Health Policy Watch: Zambia and Zimbabwe back away from ‘prescriptive’ US health deals

Health Policy Watch news story

26/02/2026 — The government of Zambia acknowledged this week that it is unhappy with part of a proposed health aid deal with the United States that “does not align with the country’s interests”.

The Zambia-US bilateral deal was due to be signed last December, but it faltered after the US linked the billion-dollar deal to access to Zambian minerals, particularly copper and cobalt.

Zambia indicated this week that it has requested “revisions” to the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and that it is still in negotiations with the US.

This week, it emerged that Zimbabwe had also halted its bilateral health negotiations with the US, rejecting the terms of an MOU worth $367-million over five years.

A leaked letter from Albert Chimbindi, Zimbabwe’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs, told officials involved in the US talks that the President directed them to “discontinue any negotiations with the USA”.

Meanwhile, Kenya’s High Court has frozen implementation of its US MOU after two separate court challenges by the Consumer Federation of Kenya (COFEK) and local Senator Okiya Omtatah over concerns about patients’ data privacy and the bypassing of Parliament.

So far, the US State Department has signed 18 bilateral global health MOUs with Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Panama, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.

Read the full news story here.

SEE ALSO:

• Devex CheckUp: ‘America First’ meets Zimbabwe first
• The Guardian: US accused of ‘shameless exploitation’ over proposed Zambian health aid deal