A year without USAID: In Kenya, the shock reaches herders and hospitals

One year after the Trump administration’s stop-work orders reshaped the global foreign aid landscape, Kenya is confronting a quieter but more consequential reckoning: how to manage a shrinking external cushion in an already tight fiscal environment.

The immediate impact was visible in halted programs and laid-off staff. But the longer-term question is macroeconomic. External financing has long underwritten key parts of Kenya’s social sector, and particularly public health services. Between 2020 and 2025, the U.S. Agency for International Development committed roughly $2.5 billion in assistance to Kenya — about $470 million per year — with roughly 80% allocated to health programs.

Now, as those flows decline, the effects are already visible —  in arid counties struggling with water and livestock losses, in clinics facing commodity shortages, and in regional mediation and conservation efforts that once relied on U.S. backing. In Kenya’s drought-hit northern counties, pastoralist communities are grappling with water shortages, collapsing livestock markets, and thinning social safety nets.