One year after USAID’s shutdown, Ethiopian aid workers are still struggling

When Yonas lost his job with a USAID contractor after the Trump administration’s foreign aid freeze last year, he began to think — for the first time in his life — about leaving Ethiopia.

Yonas, who asked to use a pseudonym to speak freely about his experience, found himself considering routes he had never imagined taking: trying to secure visa appointments at European embassies to migrate abroad, and even weighing less-than-legal paths — through Djibouti or across the Red Sea — via informal brokers who promise passage for a fee.

“I never dreamed of displacing to European countries and asking for asylum,” he said. “But that time I was even thinking about this — what should I do?”