Kenya’s key donors under President Donald Trump has proposed a USD102 million cut in development assistance to Kenya provided in 2018 to USD43.5 million in the latest sign that he is committed to seeing through his campaign pledges.
The huge cut has been attributed to his spending plan for the 2020 US fiscal year that begins next October.
In its State Department budget proposal, the White House justifies these cuts as ways of “reducing dependency on US assistance and increasing self-sufficiency” on the part of African nations.
Kenya can well restructure itself and fight corruption and make more rather than depend on USA for funds that end up in peoples pockets.
Over its eight-year reign, the Barack Obama administration gave Kenya $3.5 billion (Sh350 billion) for health programmes, $393 million (Sh39 billion) for governance and $86.3 million (Sh8.6 billion) for education, according to USAid data.
Even steeper reductions will be made in the HIV/Aids programme known as Pepfar that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Kenya.
Mr Trump wants to allocate USD276 million for this State Department-administered effort in Kenya, compared to USD441 million the US spent in 2018.
Mr Trump had asked Congress in each of the past two years to slash aid to Africa, but the House and Senate — which were then controlled by the president’s own Republican Party — largely ignored those proposals.
The outcome this year may prove even more unfavourable to the White House now that the Democratic Party is in charge of the House.