Aljazeera | Saturday, January 24, 2026 
US and Ivory Coast sign $480m deal as part of ‘America First’ aid strategy

The Trump administration is forging bilateral deals with countries hit by widespread cuts to US foreign aid. The administration of United States President Donald Trump has signed a deal committing $480m in public health aid to the Ivory Coast. The agreement, signed in the West African nation’s capital, Abidjan, on Tuesday, is the latest turn in the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy. The plan envisions forging bilateral agreements with dozens of countries to receive US health assistance in the wake of the administration’s gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration has maintained that US foreign aid policy has been inefficient and wasteful, saying that the bilateral agreements will create more accountability, oversight and eventual self-sufficiency. Experts have questioned the efficacy of the approach and raised alarm over its transactional nature. At the signing ceremony on Tuesday, the US ambassador to the Ivory Coast, Jessica Davis Ba, said the US government is moving “beyond the traditional aid approach toward a model focused on trade, innovation, and shared prosperity”. “Today, our bilateral cooperation is entering a new phase. We are implementing the America First Global Health Strategy,” the ambassador said. As part of the agreement, the Ivory Coast committed to eventually providing up to $292m to health funding by 2030, Ivorian Prime Minister Robert Beugre Mambe said. The deal is the largest of the…Read more