KPANDY TOWN, Grand Bassa County– Ezekiel Nwornee lies awake at evening, the load of his future urgent on him. After two years finding out right here at Grand Bassa University for his affiliate diploma in major schooling, he was wanting ahead to graduating subsequent month. But the choice by United States President Donald Trump to finish virtually all US help has put his diploma out of attain.
By King Brown with New Narratives
Ezekiel is one among 1000’s of college college students throughout Liberia whose scholarships in schooling have all of a sudden ended. Some like Ezekiel want simply $US288 to pay their commencement charges earlier than they’re accomplished. Now the 34-year-old is anxious for the way forward for himself and his household.
“In Liberia right now, you know the economic crisis, and when the program came, I was very happy, but now I worry about the graduation fees,” says Ezekiel who’s the primary particular person in his household to go to college. “If I can’t join my friends on graduation day, it will break my heart.”
Since the civil wars led to 2003 the US has been the second-largest donor to Liberia after the World Bank (which additionally depends closely on US funding). Education has been a key focus. The US has spent a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on Liberia’s schooling sector. Last 12 months alone, USAID allotted greater than $20 million – equal to virtually 25 p.c of the federal government schooling price range. (The authorities’s schooling price range jumped to $115 million in 2025.)
Still, USAID’s investments in Liberia’s schooling sector have been questioned by critics who ask what return has come for these massive investments. The schooling system stays one of many world’s poorest performers by virtually each measure. In one instance, a final analysis in 2021 of the $28 million USAID-backed Read Liberia mission, applied by US-based RTI International, discovered : “teachers’ uptake of the program in classroom instruction is poor. The cause of any program impact on reading levels is thus likely to lie outside the classroom rather than resulting from improved practices in classrooms.”
In 2024, Jarso Maley Jallah, Minister of Education within the incoming Boakai administration, reported that greater than 6,000 of Liberia’s academics had been volunteers – making as little as $20 a month – answerable for educating 1.3 million college students. Of these, just one in each 4 had tertiary instructor coaching. In some counties there was just one instructor for each 90 college students.
Critics have anxious that with out authorities funding to rent graduates of the USAID program, educated academics could also be pressured to maneuver out of the career. Minister Jallah has prioritized shifting educated academics from volunteer positions and onto the federal government payroll, in order that they got here decide to skilled educating careers.
Ezekiel and his classmates had been to be a few of these educated academics. They had been a part of a five-year $20 million USAID-backed program, additionally run by RTI International and recognized by the acronym TESTS, that was designed to place 3500 volunteer academics via tertiary applications by 2026.
The finish of this system has hit college students throughout eight universities and faculty in 5 counties: The University of Liberia, Africa Methodist Episcopal University, Lofa County University, Grand Bassa University, LICOSESS College of Education, Cuttington University, Adventist University of West Africa, and Nimba University.
Very few of the scholars say they may be capable to pay the excellent charges. Emmanuel Moore, a 25-year-old scholar at Cuttington Junior College in Kakata, Margibi County, is now scrambling to search out the $463 a semester that USAID had been masking.
“I don’t know where to start,” Moore says. “We were depending on USAID to help us, and now we don’t even know how to continue our education. Many of us can’t even pay the initial 15 percent of the tuition fees to start classes.”
Here are Grand Bassa University the cuts have had a direct affect. Nearly 140 college students on this campus alone have had their programs minimize quick. Almost all of them are already educating, with virtually no formal coaching. The educating school are anxious.
One chief of the USAID mission who requested for anonymity as a result of the Trump administration has instructed them to not converse to the press, says enrollment within the schooling division right here at Grand Bassa University had by no means exceeded 50 college students, however with the USAID program, the division had greater than 200 college students. He stated the cuts can be devastating to Liberia’s future.
“Without USAID, we will lose the opportunity to train the next generation of educators,” agrees Dominic Bah, Acting Dean of the College of Education at Grand Bassa University.
Teachers say Liberia’s schoolchildren would be the huge losers.
“I’ve been in the teaching field for over a decade, but this program has taught me new strategies, ways of teaching I never knew before,” says Ezekiel.
I’ve been within the educating subject for over a decade, however this program has taught me new methods, methods of educating I by no means knew earlier than,” says Ezekiel.
32-year-old Shirley Michaels, a single mom of three, agrees that her research have made her a greater instructor, particularly for Liberia’s many college students with particular wants.
“To be real, to do lesson planning, classroom management, it was USAID that brought this to my knowledge,” she says. “USAID even taught us how to do inclusive learning, for example, you get the child, the child cannot hear good, or the child is blind, and you say, ‘We have to find another school for them, so they alone can go there’. USAID says ‘No’. They gave us strategies to teach all of them together in the same classroom with those who can hear and see, and they will learn, and they will feel proud, and they will not feel segregated.”
Liberia’s Ministry of Education responded to a request for remark by saying that it was not but able to make a press release on how the federal government will reply to USAID’s cuts together with the TESTS mission.
Emmanuel Gweh, Director of Communication on the National Commission on Higher Education, says the Commission stands in solidarity with the affected college students, however has no funds to help. Gweh says they too are affected as a result of two of their employees who had been present process coaching in Nigeria have been laid off due to the cuts.
“It is sad for Liberia, but the NCHE cannot do anything about it,” she says.
Meanwhile college students have taken to social media begging for assist to assist them get to the top of their levels and turn into well-qualified academics, capable of elevate the futures of their college students.
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as a part of the Investigating Liberia Project. Funding was offered by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia. The funder had no say within the story’s content material.