Africa aid cuts strain women’s health services as new reports document the impact

France 24 reported on 9 October 2026 that cuts to US-aid-backed health programs are affecting women in Kenya. Its report comes as preliminary OECD figures show bilateral development assistance from donor countries to Africa fell sharply in 2025. Reporting from Zimbabwe describes funding losses at a reproductive-health provider, showing why the decline matters to people seeking care. The country reports describe different programs; neither establishes an Africa-wide measure of lost services.

How far did development aid to Africa fall in 2025?

The OECD’s preliminary figures put bilateral official development assistance from Development Assistance Committee countries to Africa at $29.0 billion in 2025, down 23.9%. For sub-Saharan Africa, the figure was $24.5 billion, down 26.3%. These are defined measures of donor countries’ bilateral aid, rather than totals for every form of foreign assistance reaching the continent.

The OECD separately reported a 26.3% fall in bilateral assistance for development programs, projects and technical cooperation in 2025. That measure excludes humanitarian assistance, refugee costs and debt relief. It also reported that humanitarian assistance from DAC countries fell 35.8% to $15.5 billion and multilateral aid fell 12.7%. Those figures describe different categories and should not be added to the Africa total.

The OECD called its 2025 statistics preliminary and scheduled detailed data for December 2026. The available aggregate figures establish the scale of the decline, but they do not yet provide a full country-by-country account of which donors or programs accounted for it.

What the reports found in Kenya and Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe, the Associated Press reported that Population Services Zimbabwe lost a five-year, $9 million grant awarded in 2023 after US aid programs were dismantled in 2025. The organization, an affiliate of MSI Reproductive Choices, said more than $6 million of the grant remained unspent. It obtained Swedish funding to fill part of the gap, but said that support ended in August after Sweden phased out development assistance to Zimbabwe and several other countries.

The organization’s director, Pester Siraha, told AP that its mobile clinic in Epworth had provided more than 100,000 adolescents since 2021 with contraceptives, treatment for sexually transmitted infections, counselling and reproductive-health information. Siraha warned that funding losses could force outreach activities, or even the Zimbabwe country program, to close. That was a warning about possible closures, rather than confirmation that either had shut down.

AP also spoke to Kelly Nhedega, an 18-year-old Zimbabwean who said stigma had contributed to her avoiding contraception. She said she became pregnant at 16, left school and had recently obtained contraception discreetly. Her experience illustrates a barrier to seeking care alongside the funding pressure; it does not, on its own, show that a service cut caused her pregnancy or departure from school.

What is known about the wider pressure on services?

AP reported a UNFPA estimate that aid cuts would leave a $185 million global shortfall in contraceptive funding in 2026. It also reported that the International Planned Parenthood Federation said nearly 1,400 reproductive-health facilities worldwide had closed by December, including 1,175 in Africa, leaving an estimated 5.9 million women without services. Those are the organizations’ estimates; the reported figures do not establish that aid cuts alone caused every closure.

A survey of member organizations by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health found nearly 90% had been directly affected by funding cuts and more than 60% had downsized programs. PMNCH said the reductions fell disproportionately on community health and sexual and reproductive-health services. Its membership survey describes the organizations that responded, rather than a count of all providers across Africa.

PMNCH said progress that had reduced maternal and child deaths by roughly 40% since the early 2000s had slowed sharply from 2016, before the current financing shock. It also reported that only three African countries meet the Abuja target of allocating 15% of government spending to health. At a July meeting, officials raised domestic financing and regional manufacturing as ways to strengthen health systems; those proposals do not resolve the immediate funding gaps described by providers.