Weeds cover the grave of Yagana Usman’s baby – a painful reminder of the months that have passed since she lost her infant twin to malnutrition. Her surviving twin’s fate now hinges in part on decisions made thousands of miles away in Washington, DC.
Usman and her family are sheltering in a camp for displaced people in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno state, where the Boko Haram terror group first emerged.
During her eight years at Fulatari camp in the town of Dikwa – a refuge for those fleeing Boko Haram – six of her 13 children have died. Usman, 40, told CNN her most recent loss was in March, just days after a US-funded nutrition program that had provided therapeutic food packets to her malnourished twins was abruptly halted.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration froze foreign aid and cut support for programs aid groups deemed lifesaving – decisions that quickly turned into life-or-death realities for families like Usman’s. The nutrition program in Dikwa, which was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), received a sudden stop-work order during the administration’s aid freeze, according to the nonprofit that implemented the work, Mercy Corps.
In March, UNICEF warned that critical nutrition supplies for acutely malnourished children were rapidly dwindling in Nigeria and Ethiopia. The agency cautioned that nearly 1.3 million children under the age of five in conflict-affected northeastern Nigeria and Ethiopia’s drought-stricken Afar region could lose access to treatment this year, heightening their risk of death as funding is removed.
A 6-month-old baby who suffers from severe acute malnutrition is held by its mother at Kachalla Burari Primary Healthcare Center in Damboa, Borno state, Nigeria. – Damilola Onafuwa/Arete/WFP
The impact of these funding cuts is forecast to be felt elsewhere in Africa too. In August, Save the Children reported that millions of malnourished children in Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan and other countries will also be affected.
Last month, the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) raised similar alarms, warning that its funding from international donors was “drying up,” forcing it to reduce food and nutrition assistance to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in northeastern Nigeria – children, in particular.
It added that more than 150 nutrition clinics it supported in the region were at risk of closure.
A US State Department spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday that US-funded food assistance to internally displaced people and communities in Nigeria’s Borno state had resumed. Aid workers have said that projects resumed at a lower capacity, with significant reductions to the work being carried out.
Asked about broader cuts to food assistance programs, the State Department spokesperson said the US had recently provided $93 million to help nearly one million children suffering from malnutrition in 13 countries, including Kenya and South Sudan, and was also giving $52 million to the WFP for emergency food aid.
“It is imperative to remember that the American taxpayer was never meant to bear the full burden of taking care of every person on Earth – whether that be with food, medicine, or otherwise. Despite this, America continues to be the most generous nation in the world,” a State Department spokesperson told CNN.
“This Administration is significantly enhancing the efficiency and strategic impact of foreign assistance programs and continues to deliver life-saving assistance around the world.”
‘The babies died of hunger’
Roughly 5.4 million children under 5 in Nigeria’s northeast and northwest suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), an international food-security body that tracks global hunger crises. Of these children, around 1.8 million face severe acute malnutrition, it said.
“Additionally, approximately 787,000 pregnant and breastfeeding women are acutely malnourished,” the IPC report, released last year, stated.
A woman and her malnourished child wait for care at the emergency ward of Dikwa Primary Health Center, where children are stabilized for severe malnutrition, following the reduction of USAID support, in Dikwa, Borno state, Nigeria, on August 27, 2025. – Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters
Usman’s twin boys were among more than 55,000 children receiving therapeutic food in Borno before the program was abruptly ended earlier this year, following a US funding cut, according to Mercy Corps, which operated three outpatient nutrition clinics in northeast Nigeria.
Mercy Corps said it was forced to close 42 programs earlier this year that could have reached more than 3.6 million people in crisis hotspots, including Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Gaza and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The impact has been devastating for Usman. The loss of her son compounded her grief – she had already lost her triplets just three days after their birth in 2023.
“I was sick and had no breastmilk,” she recalled of her triplets’ brief lives. “There was nothing I could afford to give them to survive, so the babies died of hunger.”
New US intervention ‘a temporary relief’
Usman began receiving additional food assistance from the WFP last year, but this month she was informed that she would no longer qualify, she said, as the agency reallocates its limited resources.
David Stevenson, WFP’s chief in Nigeria, told CNN the agency was forced to make cuts, and would be reducing support in the north of the country from 1.3 million people in July to 850,000 by September.
Yagana Usman and her children sit with the last food rations they received from the World Food Programme at the Fulatari camp on September 5, 2025. – Hassan Abubakar Bukar
Stevenson thanked the United States, the WFP’s largest donor, for a $32.5 million donation the US Embassy in Nigeria announced on September 3 “for food and nutrition assistance to help save lives in Nigeria.”
However, he warned that the US contribution, together with less than $10 million from other donors, would only keep operations running until the end of November.
Stevenson said that the available resources would help reopen several nutrition clinics and provide food assistance to some communities and displaced people – a temporary reprieve following recent closures.
Undernutrition deaths happen ‘almost every month’
Hassan Abubakar Bukar, a nutrition counsellor in Borno, told CNN that malnourished children are a painfully common sight. Deaths from undernutrition, like that of Usman’s baby, are tragically frequent in the region.
“Almost every month, we encounter stories like these,” he said.
“Because of fewer (nutrition clinic) sites in Dikwa, a lot of malnourished children are left out,” Bukar said. “The parents cannot afford (nutritious) diets, so most of the children may die at home.”
Usman is anxious about the fate of her surviving twin, who is 18 months old and in need of nutritional treatment.
“I have that fear in my mind. I’m always thinking about how I could get something to feed him,” she said.
A beneficiary displays a food voucher after receiving support at a WFP distribution center in Dikwa, on August 27, 2025. – Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters
Women from different internally displaced persons camps hold food sacks while waiting in line to receive support at a WFP distribution centre in Dikwa. – Sodiq Adelakun/Reuters
Mercy Corps told CNN there is a glimmer of hope for vulnerable people. In June, two of the organization’s previously closed health centers reopened after their US-funded project was allowed to continue following the earlier stop-work order.
The Trump administration had previously canceled more than 80% of programs at USAID, which delivered US humanitarian aid overseas. It later essentially shuttered the agency, claiming it was engaged in waste and abuse, and moved foreign aid administration under the State Department, which critics say has not delivered on much of USAID’s legacy work.
The nutrition centers now run under an extension of the project, with existing USAID funding rolled over, according to Mercy Corps’ regional director for Africa, Melaku Yirga. But this will only last until October, Yirga added.
Usman’s surviving twin was readmitted to the nutrition program in July and still receives ready-to-use therapeutic food packets and critical care for severe malnutrition, Mercy Corps said, but the threat of further funding cuts puts ongoing treatment for this child and others at risk.
Foreign aid less than 1% of US budget
The US provides the world’s largest portion of humanitarian aid, spending more than $54 billion since 2021, with $3.8 billion allocated to Africa last year, Jeffrey Prescott, who was the US ambassador to the UN Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome until January, said in a speech last year.
“It’s really less than 1% of the federal budget,” Margaret Schuler, the chief impact officer at the global Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, said about America’s yearly humanitarian spending.
“We really believe that foreign aid is a great investment for the US government in terms of the return it brings,” she told CNN, citing global benefits like progress toward eradicating polio and reducing infectious diseases.
World Vision had about $100 million worth of US government funding cut, according to Schuler.
“Like many organizations, we had programs cut across all regions in the world, over 20 countries, and what was a little bit surprising was the fact that what would have been considered ‘lifesaving programs’ were terminated,” including programs in Mali, South Sudan and Kenya, Schuler told CNN in August.
“Those were programs that were serving some of the most vulnerable populations around the world.”
She warned that filling the funding gaps would be difficult.
“For some of these large-scale food aid programs or programs that we implement at scale in the hardest places around the world, it’s very hard to fill some of those gaps with private resources.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is trying to freeze another $4.9 billion in foreign aid that was approved by Congress in 2024 but that the White House says no longer aligns with its “America-first” priorities to ensure overseas spending makes the country “safer, stronger, and more prosperous.” Trump is mounting a multifront effort to cancel that foreign aid spending both in the courts and on Capitol Hill.
In Yirga’s view, an abrupt end to US foreign assistance “risks reversing decades of progress, forcing families into dangerous coping strategies and stripping away their last lifeline.”
He cautioned, “The world cannot afford to look away – not when mothers like Yagana (Usman) face the unbearable risk of losing more children.”
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