Donald Trump wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s made that abundantly clear, practically nominating himself at the United Nations while boasting about ending “seven un-endable wars.” But his actions tell a drastically different story—one of devastation, death, and destabilization that will reverberate across Africa for generations.
In January 2025, Trump froze funding for PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, effectively shutting down HIV treatment and prevention programs that 20 million people depend on to stay alive. Clinics across sub-Saharan Africa closed their doors. Medicine supplies were cut off. A $45 million HIV vaccine trial in South Africa was stopped mid-enrollment. By February, the State Department had terminated 5,800 of 6,300 foreign aid contracts issued by USAID.
This isn’t just a health crisis. It’s a security crisis that will spawn the very conflicts Trump claims to be ending.
The AIDS Epidemic Created the Conflicts Trump Claims Credit For
Trump fundamentally misunderstands—or deliberately ignores—the direct connection between the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the conflicts ravaging Africa today. The wars he boasts about stopping were, in many cases, caused by the devastation AIDS inflicted on these regions.
Between the 1980s and early 2000s, HIV/AIDS decimated entire populations across sub-Saharan Africa. In countries like Botswana, adult HIV prevalence reached 39 percent. South Africa saw HIV prevalence among pregnant women skyrocket from 0.7 percent in 1990 to 24.5 percent in 2000, reaching 36.2 percent in KwaZulu-Natal. AIDS became the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa, wiping out 20 years of life expectancy gains in just two decades.
The epidemic didn’t just kill individuals—it hollowed out entire societies. It struck hardest at people aged 15-45, the most productive members of society critical to state development and family stability. When millions of working-age adults died, they left behind power vacuums, orphaned children by the millions, and collapsed economies. Tax bases evaporated. Foreign investment dried up. Health systems crumbled. The social fabric disintegrated.
This created the perfect conditions for conflict.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, the centerpiece of Trump’s peace deal claims, exemplifies this destructive cycle. The country has been wracked by conflict for decades, with more than 100 armed groups operating in the region. HIV prevalence in the Congolese and Rwandan militaries reached as high as 60 percent. As the UN Security Council recognized in 2000—marking the first time a health issue ever reached that body—HIV/AIDS posed a direct threat to national security by destroying economic capacity, depleting human capital, and intensifying power struggles over limited state resources.
Rwanda’s involvement in the Congo cannot be separated from the regional destabilization that followed the 1994 genocide—a catastrophe that unfolded as AIDS was simultaneously ravaging the region’s population. The epidemic created conditions of poverty, displacement, and institutional collapse that fed directly into ethnic tensions and resource conflicts.
Uganda, another country in Trump’s list, experienced one of Africa’s earlier HIV epidemics. Some analysts believe that rising AIDS mortality in Uganda in the late 1980s and 1990s became a catalyst for changing the country’s trajectory—but only after the disease had already contributed to years of instability and conflict.
South Sudan, Somalia, Sierra Leone, and Burundi—all conflict zones Trump references—share this same grim pattern: AIDS epidemics that destroyed state capacity, created orphan populations vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups, and left societies too fragile to resist descent into violence.
The World Bank reported in 1999 that one out of every five Africans lived in countries severely disrupted by war or civil conflict. Meanwhile, AIDS was killing millions. These weren’t parallel crises—they were interconnected catastrophes, each feeding the other in a deadly spiral.
George W. Bush Understood What Trump Doesn’t
In 2003, Republican President George W. Bush recognized this devastating connection between AIDS, instability, and conflict. He launched PEPFAR with strong bipartisan support—a $15 billion, five-year emergency plan that represented the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history.
Bush understood that combating AIDS wasn’t just humanitarian—it was essential for stability, security, and preventing the conflicts that emerge from collapsed states. PEPFAR wasn’t charity; it was strategic investment in global security and American interests.
The program worked. Over two decades, PEPFAR saved more than 25 million lives. It prevented millions of HIV infections. It helped countries achieve “epidemic control status,” meaning they could finally start managing rather than simply surviving the crisis. It enabled 5.5 million babies to be born HIV-free. It reduced the cost of antiretroviral treatment from $1,200 per person per year in 2003 to just $58 in 2023.
PEPFAR didn’t just save lives—it stabilized regions, strengthened economies, and prevented the very conflicts that Trump now falsely claims credit for ending. Countries that received PEPFAR support saw GDP per capita growth rates increase by 1.4 percentage points for every 1 percent increase in ART coverage. In sub-Saharan Africa, this translated to $14 per person in additional annual income—modest by American standards, but transformative for communities emerging from crisis.
Trump Is Guaranteeing the Next Wave of Conflicts
By cutting PEPFAR funding, Trump has lit the fuse on Africa’s next generation of conflicts.
South African officials project that the funding cuts will lead to 500,000 deaths over the next decade in their country alone. One study estimates that without PEPFAR funding, South Africa could see 565,000 additional new HIV infections and 601,000 more deaths by 2034, requiring $1.7 billion in extra healthcare costs the country cannot afford.
Multiply that devastation across the 54 countries where PEPFAR operates.
When antiretroviral treatment stops, HIV-positive individuals become infectious again within days to weeks. Pregnant mothers with uncontrolled infections pass HIV to their babies. People with AIDS develop tuberculosis, spreading both diseases through their communities. The health systems PEPFAR spent two decades building—the trained workers, the supply chains, the monitoring systems—are being dismantled.
As one South African researcher put it: “Instead of a careful handover, we’re being pushed off a cliff.”
The consequences extend far beyond health. When PEPFAR pulled funding from healthcare workers, physicians and nurses were forced to abandon HIV clinics. The disruption broke trust between communities and health systems—damage that cannot simply be “turned back on” when funding eventually returns. Zimbabwe, Zambia, and other countries face imminent shortages of anti-HIV drugs.
Children are once again being orphaned at catastrophic rates. Orphans without support become vulnerable to recruitment by armed groups and criminal networks. Working-age adults are dying, creating the same economic collapse and power vacuums that fueled the conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s. State capacity is eroding as governments that were just beginning to shoulder their own HIV response are forced to reallocate funds from security, education, and development.
This isn’t speculation—it’s historical pattern repeating itself. The UN already recognizes that AIDS-related deaths and new infections create conditions for conflict. Trump is ensuring those conditions return.
The Cost to Americans: Roughly $2.50 Per Month
PEPFAR’s annual budget is approximately $4.7 billion. With about 154 million tax returns filed in the United States in 2022, that means PEPFAR costs the average American taxpayer roughly $30 per year—about $2.50 per month. Less than a single streaming service subscription. Less than two cups of coffee.
For that modest investment, Americans were preventing mass death, stabilizing entire regions, strengthening diplomatic relationships with more than 50 countries, and averting the conflicts that inevitably emerge from collapsed states. PEPFAR was producing what experts call “outsized returns”—massive benefits to U.S. national security and global health for minimal cost.
Trump has now terminated this investment. The savings to individual taxpayers will be negligible—imperceptible, really. But the cost in lives, stability, and future conflict will be catastrophic.
This Is Not Nobel Prize Behavior
Let’s be clear about what Trump has done. He brokered a peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda that people on the ground say hasn’t ended the fighting. Clashes continue. Humanitarian workers report ongoing human rights violations. The M23 rebel group—the most powerful armed force in the region—says the agreement doesn’t apply to them.
Meanwhile, Trump has pulled funding from the program that was actually addressing the root causes of conflict in these regions: the destabilization caused by AIDS.
He wants credit for putting out a fire while simultaneously pouring gasoline on the kindling that will spark the next one.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to those who have “done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” It recognizes those who advance lasting peace, not those who stage photo opportunities while guaranteeing future conflict.
Trump’s actions on HIV/AIDS in Africa represent the opposite of peace. They represent a fundamental misunderstanding—or callous disregard—for how stability is built and maintained. They represent a willingness to sacrifice millions of lives and decades of progress for political theater.
George W. Bush, who started PEPFAR, never won a Nobel Prize for it. He didn’t need to—the 25 million lives saved spoke for themselves. Trump, who is dismantling that legacy, believes he deserves one.
The people of Africa—the healthcare workers seeing their clinics close, the mothers watching their children die, the communities that will descend once again into the chaos that AIDS creates—know better.
So should we.
By Marnie Wills, Bio-Sciences Reporter