MEKELE, Ethiopia, March 13, (AP): As a displaced person in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, 76-year-old Haile Tsege is no stranger to hunger. During its war with Tigray fighters that devastated the region in 2020-2022, Ethiopian government restrictions on the rebellious region reduced aid flows to a trickle. Then in 2023, U.S. and UN aid distributions of grain were halted for months over a corruption scandal.

Now the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, has again halted food deliveries to a sprawling camp of over 20,000 people outside Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele. "We will just die in silence,” said Tsege, one of the 2.4 million people in Tigray who depend on humanitarian grain, most of it provided by the US. Ethiopia with its over 125 million people had been the biggest beneficiary of US aid in sub-Saharan Africa, receiving $1.8 billion in the 2023 financial year.

In addition to life-saving food, the funds were spent on HIV medications, vaccines, literacy programs and jobs creation, as well as services for 1 million refugees hosted by Ethiopia. Most of these programs have been stopped. The USAID staffers who oversaw them have been placed on administrative leave and told not to work, as they face the threat of termination.

The US Embassy didn't respond to questions. Emergency food was exempted from President Donald Trump’s executive order, signed on his first day in office, suspending foreign aid during a 90-day review amid the administration's allegations of waste. Aid agencies in Ethiopia had to apply to USAID for waivers to continue handing out US grain.

These have been secured, but USAID’s payments system is still not functioning. As a result, a consortium of aid agencies in Tigray has had to stop distributions to the over 1 million people it has been responsible for feeding with US-provided grain. It has no money to pay for fuel, trucks and drivers to distribute existing food stockpiles. That includes 5,000 metric tons of sorghum - enough to feed 300,000 people for a month - stuck in a storage facility in Mekele that could rot before it reaches those in need.