Former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta says Africans should stop crying and instead focus on creating their own resources after the new Donald Trump administration cut foreign aid to almost all countries, including African nations.  

“Why are you crying? It’s not your government. It’s not your country. He has no reason to give you anything. I mean, you don’t pay taxes in America. He is appealing to his people,” Mr Kenyatta said while speaking at the East Africa Region Global Health Security Summit 2025.  

Mr Trump had on Saturday issued sweeping executive orders, which included pausing almost all humanitarian aid to dozens of countries around the world, many of them in Africa, for the next 90 days.  

Mr Kenyatta noted that Mr Trump’s decision should serve as a wake-up call for Africans to start challenging themselves to handle their own issues instead of relying on funding from the United States to survive.  

“This is a wake-up call to Africa to ask what we can do to help ourselves instead of crying. We should ask ourselves what we are going to do to support ourselves.”

One such aid programme includes billions of dollars in funding from the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which many African countries, including Nigeria, receive.  

“It is time for us to use our resources for the right thing because we are the ones using these resources for the wrong things,” he said.