Although the full impacts of the USAID funding cuts in South Sudan are still emerging, early signs point to their potential magnitude.

In April, eight people died of cholera trying to find medical treatment after US-funded clinics in Jonglei State were shuttered. Healthcare services at transit centres receiving people fleeing the war in Sudan have stopped. And the UN warns that hunger is nearing record levels – an alarming benchmark in a country that is no stranger to famine.

Yet reactions to the US funding cuts have been mixed among South Sudanese – a sign of the complex and often conflicted relationship between the country and an aid sector that has grown enmeshed with basic public services and the economy.

On social media, many early comments regarded the cuts as a positive step for the country. Arguments in support came from different angles, including that foreign aid has stunted economic development, made people lazy or been embezzled before reaching those in need.

In person, however, those who lauded the demise of USAID online shared more nuanced views. Many expressed a sense of weary vindication at the crumbling of a US-dominated system they felt has long failed to move their country forward – even as they acknowledged the hardship its absence would bring.

For others, including residents of the country’s many displacement sites or of refugee camps in neighbouring countries, the decision evoked feelings of anxiety and helplessness.

“You will not see someone in this camp applauding [US President Donald] Trump’s decision” said William Jal, a community leader in the Bentiu camp, home to more than 100,000 people displaced by war and flooding in Unity State. “We have been chased from our homes and have nowhere to go. If the NGOs close tomorrow, it will be very hard for us.”

South Sudan – the world’s youngest, and by some metrics poorest, country – is also one of the largest per-capita recipients of foreign aid globally. In 2024, more than one in three people received some form of emergency food assistance. Foreign donors fund 80 per cent of the healthcare system.

Aid plays a critical role in the economy, too. An estimated 25 per cent of South Sudan’s Gross National Income stems from foreign aid, and aid jobs buoy much of the country’s narrow middle class.

The cuts come as experts warn that South Sudan is edging closer to the brink of all-out war. In recent months, the government, backed by Ugandan forces, has launched a sweeping assault on opposition groups, bringing the 2018 peace agreement that ended the country’s brutal civil war to a breaking point. International observers warn of a looming explosion of ethnic violence.

At stake is more than just the loss of services. The cuts mark a potential turning point for South Sudan, where aid has long functioned not only as a lifeline but as an alternative to state authority. Now, with hundreds of programmes shutting down – some of them decades old – communities are forced to reckon with the unravelling of a humanitarian system that has, for better or worse, been woven into the national fabric.

For many, its decline represents uncharted territory – offering almost certain hardship but also hope of breaking through a widely detested status quo. For others, it is an existential threat.

The most common reason cited for supporting funding cuts is the belief that foreign aid has enabled bad governance by filling roles that the state has failed to deliver.

“By removing aid from the equation, you are forcing the government to invest in their own people. Aid, and aid jobs, keep people complacent.”

One university student from Bor, a town roughly 150 kilometres north of Juba, framed support for the cuts as frustration with the government itself.

“People are having positive responses [to the aid cuts] because they are tired of the government, which is not providing anything to its citizens. So now that the US has decided to cut aid, there will be pressure on the government,” he said.

One Juba resident, who requested anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive topic, agreed. “By removing aid from the equation, you are forcing the government to invest in their own people. Aid, and aid jobs, keep people complacent. Now, unemployment will put more pressure on the system.”

Recently, public patience for the growing pains of South Sudan’s nascent state has worn thin.

Last year, national elections scheduled for December 2024 were cancelled, extending the transitional period for a fourth time. The economy, too, is in crisis: In parts of the country, food prices have surged 800 per cent since 2023. Many speak of the urgent need for a change in leadership.

Still, the aid sector receives its share of blame.

Several people felt that the humanitarian system benefits its employees – who earn salaries hundreds of times higher than the national average – more than those in need. Others questioned the value of sprawling humanitarian missions as living conditions and security continue to deteriorate.

A common framing casts the aid sector and government as mutually reinforcing. “There’s a perception that the aid sector and the government collaborate to keep things the way they have been,” said the Juba resident. “Now, some people think the whole system needs to be burned down to get back on track.”

Most, however, do not view the decline of foreign aid in black-and-white terms.

Opiyo Anthony returned to his hometown in Magwi, Eastern Equatoria State, in 2021 after five years living abroad in the Palabek refugee camp in northern Uganda. Conditions in the camp were difficult, he said, despite humanitarian support.

“We would always struggle because the food was not enough. I had eight people living with me, and sometimes the food [provided by NGOs] would run out with weeks left until the next distribution,” he recalled. “We kept struggling like that until I decided to return home and see if there was a better option for me and my family.” Now, he runs a farming cooperative of more than 100 people – most former refugees like himself.

Anthony, 53, called the decision to slash aid “drastic” and predicted that people will go hungry, get sick, and die as a result. He also thinks the funding cuts will push people to return home from the refugee camps, where they can rebuild their lives. “The provision of aid has kept people in the camp for too long,” he said.

Such views reflect the cognitive dissonance experienced by those who have benefited from aid but feel that change is sorely needed.

“What the NGOs are providing, our government can also provide. But only NGOs are paying good money. Without them, how can we support our families?”

One local aid worker in Juba feared losing his job due to funding cuts but hoped that the cost of living might fall as the UN and NGOs – whose outsized purchasing power he said has inflated prices – scale back their presence.

Sunny Ouda, a clinical assistant from Torit, has three sisters who live in the Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya. “It’s complicated,” he said when asked how he felt about Trump’s decision to downsize USAID.

“We have lots of resources here in South Sudan, but they are poorly managed,” he said. “What the NGOs are providing, our government can also provide. But only NGOs are paying good money. Without them, how can we support our families? So yes, we support Trump’s decision, but we are crying at the same time.”

For many – perhaps most – South Sudanese, dire living conditions and the country’s backslide towards war leave little room for optimism.

Nyakhim Doboul has lived in the Bentiu IDP camp since 2022, when she and her family fled a third consecutive year of historic flooding in Unity State. They joined more than 100,000 people, many who had been displaced by the war years earlier. She spoke highly of the services provided by the UN and NGOs in the camp, including healthcare and the reunification of separated children with their families.

Yet conditions in the camp are among the worst in the country. The flooding has submerged thousands of kilometres of farmland and pasture, decimating livelihoods. Many residents now subsist on waterlilies, which they collect from floodwaters polluted by nearby oil fields.

Conditions are now worsening as many services have been stopped or scaled back and residents employed by aid organisations have lost their only source of income. Young girls are increasingly being married off in return for desperately needed dowry payments, said Doboul, and a cholera outbreak has killed nearly 200 people since December.

When asked about the support for aid cuts on social media, Doboul scoffed. “We know some people have celebrated what Trump has done, but the people here cannot celebrate,” she said. “People say that USAID is promoting laziness. But that is not true. It is not USAID that put us here, it is the government.”

“What choice do we have?” said William Jal, the camp leader. “If there was no flooding, people here could cultivate to survive. If there was security, people could go home. But there are no roads and no hospitals, and the parties have failed to implement the peace agreement.”

Nyuon Kuey, a 29-year-old living in a refugee camp in the Gambella region of Ethiopia, agreed that any further decline in aid would place communities displaced by conflict in an untenable situation. “If the refugees go home, they will be killed. That is why they are in refugee camps. South Sudan is still at war,” he said.

Two days after speaking by phone, the government carried out an aerial bombardment in Kuey’s hometown of Nasir, where a local militia had recently clashed with government forces. Pictures of women and children burned alive in the attack circulated online. A fresh wave of refugees fled into Gambella, where US funding cuts now threaten to halt food aid.

“These people on social media who support Trump’s decision are mostly in the capital or outside the country – they are not representative of the population,” said Leben Moro, a professor at University of Juba and board member of the Rift Valley Institute think tank.

“People feel they do not benefit from foreign aid because they think internationals eat up the money and because it supports the government,” said Moro. “But these cuts will affect them eventually. People will feel differently when it begins to hit them.”

• A Tell Media report / Republished with the permission of The New Humanitarian s