The highlights this week: Pushback mounts over the Trump administration’s health aid deals in Africa, Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt is set to reopen, and the United Kingdom pauses legislation to ratify its Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Africa Brief.
The highlights this week: Pushback mounts over the Trump administration’s health aid deals in Africa, Gaza’s Rafah crossing with Egypt is set to reopen, and the United Kingdom pauses legislation to ratify its Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius.
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Unpopular Deals
As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has inked $11 billion in health agreements with more than 15 African countries in recent weeks, it is facing increased pushback on the continent, especially in Nigeria and Kenya.
In Nigeria, the bilateral deal—whereby the United States has committed $2.1 billion in health aid over five years—is drawing significant backlash across the political spectrum. This has centered on the agreement’s emphasis, in the U.S. State Department’s words, on “promoting Christian faith-based health care providers.”
“Healthcare is a core public good that must remain neutral, inclusive, and universally accessible,” Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, a member of the African Democratic Congress, a Nigerian opposition party, said last week. Nigeria’s population is roughly split between the predominantly Christian south and predominantly Muslim north.
In Decem
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