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In January 2025, when the Trump administration froze nearly all foreign aid, more than 1,000 emergency communal kitchens in Sudan shut down within weeks. Half a million displaced people lost access to clean water. Famine conditions that had been held at bay collapsed into crisis. Within months, Russian grain ships arrived in African ports and Chinese agricultural delegations expanded across the continent. Decisions made in Washington marked the end of seven decades of American dominance in humanitarian food assistance and the rise of two powers with fundamentally different models.

For the first time since World War II, the United States ceded its role as the world’s default responder to hunger crises. China and Russia are filling the gap by replacing emergency aid with systems designed to create permanent dependencies. Understanding how these competing models work and what they cost recipient nations will determine which countries retain food sovereignty and which become client states in a new era of agricultural colonialism.

The American Retreat

When Executive Order 14169 froze nearly all foreign aid for 90 days in January 2025, the predictability and order needed for reliable humanitarian aid were shattered. The U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance had saved approximately 3 million lives annually. In countries such as Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, the freezing of aid collapsed humanitarian infrastructure overnight. Organizations that had spent years building distribution networks found themselves unable to pay staff or transport food.

While American food aid included political calculation, it did maintain at least the pretense of needs-based assistance. The United States sent food to countries that voted against it in the United Nations. For instance, during the 1990s famine, even North Korea received American grain shipments. Political motivation drove the American model, yet it still operated according to humanitarian principles. Now, China and Russia are replacing this system with food assistance designed foremost to extract strategic value from hunger.

While European nations remain significant donors of food aid, they lack the scale and coordination to replace the United States’ capacity. In the past months, most have also reduced their aid budgets in favor of increased military spending amid the growing threat posed by Russia in the East. Europe cannot fill the space left by the United States.

The Russian and Chinese Models

Russia’s approach to food diplomacy, especially following its invasion of Ukraine, demonstrates how agricultural commodities function as geopolitical leverage. Moscow deploys “grain diplomacy” to strengthen ties with aligned states and weaken enemies. In early 2025, Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev announced the completion of an initiative shipping 200,000 metric tons of free grain to six African countries: Somalia, the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea. The timing is revealing, as the grain shipments coincide with Russia’s expanded security presence across the Sahel, where Russian troops arrived as part of the Africa Corps. The Central African Republic is seeking to host a Russian military base in exchange for receiving weapons and training. Moscow benefits by gaining access to natural resources, African support and votes in international forums, and military footholds that complicate Western influence.

Yet Russia’s grain diplomacy faces limits. From July to September 2025, Russian wheat exports fell to 10.9 million tons, down 28.8 percent from the previous year. Declining demand from Egypt and growing competition from Argentina and Australia are weakening what has been a key foreign policy instrument for Moscow. This model works only as long as Russia can afford to give away grain it could otherwise sell.

China has pursued a different form of food diplomacy, focused on long-term agricultural cooperation and trade integration with the Global South. In October 2025, the China-Africa Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Alliance convened in Addis Ababa, bringing together over 200 scientists and policymakers to discuss technology transfer and climate-resilient crops. China also announced a zero-tariff policy covering all tariff items for 53 African countries, dramatically expanding access to the Chinese market for African agricultural products.

Unlike Russian grain shipments, which are transactional and finite, Chinese agricultural engagement builds permanent infrastructure. China’s strategy establishes demonstration zones, agricultural technology centers, and training programs that foster dependence on Chinese expertise within African agriculture. Once a country’s seed varieties are bred for Chinese climate conditions, its irrigation systems are designed around Chinese engineering standards, and its agricultural graduates are trained in Chinese methods, switching to alternative suppliers becomes prohibitively expensive.

This is a more sophisticated form of dependence than Russia’s guns-for-grain bargain, and it is working. African nations gain genuine increases in agricultural productivity and economic growth. But they also lock themselves into asymmetrical relationships where China controls the technological standards, financing arrangements, and ultimately market access for their agricultural exports. While the “debt trap diplomacy” framing remains contested, with evidence showing Chinese lenders often restructure or forgive loans, the strategic leverage is real. Chinese-financed agricultural infrastructure creates dependencies that constrain recipient nations’ policy choices on issues Beijing cares about, including Taiwan recognition, Xinjiang criticism, and South China Sea disputes. The farms are economically productive, but they are not sovereign.

China’s model is predatory but also effective. It offers long-term development benefits, and it arrives without lectures about governance and human rights that accompany Western assistance. For the United States, this presents a strategic problem. China is building influence in regions Washington once dominated, not through coercion alone but by delivering tangible economic gains that win genuine support from recipient governments. For governments facing immediate hunger crises and long-term development challenges, Chinese agricultural partnerships offer a compelling solution.

Who Will Dominate and Why Does it Matter?

The competition between these models will accelerate in 2026 because American retrenchment is forcing countries to choose. Ethiopia has already signed agreements for Chinese agricultural development zones while accepting Russian grain shipments. Somalia is negotiating Chinese port infrastructure alongside Russian food assistance, and Sudan is receiving overtures from both powers. These countries are locking in dependencies that will govern their food systems for decades.

The consequences are difficult to reverse. Once Ethiopia’s seed systems are optimized for Chinese standards and its irrigation networks are built to Chinese engineering standards, switching suppliers becomes prohibitively expensive. The same path dependency exists in Russian security partnerships, where grain today means military bases tomorrow, and diplomatic alignment follows. Countries entering into these agreements now are trading immediate relief for permanent constraints on their sovereignty.

This matters because need-based humanitarian aid, for all its flaws, created space between human suffering and strategic calculation. When — notwithstanding the considerable domestic political controversy it caused — the United States fed North Korea during its late-90s famine, it demonstrated that hunger could be addressed without an explicit quid pro quo. The decision was seen through, despite being decried as “rewarding enemies of the United States.” That principle of prioritizing humanitarian need is dying. The American withdrawal is not temporary. The Trump administration’s cuts reflect clear political shifts, and Europe lacks both the scale and political will to replace American capacity. What replaces United States-led food assistance treats starvation as leverage and food security as a commodity to be traded for diplomatic compliance.

By the end of 2026, the geopolitical map of food security will look different. China will control even more agricultural infrastructure in multiple African nations. Russia will have converted grain diplomacy into security partnerships across the Sahel and Horn of Africa. The United States will have proven that seven decades of humanitarian leadership can be dismantled in a single presidential term. And hundreds of millions of people will have learned that, in the new era of great power competition, hunger is not a crisis to be solved but a tool to be wielded.

Fenja Tramsen works on food security at the European Union Delegation to the United Nations organizations in Rome. She was named a 2025 Rising Expert in Development Cooperation by Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and previously served as a Princeton in Africa Fellow at the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect those of the European Union or any institution with which she is affiliated.

Image: Wikimedia Commons