Which countries would be worst hit by the US aid freeze?

The United States is the largest provider of official development assistance in the world. In 2023, it gave $64.7 billion in official development assistance, or ODA, nearly double Germany’s contribution of $37.9 billion. However, a recent order from United States President Donald Trump to stop work at USAID has put much of that funding at risk. Devex used final ODA data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, as a benchmark to show how much potential funding will be lost from the stop-work order and which countries could be affected the most. Devex has already analyzed global ODA figures using the preliminary data published by OECD. Now, we have the final figures using OECD’s Creditor Reporting System dataset. The figures presented will be in 2022 constant prices unless stated otherwise. In 2023, the United States spent $57.3 billion bilaterally on projects in low- and middle-income countries. The Development Assistance Committee, or DAC, countries as a whole provided $171.1 billion, which means the U.S. alone accounted for 33.5% of the spending. If this funding from the U.S. were to cease, the hardest-hit region would be Africa, which received $15.2 billion last year, accounting for 40.8% of its total funding from DAC countries. Within Africa, the top recipients were Ethiopia with $1.6 billion, followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo with $1.2 billion. Europe would be the next hardest hit, as the U.S. provided $12.6 billion, more than half — 56.9% — of the total. The majority of which was for Ukraine, which received $11.4 billion, mostly as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Asia received $8.5 billion, the Americas received $3.3 billion, and Oceania received $252.1 million. Delving into the specifics, Ukraine received by far the most funding from the U.S., with $11.4 billion, accounting for 63.1% of the total ODA it received from DAC countries. The next on the list is Ethiopia, with $1.6 billion; followed by Jordan, with $1.23 billion; and then Afghanistan, with $1.19 billion. The data tells us that 28 countries from different regions got more than 50% of their ODA from the U.S., while 52 countries received 20% to 49%. Lesotho, particularly, got 92.6% of its ODA from the U.S. Out of the $91.4 million it received from DAC countries, the U.S. provided $84.6 million. Next is Micronesia. It received a total of $106.6 million from DAC countries, of which $96.5 million came from the U.S., accounting for 90.5% of the total ODA. Eswatini would be another hard-hit country. It received almost 83% of its ODA from the U.S. Of a total of $72.4 million received in 2023, around $60 million came from the U.S. Then the Marshall Islands, with 81.3% of its ODA coming from the U.S. Update, Feb. 18, 2025: This article has been updated to include additional data on the proportion of funding from the U.S. 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.