Trump shakes up US embassy

USAID closed, jobs cancelled, operations scuttled as President implements Project 2025

ANALYSIS | IAN KATUSIIME | Within just 50 days of taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump is radically shaking up American foreign policy. Trump’s assault on the U.S. State Department has affected U.S. embassies further afield like those in Uganda.

The Trump administration has plans to close embassies in some parts of the world and cut down on embassy staff in other countries according to POLITICO, the American newspaper.

Trump issued an executive order putting in place a U.S. federal hiring freeze which also affected the recruitment processes of U.S. diplomatic staff worldwide.

As the US embassy in Uganda adjusts to life under a radical new President, the embassy across the border in Kenya has already experienced significant changes.

Then US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman announced her resignation as soon as Trump was declared President-elect. Whitman was named ambassador to Kenya by former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2022 and she had a high profile tenure as a former tech CEO who marketed Kenya as a tourism and investment destination to the global business community.

Unlike Whitman who was considered a political ambassador because Biden personally asked her to serve in the position, the U.S. Ambassador to Uganda William Popp is a career foreign service official who has been in the diplomatic corps for over 20 years and served in countries like Brazil, Colombia, Angola, and Nicaragua.

Popp served as Ambassador to Guatemala from 2020 to 2023 and as the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Mission in Brazil where he was also the Chargé d’Affaires from 2018 to 2020 according to his profile by the US Embassy.

The towering diplomat has also worked as the Political Counselor and then the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya (2015-2017). Other roles included Director of the Office of Regional Economic Policy and Summit Coordination in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department for the 2015 Summit of the Americas.

The U.S. Embassy in Uganda has already canceled vacancies that were advertised as early as last year even before Trump was elected. The Embassy has about 700 staff working in different capacities and typically is the largest foreign mission in any country.

The cost cutting measures are being implemented by the newly created Department of Government Efficiency DOGE led by billionaire Elon Musk. The measures are whittling down the food chain affecting thousands of employees and contractors in the US and overseas.

Fallout from the shutting down of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has had an adverse impact on the health sector and NGO activities in Uganda which largely depend on American donor aid.

News from Washington indicates that several U.S. State Department programmes that benefit citizens of other countries could be affected including the Fulbright Program, Hubert Humphrey Program, Mandela Washington Fellowship and a host of others supported by the State Department.

These programmes fall under the State Department’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs which the Trump administration is thinking of doing away with.

If Trump goes after the Bureau, he will have struck at the heart of America’s soft power. The bureau has been responsible for generations of Africans and other nationalities travelling to the US on various exchange programmes. The Mandela Washington Fellowship was started by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 to train young African leaders.

In the last ten years, over 7000 young leaders from Africa have participated in the program. President Trump has now left such programmes in suspense.

Trump and his allies have for long believed that the State Department harbours a deep state out to stymy his America First agenda.

Guns aimed at State

Overall, the U.S. State Department has been the target of Trump’s ire. According to Project 2025, a blueprint for the Trump administration, the agency needed to be tamed because “large swaths of the State Department workforce are left-wing and predisposed to disagree with a conservative president’s policy agenda and vision.”

The document added, “The next administration must take swift and decisive steps to reforge the department into a lean and functional diplomatic machine that serves the president and thereby the American people.”

Project 2025 also outlines what has already been implemented by the new U.S. administration. “Upon inauguration, the Secretary of State should order an immediate freeze on all efforts to implement unratified treaties and international agreements, allocation of resources, foreign assistance disbursements, domestic and international contracts and payments, hiring and recruiting decisions, etc., pending a political appointee-driven review to ensure that such efforts comport with the new Administration’s policies.”

It stressed that the posture of the department during this review should be an “unwavering desire to prioritise the American people—including a recognition that the federal government must be a diligent steward of taxpayer dollars.”

The new administration has created tensions in U.S. diplomatic posts as it aimed at a clear out of all Biden officials. The document also advised the new administration to reboot ambassadors worldwide. “It should both accept the resignations of all political ambassadors and quickly review and reassess all career ambassadors. This review should commence well before the new Administration’s first day.”

Project 2025 which was authored in 2024 by a host of American conservative leaders also laid out why USAID had to be reformed.

“The Biden Administration has deformed the agency by treating it as a global platform to pursue overseas a divisive political and cultural agenda that promotes abortion, climate extremism, gender radicalism, and interventions against perceived systematic racism.”

The defunct American agency had over 5000 contractors and its closure also affected the work of PEPFAR through which 700,000 Ugandans living with HIV were receiving anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment.

The actions also crippled the operations of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC) which has been working closely with the Ministry of Health to roll out several initiatives and interventions. The Ministry of Health is particularly hamstrung by the circumstances of its partners.

The CDC supported development of Uganda’s first national health laboratory services policy in 2009 and the national strategic plans for 2010-2015 and 2016-2022 according to the organisation’s site. Over 40 laboratories are now in place. In addition, CDC partnered with Makerere School of Public Health to establish a Field Epidemiology Training Program which has over 90 fellows.

The embassy through USAID was working closely with CDC and PEPFAR on various health programmes.

The gutting of USAID left critical vulnerabilities in Uganda’s health sector which was heavily reliant on American support. USAID was supporting parts of the AIDS Control Program, National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Program, and Health Systems Strengthening.

Millions of Ugandans depend on U.S. aid to receive treatment for HIV, malaria, and other epidemics. This aid has also supported maternal and child health, vaccine delivery and other forms of logistical support.

USAID was key during the Covid19 response in Uganda. In 2021, at the height of a deadly variant, it contributed US$3.5 million for oxygen and other supplies. During the Ebola outbreak in 2022, the Ministry of Health received viral hemorrhagic fever kits from USAID including gloves, boots, masks and scrubs.

According to U.S. foreign assistance data, U.S. aid to Uganda amounted to averagely $710 million (Shs2.5 trillion) per year—the bulk of it going to HIV/AIDS treatment.

The USAID funding of health activities in Uganda was almost double what the health sector was allocated in the 2024/2025 budget at Shs1.3trn. More than a month since the cuts, an estimated two thousand medical workers remain unemployed and patients are in dire condition as the Ugandan government scrambles to plug the gaps left by the largest health benefactor.

Ellen Masi, U.S. Mission Uganda Public Affairs Counselor, told The Independent in an email that the embassy’s diplomatic operations continue per Executive Order reevaluating and realigning United States Foreign Aid.

As an example, Masi said under Secretary of State Rubio’s waiver for lifesaving humanitarian activities, the U.S. Government has mobilised an extensive, coordinated interagency response to address the recent Ebola outbreak.

“We are bolstering the Government of Uganda’s response to Ebola with technical assistance and expertise on case identification and field investigation, contact tracing, lab diagnostics, points of entry screening, medical countermeasures, risk communication, community mobilisation, logistics management, and infection prevention and control.”

But sources familiar with workings of the embassy say a number of activities are under review by the U.S. Mission following the uncertainty that came with the hiring freeze and the shutting down of USAID which works closely with American embassies worldwide to implement U.S. foreign policy objectives. Orders have been issued to reduce local embassy staff per sources.