How the aid freeze affects nearly $60 billion in USAID spending

Throughout its existence, the U.S. Agency for International Development has funded tens of thousands of lifesaving development and humanitarian projects in a wide range of sectors all around the world. However, Elon Musk, the billionaire head of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, still believes that it is “a criminal organization” that needs to die. With its looming closure, the uncertainty around USAID’s future and the future of its programs extends beyond the current fiscal year — with tens of billions in obligated funding yet to be disbursed. So how much money is at risk? There are still around $56 billion in undisbursed obligations. In a previous analysis, we dug into USAID’s assistance and acquisition, or A&A, transactions in the fiscal year that ended in September 2024. These transactions are tranches of larger, multiyear awards. They are reported in terms of obligations — which are basically the amount owed by USAID to the awardee. In this article, we turned our attention to the remaining obligations out of these awards, so we could assess the full effect of the aid freeze. The data showed that the A&A transactions in 2024 bring USAID’s total obligation to $155.6 billion, of which $100.1 billion has been paid off — leaving around $55.5 billion in unpaid obligations. The amount only includes primary awards where at least one transaction was made in 2024. Unlike multilateral institutions, which typically list all their active projects, USAID only shares updates on the transactions approved within a fiscal year. So if USAID has obligated funds, but not paid out yet, those figures won’t be tracked. This suggests that the total obligation and unpaid amount of all USAID’s active A&A programs is likely to be significantly higher. But at the very least, the figure gives us the minimum estimate of affected funding. Acquisition Based on our findings, USAID’s total obligation via acquisition — which were mostly contracts — amounted to $43.5 billion. Half of this, worth $22.5 billion, has already been disbursed. The remaining $20.9 billion is supposed to be paid out by 2034. Our analysis revealed that most of the undisbursed obligations are due to be made to U.S.-based contractors — a total of $20.2 billion. Kenya-based contractors ranked next, with nearly $417 million in unpaid obligations. Awardees from the East African country received a total obligation of $557.5 million, of which just $140.5 million, or a quarter, has been disbursed. Tanzania-based contractors followed, with $35.9 million in undisbursed obligation; then recipients from Uganda, with $29.4 million; the U.K., with $25.4 million; South Africa, with $22.2 million; and Mozambique, with $21.6 million. On average, USAID has only paid nearly 60% of its obligation to each supplier country. We also looked at where the unfinished work was due to be done. A significant fraction of the undisbursed contracts, worth $12.1 billion, had the U.S. listed as the place of performance. In most cases, this means the project was regional or global in nature. The rest of the contracts listed a country where the work was due to take place. Ukraine topped the list with a $1.6 billion obligation yet to be spent. Kenya followed with $858.6 million, Afghanistan with $652.7 million, the Democratic Republic of Congo with $284.2 million, Colombia with $275.9 million, and Tanzania with $263.6 million. Assistance Unlike acquisition, USAID’s assistance data — which are mostly grants and cooperative agreements — only provided information on the total obligation and total spending, and not the total award value that would have included the unobligated money. The figures showed that USAID has obligated $112.1 billion, of which $77.6 billion has been spent. The agency is supposed to still disburse a further $34.5 billion, with some projects due to run until 2031. Similar to acquisition, U.S.-based grantees are still the leading casualties, with $26 billion, or 75.3% of the total undisbursed obligation, yet to be fulfilled by USAID. Switzerland, which is home to many of the largest multilateral recipients such as The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance ranked next. Its total undisbursed assistance was worth $4.1 billion. The other recipient countries with the largest unspent obligations are South Africa with $517.7 million, Kenya with $334.1 million, the U.K. with $327.6 million, Denmark with $327.4 million, and Uganda with $323.2 million. Among the places of performance, Ukraine is going to be hit the most, with $4.7 billion in undisbursed assistance. About $30.6 billion was obligated for the country, with $25.9 billion already spent. Switzerland ranked next, but this is for the operations and programs of the multilateral recipients. Their total obligation amounted to nearly $21 billion, of which $17.1 billion has been paid. The total undisbursed obligation is worth $3.9 billion. The U.S. ranked next, which again refers to global and regional programs, with $3.3 billion in undisbursed money. The other most affected countries are Afghanistan with $3.2 billion in unspent obligations, Ethiopia with $1.4 billion, the Democratic Republic of Congo with $1 billion, Nigeria with $793.2 million, and Kenya with $723.3 million. Try out Devex Pro Funding today with a free five-day trial, and explore funding opportunities from over 850 sources in addition to our analysis and news content.