For decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been the world’s
largest national development and humanitarian assistance donor. It has provided critical material
and human resources to build resilience to shocks and to respond to crises all over the world,
particularly in Sahelian Africa. In February 2025, USAID was shuttered. While the impacts will
undoubtedly be profound and reverberate across the globe, they remain largely unquantified.
With debates about the role of U.S. foreign assistance invigorated by this recent event, providing
concrete evidence of these impacts is essential to shaping future policy discussions.
This project seeks to quantify the immediate effects on household food security and the
behavioral responses caused by the abrupt termination of food assistance. To achieve this,
the project draws on a panel dataset of 1,758 households, constructed from two survey waves
conducted in 2017 and late 2020 in Burkina Faso and Niger. Data was collected by TANGO
International from a USAID-funded resilience project: Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE).
In these regions, COVID-19 lockdowns and market closures occurred about six months prior
to the 2020 data collection. Approximately 20% of the households experienced an abrupt end
to their food assistance. Using this dataset, the project will provide insights into the impacts of
COVID-19 and, by analogy, offer a view of the fallout caused by the recent termination of USAID
development and food assistance programs.
Project Point of Contact: Zack Guido (zguido@arizona.edu)