DOGE’s 2025 USAID Shutdown Linked to Surge in African Violence, Study Reveals

In February 2025, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the rapid dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), declaring that his team had "fed the agency into the woodchipper." The move came days into former President Donald Trump’s second term and marked the abrupt shutdown of what had been the world’s largest national humanitarian donor.

According to a study published in Science on Thursday, these cuts were directly associated with a surge in violent conflicts across Africa. The research provides the earliest evidence linking USAID’s collapse to increased violence, revealing that regions receiving the most U.S. aid experienced a 6.5% higher probability of conflict events compared to areas with no aid.

Key findings from the study include:

• 10% higher probability of protests and riots
• 10.6% increase in the number of conflict events
• 6.9% rise in battle counts
• 9.3% increase in battle-related fatalities
• 12.3% relative increase in conflict events overall

The study’s co-author, Austin L. Wright, associate professor and director of strategic initiatives at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, stated in a call with 404 Media:

"What we find is that with the USAID shutdown, there was a rapid increase in the likelihood of violence, the severity of violence, and the lethality of violence across nearly one thousand subnational administrative units across Africa."

Between 2021 and 2024, USAID is estimated to have saved 91 million lives, about a third of which were children under 5 years old. The agency, created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, accounted for less than 1% of total U.S. federal spending in the years leading up to its shutdown.

The impact of foreign aid on communities is complex and context-dependent. While aid can reduce conflicts by mitigating the opportunity costs of violence—known as the "opportunity cost effect"—it can also fuel conflicts over resource distribution, a phenomenon referred to as the "rapacity effect." The unprecedented speed and scale of USAID’s collapse, according to the study, have resulted in the worst of both outcomes.

Tracking models cited in a February 2026 study suggest the collapse of USAID may have already caused 762,000 preventable deaths, including 500,000 children. The cuts could lead to more than nine million preventable deaths by 2030.