When James Lule was told he was HIV-positive two decades ago, he kept his diagnosis a secret from his family. In those days, he says, it was common for Ugandans to dig a grave the moment they learned someone close to them had HIV. “People thought HIV was a curse,” he says.
He might have felt that way, too, if not for the counselors he spoke with soon after his diagnosis. They taught him not just how to treat himself, but also how to care for himself.
In return, Mr. Lule has dedicated his life to doing the same for others. But when the Trump administration announced a freeze on most U.S. foreign assistance in January, the organization where Mr. Lule works lost most of its funding overnight.
Why We Wrote This
The demise of USAID didn’t just end funding to thousands of charitable organizations around the world. In many places, it fractured communities that depended on that aid.
The freeze also fractured the community Mr. Lule and his colleagues had built for HIV-positive people in a country where the disease is still stigmatized, shuttering a safe meeting space and putting a stop to counseling and conversation.
Crumbling support systems
Six months after an executive order by President Donald Trump began decimating U.S. foreign aid, a similar loss of community is being felt far and wide.
Across the African continent, cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development are breaking down support systems built up over generations, leaving them to “crumble,” says Jakkie Cilliers, head of the African Futures and Innovation program at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank in South Africa.
Over the border from Uganda, in eastern Congo, the funding freeze snapped into place just as a Rwanda-backed rebel group known as M23 occupied the regional capital, Goma.
Days after M23 marched into the city, Furaha (not her real name) arrived at a center providing her and other rape survivors with business training. It had been shuttered without warning. Furaha was devastated. She had just weeks left in her training, and the program had also provided a supportive space for her and other women to grieve and heal. “We would sit together and share what each one of us had gone through or suffered,” she says.
At first, Furaha thought the closure was because of the conflict. She then heard on the radio that the United States had cut its funding. “We fear going back to the life we were trying to leave behind,” she says, adding, “The project stopped, but the violence continues.”
An aid worker who managed Furaha’s program says staff members are also distraught. “We feel like we are giving up on these women,” says the aid worker, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Losing community
In Uganda, Mr. Lule feels a similar sense of loss.
Each morning, he walks several miles along dusty roads in Kampala to reach the office of the National Forum of People Living with HIV/AIDS Networks in Uganda.
Until recently, the office was full of activity. Mr. Lule oversaw an American-funded program that helped people living with HIV or AIDS manage their treatment by, among other things, providing digital instant-message responses to health questions.
According to Mr. Lule’s supervisor, Flavia Kyomukama, eight program staff members in Kampala were laid off after USAID cut its funding, along with 20 district coordinators.
Now, she and Mr. Lule work for free out of a near-silent office, searching for another source of funding. It’s a stark change from the chatter and excitement that once filled the space, Ms. Kyomukama says. “It’s demoralizing.”
“We are incapacitated,” she adds. “We don’t even know what is happening in the community.”
On July 1, six months after Ms. Kyomukama and Mr. Lule lost their American backing, the Trump administration dissolved USAID completely. More than 80% of USAID’s programs had already been shut down. The agency’s 1,000 remaining programs have been fully absorbed into the State Department.
“We stopped everything,” says Shilah Morgana, a peer coordinator for a USAID-funded program that provided individual and group counseling for transgender people in Uganda. “We don’t know what is going on. We don’t know if funding will be available again.”
Ms. Morgana, who is also trans, says this community-led support was particularly significant in Uganda, where people in LGBTQ+ relationships can be punished with life imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Ms. Kyomukama says many HIV counseling groups are no longer operating. “Community support structures have stopped working,” she says.
Mr. Lule hopes local organizations like his will find new ways to survive without foreign assistance in the future. In the meantime, he is looking for ways to keep the community alive – but feels as though he is in a race against time.
Without support systems to make sure people stay on treatment, Mr. Lule fears there will be a resurgence in HIV infections in Uganda. “What will happen next? Shall we be able to end AIDS by 2030?” he asks, referring to a United Nations goal. “We will not.”
