Former President Uhuru Kenyatta has watered down the Trump administration’s decision to halt funding of health programmes in low and middle-income countries.
Speaking during the East Africa Region Global Health Security Summit 2025 in Mombasa, Uhuru slammed African leaders who are lamenting about the decision, warning them against excessive dependence on foreign aid.
“I saw some people the other day crying that Trump has removed money. Why are you crying it is not your government it is not your country. He has no reason to give you anything. You don’t pay taxes in America. He is appealing to his people,” Uhuru said on Wednesday, January 29.
A wake-up call
Instead, Uhuru said that President Donald Trump’s policies of ‘America First’ are a wake-up call for African governments to work closely in order to develop self-sustaining mechanisms for developing funds for disaster management and other critical development projects.
“This is a wake up call to say ‘what are we going to do to support ourselves?’ Because nobody is going to continue holding out a hand to give you. Let’s work together to bring an end to that,” Uhuru added.
In any case, Uhuru rued that African governments have a tendency to use resources at their disposal for the wrong things
“It is time for us to use our resources for the right things, we are the ones using them for the wrong things. The bullets and the guns we buy we are not given for free, we buy them. And we are not buying them to fight wars off our shores, we are buying them to fight our own people hapa hapa tu! Brother killing sister, sister killing brother over stupid things.
“We have actually lost more people to bullets fired by Africans on Africans than we actually lost to Coronavirus. And we have actually spent more buying those bullets to kill ourselves, than we have actually spent on protecting our health and our societies.”
He warned that in case of a pandemic akin to the COVID-19 one, Western countries will prioritise their citizens then leave surplus to Africans, and therefore the need to re-classify policies that will cater for the well-being of Africans.
WHO concerned
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday, January 28 expressed deep concern after the Trump administration to stop funding of various health programmes, including PEPFAR (U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief).
The WHO is worried about the implications of the immediate funding pause, with the programme providing access to life-saving HIV therapy to more than 30 million people worldwide. Globally, WHO notes, 39.9 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2023.
“A funding halt for HIV programmes can put people living with HIV at immediate increased risk of illness and death and undermine efforts to prevent transmission in communities and countries,” WHO highlighted in a statement.
Kenyan government spokesperson, Isaac Mwaura, on Wednesday told the nation that the government was actively mobilising local resources, seeking new partnerships and donors to ensure that HIV patients treatment and care continue uninterrupted.
