A new and deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda is the latest health emergency forcing African governments to break free of dependency on global donors like the United States as international support has been slashed in half over the past five years.

Shrinking assistance worsened by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts is colliding with Africa’s fast-growing population of over 1.5 billion people. The Ebola outbreak of a strain with no approved therapeutics or vaccines comes days after a rare hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship put officials on the continent on alert.

Africa faces “an equally dangerous threat” of funding, Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said while launching an initiative for African self-reliance in health financing earlier this year.

But African nations know that must change.

African nations for years pledged more health funding

The Africa CDC says the continent now faces “an unprecedented financing crisis.”

It says official development assistance has dropped sharply, from about $26 billion in 2021 to around $13 billion in 2025, as wealthy nations turn attention instead to wider geopolitical issues like the Iran war and domestic pressures.

African leaders for years had pledged to better finance their own health systems, but commitments remained on paper. In 2001, countries committed to allocating at least 15% of national budgets to health, yet only Rwanda, Botswana and Cape Verde are on track out of Africa’s 54 nations.

“The conversation was somehow theoretical because the donor system was still functioning,” said Dr. Alex Ajangba, a health financing expert and co-editor of the new African Journal of Health Economics, Systems and Policy. “But now that cushion is gone.”

Read the full article about the ebola outbreak by Farai Mutsaka at Associated Press.