Aid Cuts and the Fragmentation of Humanitarian Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
Analysing the growing pressures on humanitarian systems across conflict-affected African regions
The past year, 2025, has been marked by a sharp decline in humanitarian assistance worldwide, occurring simultaneously with a continued rise in conflicts and climate hazards, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Drawing on official data from the ACLED, OECD, OCHA and Oxfam, this article highlights the urgent situation faced by Sub-Saharan African and proposes a reflection on the structural fragility of the current aid system, arguing for a shift towards investment in local capacity-building and local solutions to reduce dependency and mitigate the risks associated with sudden funding contractions.
Contraction in Global Aid and Humanitarian Funding
The OECD released in April the preliminary statistics about the Official Development Assistance (ODA) provided in 2025, alongside a projection for 2026. The figures are alarming, suggesting a dramatic contraction in global aid of more than 20% compared to the previous year. This has been driven mostly by the substantial reductions from the United States, followed by other donor countries such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Japan (OECD, 2025b).
This downturn is particularly concerning given that ODA levels were already low, not even reaching the internationally agreed standard of the OECD of 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI). While ODA encompasses a broad range of flows, the most urgent issue coming from this recent data is the sharp reduction of humanitarian assistance, which means a reduction in the part dedicated to responding to conflicts, forced displacement, food crisis and natural disasters.
In recent years, despite an overall decline in aid, humanitarian funding has experienced a relatively upward trend since 2021. However, this preliminary data for 2025 (OECD) and the projections for 2026 indicate a change in this trend with a possible significant reversal. As observed in the figure below, there has been a massive drop in both humanitarian assistance and refugee-related assistance, coming down to levels like the previous period to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.
Looking concretely to Africa, as the second graph suggests, although all least developed countries have been affected, Sub-Saharan Africa has been disproportionately impacted by these ODA cuts, experiencing declines of 25.8% and 26.3%, respectively. These aid cuts have been translated into a reduction of services, the closure of a substantial number of NGOs and a shift from universal towards more targeted aid (Oxfam, 2025a). As the Oxfam Report (2025a) explains, such cuts in aid assistance have huge consequences because they lead to an increase in the already high existing inequalities and poverty in these countries, further widening the gap between available resources and on-the-ground realities.
Instability in Sub-Saharan Africa
Those dramatic aid cuts in Sub-Saharan countries coincide with increasing instability and conflicts in the region.
The ongoing conflict in Sudan, which has spread over the Sahel region (ACLED, 2026) or the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is causing mass forced displacement towards neighbouring countries; displacements that are becoming prolonged. Nevertheless, the reduction of ODA undermines the ability of humanitarian actors to provide basic services not only in the countries of origin but also in hosting countries, leading to increasing levels of food insecurity, diseases and gender-based violence (OCHA, 2025).
The data and recent analysis from ACLED (2026) also indicate the resurgence of violence in some countries due to the fragility of peace agreements. In Ethiopia, there are increasing tensions mainly in regions such as Tigray, Amhara and Oromia, which are putting the country on the verge of a new war. Similarly, in Mozambique, despite international and regional stabilization efforts, the Cabo Delgado insurgency has persisted and evolved into a low-intensity conflict, with recurrent violence and continued displacement.
Findings also suggest not only an increase in armed conflicts as such but also in civil demonstrations and political instability (ACLED, 2026). Examples of this are the recent electoral events across East Africa. The January 2026 elections in Uganda and the October 2025 elections in Tanzania -this second country considered one of the most peaceful in Africa- were followed by protests and heavy repression, and opposition candidates were disqualified from participating in the elections.
Furthermore, all these conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa and crises are worsened due to the severe climate conditions, such as prolonged droughts in the Sahel, heavy rains and floods in East Africa, which increasingly act as direct drivers of forced displacement and migration. For example, in the Horn of Africa, recurrent droughts—particularly in Somalia and Ethiopia—have led to widespread loss of livestock and crop failure, pushing households to adopt migration as a coping strategy. At the same time, countries such as Mozambique, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan have experienced severe floods linked to heavy seasonal rains, further intensifying cross-border and internal mobility patterns across the region (Mixed Migration Centre, n.d.).
Although this situation makes humanitarian aid more urgent, the intersection of conflict, climate shocks and decreasing funding is significantly constraining humanitarian access in these affected countries (OCHA,2025).
Reflection and further research
Through this short analysis, we have seen how humanitarian needs continue to rise due to protracted crises, conflict-driven displacement, extreme weather conditions, rising violence and persistent structural inequalities in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, international funding for the region is declining at a huge rate. This gap is not accidental. It reflects the limits of a humanitarian financing system that is not diversified and depends on a small number of donors.
As highlighted in the Centre for Global Development’s analysis of the 2025 aid shock, when the USA performed massive aid cuts, African governments responded in a fragmented way, prioritising short-term continuity of essential services rather than providing deeper structural adjustments. This exposes the fragility of a system that depends greatly on external funding and reinforces the need to rethink humanitarian responses to better meet the real needs in these continuing, dynamic and complex contexts.
Additionally, in conflict-affected regions, humanitarian assistance from NGOs and international organizations from donor countries, although being really important, often replaces the existing weakened state structures or local organizations (AidWatch, 2024). Such a dynamic increases the fragility of the system because sudden funding cuts lead not only to worsened humanitarian conditions but also intensify instability because essential services are disrupted when international actors scale down their operations, as we are observing nowadays (Oxfam, 2025b). Addressing this imbalance requires rethinking the structure of the aid system to prioritize capacity-building and working together with local actors and, in this way, reducing the structural dependence in conflict-prone and humanitarian needs settings.
To conclude, it is important to mention that this is just a broad analysis. The reality of Sub-Saharan African countries is highly dynamic—particularly in relation to conflict, humanitarian needs and instability—and it is important to acknowledge that many more crises and conflicts exist beyond those mentioned in this article. Nevertheless, this research opens lines for further analysis. Future work could also examine concrete projects and initiatives in Sub-Saharan African contexts, in order to evaluate their effectiveness and the extent to which local actors are meaningfully integrated into development and humanitarian action processes.
References
AidWatch (2024) Whose Interests Does Official Development Assistance Truly Serve? Available at: https://aidwatch.concordeurope.org/2024-report (Accessed: 10 April 2026).
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) (n.d.) Africa. Available at: https://acleddata.com/region/africa/ (Accessed: 10 April 2026).
Center for Global Development (2025). How African governments responded to the 2025 aid shock. Available at: https://www.cgdev.org/blog/how-african-governments-responded-2025-aid-shock (Accessed: 21 April 2026).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2026a) DCD(2026)8. Available at: https://one.oecd.org/document/DCD%282026%298/en/pdf (Accessed: 8 April 2026).
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2026b) A historic decline in foreign aid: Preliminary 2025 ODA data. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/data-explainers/2026/04/a-historic-decline-in-foreign-aid-preliminary-2025-oda-data.html (Accessed: 10 April 2026).
Oxfam (2025a) Africa Humanitarian Overview – Mid-Year Update (as of June 2025). Available at: https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/world/africa-humanitarian-overview-mid-year-update-june-2025(Accessed: 10 April 2026).
Oxfam (2025b) Changing face of aid in Africa: Outlook, failures and reform potential. Available at: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621728/bn-changing-face-of-aid-in-africa-080825-en.pdf (Accessed: 10 April 2026).
Mixed Migration Centre (n.d.) Eastern and Southern Africa. Available at: https://mixedmigration.org/regions/eastern-and-southern-africa/ (Accessed: 21 April 2026).
