FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 7, 2026
The Association of Black American Ambassadors (ABAA) are Americans who have watched with alarm and sorrow as our government appears prepared to implement a “humanitarian aid” policy that will shame us in the eyes of history.
Reports from The New York Times, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, and a leaked State Department memorandum prepared for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, indicate that the United States has demanded preferential access to Zambia’s copper, cobalt, and lithium reserves as a condition for continuing HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria assistance to that country. The deadline given to Zambia was April 30, 2026. Since Lusaka appears not to have accepted Washington’s terms, lifesaving medicine for as many as 1.3 million Zambians will be cut off. The issue is not whether America should compete for critical minerals. It is whether we should use human beings receiving lifesaving treatment as pawns by our negotiators in order to secure another nation’s sovereign resources. There have also been reports of similar offers being made to other countries in Africa and, in some cases, offers of humanitarian aid being used as leverage to get countries to agree to receive third-country nationals who are being deported from the United States.
This is not policy. It is coercion. It is also a betrayal of the very programs it claims to administer.
The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), was introduced by President George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address as, in his words, “a work of mercy.” For twenty-three years and across four presidencies, PEPFAR was never conditioned on the extraction of a foreign country’s natural resources, or any other condition unrelated to the administration of the program or the treatment of this deadly disease. Its power came from the opposite premise: that American assistance, when offered in partnership and with respect, could save lives while strengthening America’s standing in the world. PEPFAR told the world that American power could be joined to American decency. It showed that our flag did not arrive only with conditions, lectures, or demands, but sometimes with doctors, nurses, medicine, laboratories, and hope.
What is now being proposed completely abandons that premise. The leaked draft Memorandum of Understanding with Zambia would reduce U.S. health funding to roughly $1 billion over five years, less than half the prior level, and condition even that reduced sum on three demands, only one of which relates to the goal of PEPFAR, and even that one is unrealistic. Zambia would be required to commit $340 million in new domestic health spending on a timeline it cannot possibly meet. It would be required to grant U.S. mining companies preferential access to critical minerals and, finally, it would also be required to restructure a $458 million Millennium Challenge Corporation grant toward mining regulatory reform.
A separate, secret “Bilateral Compact” would reportedly lock in the mineral terms. A 25-year biological and health data-sharing provision would extract the genetic and health information of Zambia’s people along with their copper.
The Africa Bureau memorandum prepared for Secretary Rubio states the matter plainly: “We will only secure our priorities by demonstrating willingness to publicly take support away from Zambia on a massive scale.”
This is not normal policy language, it is the language of extortion, written about people on antiretroviral therapy. This is not what we promised. This is not what was intended. And it is not, we believe, what the American people would choose if the choice were put plainly before them.
The American people did not fund PEPFAR because we expected copper in return. We funded it because, as President Bush said, we had the power to help. We funded it because a nation that can save a child from dying of a treatable disease and chooses not to is not the nation we believe ourselves to be. Strength is not cruelty. Hard bargaining is not the same as threatening the sick. National interest is not served by making America feared where it was once trusted. Insisting that a country make proper use of the aid we provide is an acceptable condition. Using humanitarian assistance as leverage to force economic or other concessions is not. This is not what we are as a nation.
We urge the Department of State to drop this plan in Zambia and anywhere similar plans have been proposed. We encourage the U.S. Congress review to this proposal to ensure that the will and intentions of U.S. taxpayers are respected.
CONTACT: Pamela L. Spratlen
contact@blackamericanambassadors.org
202-670-1517