This archive report was first published on 3 October 2019.
On Wednesday, the State Department's top Africa official, Tibor Nagy, downplayed the impact of a recent cut in US funding for combating HIV/AIDS in Kenya, stating that US investments in the country will continue to grow.
According to Nagy, the US government's official funding represents a small percentage of total US investment in countries, with a great proportion of investment coming from the private sector.
He cited the example of Kenya, where US foreign direct investment totalled $405 million in 2017, a 7.5 percent decrease from 2016, and $644 million in imports from Kenya in 2018, a 12.6 percent increase from the previous year.
The reduction in aid funding, from $500 million last year to $375 million for the 2020 US fiscal year, is part of the President's Emergency Programme for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) and is framed as a reflection of the programme's success in helping combat the epidemic.
Kenya has received over $6 billion in Pepfar funds since the inception of the programme in 2003, and additional reductions in aid are likely to be made in the coming years as the epidemic is brought under control.
Nagy emphasized Washington's reliance on US corporate investment as a means of boosting development in African countries, stating that the Trump administration's Africa policy has a 'number-one priority of very dramatically increasing trade and investment with the continent.'
