A new academic study published Thursday in the journal *Science* has uncovered a clear correlation between former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2025 sudden decision to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — a historic leading global aid provider — and a sharp, sustained rise in violent conflict across aid-dependent regions of Africa.
For decades, USAID anchored international development and humanitarian support across Africa, channeling critical funding to fragile states grappling with insurgency, post-conflict recovery and civilian crises. The Trump administration’s dissolution of the agency terminated more than 90 percent of active foreign aid contracts, wiping out an estimated $60 billion in committed development funding. The sudden pullout disrupted ongoing aid operations, halted planned programming, and left gaps in staffing, service delivery and procurement across communities that relied entirely on USAID support, the study found.
A team of researchers from European and American universities analyzed conflict patterns across African regions that had historically received the highest volumes of USAID assistance to reach their conclusions. While the study’s authors stop short of definitively attributing the violence increase solely to the aid cuts, they emphasize that the data confirms a key risk: large-scale, abrupt withdrawals of development aid can severely destabilize already fragile political and social contexts. Crucially, the researchers clarify the findings do not prove that increased foreign aid inherently reduces conflict — they only demonstrate the measurable destabilizing effect of sudden, unplanned disruption to long-standing aid programming.
The study’s conclusions come amid growing alarm over rising extremist violence across Africa. A separate report released Wednesday by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) echoed this concern, noting that jihadist-linked violence has grown steadily across the continent over the past four years, with insurgents increasingly targeting civilian populations.
Case studies included in the new *Science* study illustrate the gaps left by USAID’s exit. In northeast Nigeria, the agency had long supported civilian victims of the Boko Haram insurgency, which has displaced millions and killed tens of thousands since 2002. In Ethiopia’s war-ravaged Tigray region, local authorities depended heavily on USAID funding to launch post-conflict recovery after a two-year civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. And in northern Ivory Coast, a frontline in regional counter-extremism efforts, USAID had committed significant resources to programs blocking the expansion of al-Qaida and Islamic State-affiliated groups.
Outside experts warn the damage from USAID’s abrupt dissolution will outlast the funding gap itself. Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, who was not involved in the study, noted that even if funding is eventually restored, much of the institutional knowledge and on-the-ground program experience built up over decades by USAID staff has already been lost.
Ladd Serwat, senior Africa analyst at ACLED, added that many USAID programs were designed to stop conflict from spreading across borders and into stable communities. “We now see increasing insurgency and spillover, so some of those programs may have supported these communities against insurgent threats, and now they are no longer active,” Serwat explained.