In January 2025, when the Trump administration froze practically all international assist, greater than 1,000 emergency communal kitchens in Sudan shut down inside weeks. Half one million displaced folks misplaced entry to scrub water. Famine situations that had been held at bay collapsed into disaster. Inside months, Russian grain ships arrived in African ports and Chinese language agricultural delegations expanded throughout the continent. Selections made in Washington marked the top of seven many years of American dominance in humanitarian meals help and the rise of two powers with basically totally different fashions.
For the primary time since World Warfare II, the US ceded its position because the world’s default responder to starvation crises. China and Russia are filling the hole by changing emergency assist with methods designed to create everlasting dependencies. Understanding how these competing fashions work and what they value recipient nations will decide which international locations retain meals sovereignty and which grow to be consumer states in a brand new period of agricultural colonialism.
The American Retreat
When Govt Order 14169 froze practically all international assist for 90 days in January 2025, the predictability and order wanted for dependable humanitarian assist have been shattered. The U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement’s Bureau for Humanitarian Help had saved roughly 3 million lives yearly. In international locations akin to Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, the freezing of assist collapsed humanitarian infrastructure in a single day. Organizations that had spent years constructing distribution networks discovered themselves unable to pay workers or transport meals.
Whereas American meals assist included political calculation, it did keep at the very least the pretense of needs-based help. The USA despatched meals to international locations that voted towards it within the United Nations. As an example, in the course of the Nineteen Nineties famine, even North Korea obtained American grain shipments. Political motivation drove the American mannequin, but it nonetheless operated in response to humanitarian rules. Now, China and Russia are changing this method with meals help designed foremost to extract strategic worth from starvation.
Whereas European nations stay important donors of meals assist, they lack the dimensions and coordination to switch the US’ capability. Prior to now months, most have additionally lowered their assist budgets in favor of elevated navy spending amid the rising risk posed by Russia within the East. Europe can not fill the area left by the US.
The Russian and Chinese language Fashions
Russia’s method to meals diplomacy, particularly following its invasion of Ukraine, demonstrates how agricultural commodities perform as geopolitical leverage. Moscow deploys “grain diplomacy” to strengthen ties with aligned states and weaken enemies. In early 2025, Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev introduced the completion of an initiative transport 200,000 metric tons of free grain to 6 African international locations: Somalia, the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea. The timing is revealing, because the grain shipments coincide with Russia’s expanded safety presence throughout the Sahel, the place Russian troops arrived as a part of the Africa Corps. The Central African Republic is looking for to host a Russian navy base in trade for receiving weapons and coaching. Moscow advantages by getting access to pure assets, African help and votes in worldwide boards, and navy footholds that complicate Western affect.
But Russia’s grain diplomacy faces limits. From July to September 2025, Russian wheat exports fell to 10.9 million tons, down 28.8 % from the earlier yr. Declining demand from Egypt and rising competitors from Argentina and Australia are weakening what has been a key international coverage instrument for Moscow. This mannequin works solely so long as Russia can afford to provide away grain it may in any other case promote.
China has pursued a distinct type of meals diplomacy, targeted on long-term agricultural cooperation and commerce integration with the International South. In October 2025, the China-Africa Agricultural Science and Know-how Innovation Alliance convened in Addis Ababa, bringing collectively over 200 scientists and policymakers to debate expertise switch and climate-resilient crops. China additionally introduced a zero-tariff coverage overlaying all tariff objects for 53 African international locations, dramatically increasing entry to the Chinese language marketplace for African agricultural merchandise.
In contrast to Russian grain shipments, that are transactional and finite, Chinese language agricultural engagement builds everlasting infrastructure. China’s technique establishes demonstration zones, agricultural expertise facilities, and coaching applications that foster dependence on Chinese language experience inside African agriculture. As soon as a rustic’s seed varieties are bred for Chinese language local weather situations, its irrigation methods are designed round Chinese language engineering requirements, and its agricultural graduates are educated in Chinese language strategies, switching to various suppliers turns into prohibitively costly.
This can be a extra refined type of dependence than Russia’s guns-for-grain discount, and it’s working. African nations acquire real will increase in agricultural productiveness and financial development. However in addition they lock themselves into asymmetrical relationships the place China controls the technological requirements, financing preparations, and finally market entry for his or her agricultural exports. Whereas the “debt entice diplomacy” framing stays contested, with proof displaying Chinese language lenders typically restructure or forgive loans, the strategic leverage is actual. Chinese language-financed agricultural infrastructure creates dependencies that constrain recipient nations’ coverage decisions on points Beijing cares about, together with Taiwan recognition, Xinjiang criticism, and South China Sea disputes. The farms are economically productive, however they don’t seem to be sovereign.
China’s mannequin is predatory but additionally efficient. It presents long-term improvement advantages, and it arrives with out lectures about governance and human rights that accompany Western help. For the US, this presents a strategic drawback. China is constructing affect in areas Washington as soon as dominated, not by way of coercion alone however by delivering tangible financial beneficial properties that win real help from recipient governments. For governments going through quick starvation crises and long-term improvement challenges, Chinese language agricultural partnerships supply a compelling answer.
Who Will Dominate and Why Does it Matter?
The competitors between these fashions will speed up in 2026 as a result of American retrenchment is forcing international locations to decide on. Ethiopia has already signed agreements for Chinese language agricultural improvement zones whereas accepting Russian grain shipments. Somalia is negotiating Chinese language port infrastructure alongside Russian meals help, and Sudan is receiving overtures from each powers. These international locations are locking in dependencies that may govern their meals methods for many years.
The implications are tough to reverse. As soon as Ethiopia’s seed methods are optimized for Chinese language requirements and its irrigation networks are constructed to Chinese language engineering requirements, switching suppliers turns into prohibitively costly. The identical path dependency exists in Russian safety partnerships, the place grain right this moment means navy bases tomorrow, and diplomatic alignment follows. International locations coming into into these agreements now are buying and selling quick reduction for everlasting constraints on their sovereignty.
This issues as a result of need-based humanitarian assist, for all its flaws, created area between human struggling and strategic calculation. When — however the appreciable home political controversy it triggered — the US fed North Korea throughout its late-90s famine, it demonstrated that starvation might be addressed with out an express quid professional quo. The choice was seen by way of, regardless of being decried as “rewarding enemies of the US.” That precept of prioritizing humanitarian want is dying. The American withdrawal just isn’t momentary. The Trump administration’s cuts replicate clear political shifts, and Europe lacks each the dimensions and political will to switch American capability. What replaces United States-led meals help treats hunger as leverage and meals safety as a commodity to be traded for diplomatic compliance.
By the top of 2026, the geopolitical map of meals safety will look totally different. China will management much more agricultural infrastructure in a number of African nations. Russia may have transformed grain diplomacy into safety partnerships throughout the Sahel and Horn of Africa. The USA may have confirmed that seven many years of humanitarian management will be dismantled in a single presidential time period. And a whole bunch of tens of millions of individuals may have discovered that, within the new period of nice energy competitors, starvation just isn’t a disaster to be solved however a instrument to be wielded.
Fenja Tramsen works on meals safety on the European Union Delegation to the United Nations organizations in Rome. She was named a 2025 Rising Skilled in Improvement Cooperation by Younger Professionals in International Coverage and beforehand served as a Princeton in Africa Fellow on the Worldwide Livestock Analysis Institute in Kenya.
Picture: Wikimedia Commons
