Suspension of USAID leaves food destined for Sudan rotting
The suspension of USAID in Sudan has left 1.8 million famine affected people being denied food sitting in warehouses across Africa rotting, according to Middle East Eye on March 10th.
As the food rots in warehouses, Secretary of State Mark Rubio said on Monday that Trump’s purge of USAID was complete. With 5,200 of its 6,200 programmes having been eliminated.
The food sitting in neighbouring countries has been paid for, but the organisations do not have the money to distribute them to the Emergency Response Rooms within Sudan, because that cash was supposed to come from the US government.
Banks have refused to cover the cost of the suspension of USAID because they are far from convinced that Trump and Elon Musk will retreat from their mission to slash government spending.
Last year, the humanitarian community in Sudan needed $2.7 billion to address the most urgent needs. In the end they only received $1.8 billion with the United states as the largest donor to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The people of Sudan drove out military rulers in 2022 but two generals grabbed back power and went to war with one another. The fighting has destroyed the economy and kept the farmers out their fields, ruining agricultural production, rendering 12 million people displaced, and two-thirds of the population in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
Financial aid, including that provided by the United States was sent, via international agencies and organisations to Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), which grew out of a youth resistance movement at the heart of Sudan’s democracy revolutionary movement.
Now, the ERRs, nominated for the Nobel peace prize this year, have a 77 percent funding gap and are currently only operating 324 of the 1,460 community kitchens they had been running across Sudan, previously reported by Maghrebi.
The suspension of USAID and the food scarcity rampant in the war-ravaged country has also coincided with outbreaks of cholera in West Nile State. Time Magazine reported that the volunteer coordinator for West Kordofan, in the south of the country, has measured the health of his community at “zero.”
It is almost unfathomable that food already paid for is sitting in warehouses rotting, some may even describe it as the epitome of government waste and inefficiency, but there appears no apparent aid relief coming from the US government in the foreseeable future and so, without an alternative aid partner to step in, the situation in Sudan will continue.
Middle East Eye, Maghrebi, Time Magazine
Want to chase the pulse of North Africa?
Enter your email address and name to receive our weekly newsletter.
