been trying to separate Europe from China economically. Kenya doesn’t get a pass when Paris doesn’t.Â
âJust last month, President Ruto declared that Kenya, a major non-NATO ally, and China are ‘co-architects of a new world order’. Thatâs not just alignment to China; itâs allegiance”, Risch said during a speech in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May,
“Relying on leaders who embrace Beijing so openly is an error. Itâs time to reassess our relationship with Kenya and others who forge tight bonds with Chinaâ.
Nairobiâs relationship with Iran and Russia, as well as violent extremist groups Al-Shabaab and Sudanâs Rapid Support Forces will also be reviewed.
Sad, but if people are this reliant on foreign aid from just one country, seems like the problem isnât that one country. Itâs that people are so reliant on foreign aid, or all the other countries that arenât stepping up.
Iâm sorry, but Kenyaâs president is one of the wealthiest in Africa. Their 1% holds like 80% of the nationâs wealth.
This isnât a âwe need foreign tax dollarsâ problem, itâs a âKenya needs to fix its corruptionâ problem.
This is a failure of the Kenyan government more than anything else. The leaders steal so much that they can feed the country multiple times over
If you donât send your entire next monthâs paycheck to Africa, someone will starve who otherwise wouldnât. Thank you for your contribution to humanity.
Or if youâd like to have serious discussions about how to manage nations, you can ignore this bleeding heart drivel.
If you stop feeding children they die. How could Trump have foreseen this. Oh wait, he knew that.
And yes Kenya has a major corruption problem, but suddenly rugpulling aid is gonna lead to avoidable deaths. There are more humane ways to slowly withdraw aid and actually motivate the Kenyan government to invest in its own people.
Alternative headline: “America stops enabling massive and overt corruption in Kenyan government”
Lots of Republican Jesus energy in these comments.
The idea that US or other powers have a moral obligation to provide aid to other nations is naive and never based on any reality. Nations always act in their own perceived self-interest.
Major powers use aid to increase soft power, improve PR, and compete with other major powers for influence. At the end of the day, there was always a risk that they may pull out for any reason. In the US case, they pulled out because it was domestically popular to do so.
If US citizens truly cared about this matter, they would had voted accordingly. The election results showed that the majority of Americans supports curting foreign aid or just dont care.
Citizens of other free nations – feel free to tell your leaders to provide aid if you so desire.
I was told other nations would swoop in and replace American hegemon in this regard
Iâm for restoring a lot of aid funding, but I think the framing here is a big roadblock to that.
I got an advanced degree in Europe and was told constantly how bad US aid is, how it destroys local economies, how itâs colonialist, etc. Then it was cut and the same people suddenly flipped – the US is starving huge masses of people by reducing US Aid.
This is a major cause of growing American isolationism imo. When we provide help, itâs at best taken for granted and more likely portrayed as a bad, colonialist exertion of power (by people generally, not accusing starving people of being ungrateful). When we stop helping, thatâs portrayed as outright evil.
This is an incentive structure that any country would get tired of. âThere is no way to build good will, just focus on your own country and let the world handle its own problemsâ.
A second issue is that a lot of non-emergency, political spending got lumped into USAID. Almost everyone wants to feed starving people. Not everyone wants to fund trans-themed musicals in Ireland. Using USAID for the latter jeopardized the former. (For clarity I have zero issues with trans-themed musicals, I just think that jeopardizes USAID)
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After the U.S. stopped funding the World Food Program, rations in the third-largest refugee camp located in Kakuma, Kenya, dropped to historic lows.Â
And without USAID funding to help buy food for refugees, WFP rushed to prioritize families by need, determining that only half the population would receive food. They began to starve, and many â mostly children â died because their malnourished bodies couldnât fight off infections, ProPublica found while reporting in the camp.
Mothers had to choose which of their kids to feed. Young men took to the streets in protests, some of which devolved into violent riots. Pregnant women with life-threatening anemia were so desperate for calories that they ate mud. Out of options and mortally afraid, refugees began fleeing the camp by foot and in overcramped cars, threatening a new migration crisis on the continent. They said theyâd rather risk being shot or dying on the perilous route than slowly starving in Kakuma.
For months, U.S. government and humanitarian officials warned Washington that the cutoff had led to increasingly dire circumstances. They begged Trumpâs political advisers to renew WFPâs grant and give the money it needed to avert disaster. The embassy in Nairobi sent at least eight cables to the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, explaining the situation on the ground and projecting mass hunger, violence and regional instability. But for months, they failed to act.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, facing pressure from lawmakers and humanitarian groups, nevertheless publicly asserted that the agencyâs mass cuts had spared food programs â even as the administration failed to fund WFP in Kenya behind the scenes.
Read our story here â [https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths](https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths)Â
*This story is the second in a three-part series on the deadly fallout from U.S. foreign aid cuts in Africa. Read parts* [*one*](https://www.propublica.org/article/usaid-cholera-deaths-trump-humanitarian-aid-cuts-south-sudan) *and* [*three*](https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-usaid-kenya-humanitarian-aid-starvation-families-children)*.*
In response to questions, a senior State Department official said the Office of Management and Budget, not USAID or the State Department, has ultimate authority to approve new foreign aid money. They said they worked closely with OMB to review all of the funding requests. âIn order to make an obligation like that,â the official said, âyou need to have apportioned funds from OMB.âÂ
The official insisted that no one had died as a result of foreign aid cuts. The official also said that the U.S. still gives WFP hundreds of millions a year and the administration is shifting to investments that will better serve both the U.S. and key allies like Kenya over time.Â
Rubio did not respond to requests for comment.Â
*Do you have any information about foreign aid, the State Department or the government officials leading U.S. foreign policy? If so, please reach out to Brett Murphy on Signal at +1 508-523-5195 or Anna Maria Barry-Jester on Signal at +1 408-504-8131.*
Why wouldnât China fill in? Free soft power right?
I tend to favor soft power, so I wouldn’t have ended foreign aid, but shouldn’t the UN handle things like this? Since, there is no shortage of entities who want to dump food in Gaza, this should be a slam dunk. Instead, the US is blamed for something the US shouldn’t have to do in the first place.
Ahh, I get it. Fabricate a famine in Gaza to make the Jews look bad, and ignore the suffering that Jews had nothing to do with (I’m sure we’ll get blamed for it somehow anyway).
Why should the US assist a Kenya that cosies up to China? The US has been trying to separate Europe from China economically. Kenya doesn’t get a pass when Paris doesn’t.Â
https://www.africanews.com/2025/08/08/us-reevaluates-kenyas-nato-status-amid-concerns-over-china-ties/?hl=en-US#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20State%20Department%20will,be%20completed%20within%20180%20days.
âJust last month, President Ruto declared that Kenya, a major non-NATO ally, and China are ‘co-architects of a new world order’. Thatâs not just alignment to China; itâs allegiance”, Risch said during a speech in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May,
“Relying on leaders who embrace Beijing so openly is an error. Itâs time to reassess our relationship with Kenya and others who forge tight bonds with Chinaâ.
Nairobiâs relationship with Iran and Russia, as well as violent extremist groups Al-Shabaab and Sudanâs Rapid Support Forces will also be reviewed.
Sad, but if people are this reliant on foreign aid from just one country, seems like the problem isnât that one country. Itâs that people are so reliant on foreign aid, or all the other countries that arenât stepping up.
Iâm sorry, but Kenyaâs president is one of the wealthiest in Africa. Their 1% holds like 80% of the nationâs wealth.
This isnât a âwe need foreign tax dollarsâ problem, itâs a âKenya needs to fix its corruptionâ problem.
This is a failure of the Kenyan government more than anything else. The leaders steal so much that they can feed the country multiple times over
If you donât send your entire next monthâs paycheck to Africa, someone will starve who otherwise wouldnât. Thank you for your contribution to humanity.
Or if youâd like to have serious discussions about how to manage nations, you can ignore this bleeding heart drivel.
If you stop feeding children they die. How could Trump have foreseen this. Oh wait, he knew that.
And yes Kenya has a major corruption problem, but suddenly rugpulling aid is gonna lead to avoidable deaths. There are more humane ways to slowly withdraw aid and actually motivate the Kenyan government to invest in its own people.
Alternative headline: “America stops enabling massive and overt corruption in Kenyan government”
Lots of Republican Jesus energy in these comments.
The idea that US or other powers have a moral obligation to provide aid to other nations is naive and never based on any reality. Nations always act in their own perceived self-interest.
Major powers use aid to increase soft power, improve PR, and compete with other major powers for influence. At the end of the day, there was always a risk that they may pull out for any reason. In the US case, they pulled out because it was domestically popular to do so.
If US citizens truly cared about this matter, they would had voted accordingly. The election results showed that the majority of Americans supports curting foreign aid or just dont care.
Citizens of other free nations – feel free to tell your leaders to provide aid if you so desire.
I was told other nations would swoop in and replace American hegemon in this regard
Iâm for restoring a lot of aid funding, but I think the framing here is a big roadblock to that.
I got an advanced degree in Europe and was told constantly how bad US aid is, how it destroys local economies, how itâs colonialist, etc. Then it was cut and the same people suddenly flipped – the US is starving huge masses of people by reducing US Aid.
This is a major cause of growing American isolationism imo. When we provide help, itâs at best taken for granted and more likely portrayed as a bad, colonialist exertion of power (by people generally, not accusing starving people of being ungrateful). When we stop helping, thatâs portrayed as outright evil.
This is an incentive structure that any country would get tired of. âThere is no way to build good will, just focus on your own country and let the world handle its own problemsâ.
A second issue is that a lot of non-emergency, political spending got lumped into USAID. Almost everyone wants to feed starving people. Not everyone wants to fund trans-themed musicals in Ireland. Using USAID for the latter jeopardized the former. (For clarity I have zero issues with trans-themed musicals, I just think that jeopardizes USAID)
Comments are closed.