US President Trump's 90-day foreign aid freeze and shutdown of USAID is causing confusion and panic in Africa, disrupting critical services like HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa, healthcare in Nigeria, food aid in Sudan, and development projects in Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, and The Gambia.

“The only thing we take a certain satisfaction from is that everything we said turned out to be true,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a weekly briefing, referring to Moscow’s longstanding criticism of the agency. “It is a machine for interfering in internal affairs; it is a mechanism for changing regimes, political order, and state structure.” The aid arm of U.S. foreign policy, USAID, funded health and emergency programs as well as democracy promotion initiatives in around 120 countries, including the world’s poorest regions. Musk has called USAID “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America.” Trump said last week it was being run by a “bunch of radical lunatics.” The assault on the agency has drawn a swift backlash from aid groups.