Trump’s aid cuts make Malawians more vulnerable to climate change

The US government has ended support for a scheme that taught villagers how to produce honey, mangoes and cleaner cookstoves

A $22.1 million contract for the Modern Cooking for Healthy Forests Accelerator was terminated on 1 March 2025, according to a list published on the website of the Department of Government Efficiency.

President Donald Trump’s cuts to the US overseas aid budget are fuelling concern in African communities about how they will deal with the worsening impacts of climate change, as Climate Home found when visiting a now-halted project in Malawi that protected forests and provided poorer, rural people with ways to make money, enabling them to cope better with drought.

Malawians in the areas that benefited from the USAID-backed programme criticised the decision. The chair of Mbatamile village’s natural resources management committee, Lucia Kasimu, said: “It is our plea that the US government rescind its decision – to help the poor. It is their money we know, but this will leave many people suffering from climate change.”

Since 2019, the Modern Cooking for Healthy Forests Accelerator (MCHF) programme – co-funded by the UK – has been teaching people in Salima district to make stoves that use less firewood, cultivate mangoes, produce honey from bee-keeping and grow trees, whose wood they can use or sell.

But a spokesperson for American consulting firm Tetra Tech, which led the MCHF project, told Climate Home last month it was “under a stop-work order from USAID until further notice”, after Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance, including climate projects, on his first day in office.

Drought resilience

Last year, drought killed thousands of cattle across Southern Africa, including in Malawi, as there was not enough grass and water to sustain them. The vice-chair of Mbatmile’s resources committee, Enock Joseph, said the skills taught by the forest programme allowed villagers to earn additional income and buy food when drought or other climate–driven disasters strike.

“Animals are dying due to drought and people are suffering as a result of climate change. Salima is prone to drought – and when there is hunger, people rely on these economic activities to survive,” he said.

With more efficient cookstoves, the project also aimed to reduce demand for firewood in a bid to protect Malawi’s forests. Almost all Malawian households depend on wood or charcoal for cooking and heating. The MCHF also supported the government’s national forest inventory, which tracks levels of forest cover.

He told Climate Home it was wrong for the US to cut aid so abruptly, leaving recipients and employees out of pocket in a food crisis. “For the project to end just like this is like removing an oxygen supply machine from a patient in an ICU so that he dies quickly,” Joseph added.

Tetra Tech declined to comment further. The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office did not comment on its specific support for the MCHF project but told Climate Home it is working “to assess the implications of the US funding pause across development programmes”.

Global domino effect?

While Trump had criticised USAID in general before winning the presidential election, there was no indication he would immediately freeze its spending or launch drastic cuts so rapidly. 

Since he took power, his administration has said in court filings it will try to slash over 90% of the foreign aid agency’s budget – although it remains unclear if that effort will be successful, given that USAID’s budget is controlled largely by Congress.

After Trump’s move, the UK followed suit by announcing plans to slash its aid budget from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%. Germany, France, the Netherlands and several other European nations have also proposed aid cuts in recent months.

Trump’s cuts to USAID projects are hurting communities in the Global South, particularly in Africa. Bloomberg reported that US has scrapped support for the Power Africa programme, which provided grants for renewable energy on the continent, and the World Food Programme this week said it would have to close its Southern Africa office in Johannesburg in expectation of US and European funding cuts.

The US has also ended its participation in – and financing for – the Just Energy Transition Partnerships, which aimed to shift South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam from coal to clean energy. German Development State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth said the US move was “regrettable” but with European nations, Canada and Japan still involved he was “convinced” the partnerships would be successful.

But Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, told Climate Home that USAID cuts will have not only humanitarian impacts on people but also “huge security and geopolitical consequences”.

“I understand if there is a political will to change the policies in USA,” he said. “However, I can’t understand the way the cut was done. Funding commitments were cancelled and contracts broken. This way of closing down is disrupting the work of local organisations, and development actors.”

Cover photo:  Storm clouds loom as a woman carries maize and an umbrella on her head near Malawi's capital Lilongwe, February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Hutchings