Fatma Tanis

I think...

It hasn't had that like the decades of influence that U.S.

aid has.

But I think certainly, you know, China's biggest advantage perhaps is the fact that the U.S.

is pulling away.

And so right now, where the U.S.

is not giving anything, China is.

And that alone is a win for them.

Yeah, it certainly does.

And I do, you know, when I'm planning my reporting, that's something I definitely build in space for both, you know, logistically, but also mentally.

Most recently, when I was in Uganda, there was one story I was working on, you know, obviously, we were covering the USAID shutdown and its impacts and like the change in foreign aid policy.

However, I also wanted to do stories that had nothing to do with that.

And so there was this one program in a rural part of Uganda that I was profiling.

It was a program meant to, you know, push people who were living in extreme poverty out by giving them some cash and coaching.

It's a program that's, you know, has been...

it has has had high rates of success elsewhere and this one was doing something interesting it was not funded or supported in any way by the U.S.

it was funded privately and so you know we're we're out there in the field we're talking to participants of these programs trying to understand how their lives are changing with you know the help of this cash and the coaching and uh

we realized that there had been something that was stopping people from being able to invest as much as they could have or they had been encouraged to in building their businesses.

And it turned out to be that the U.S.

aid cuts had caused a serious slowdown in the local economy because people who weren't in the program, people in the area who had been receiving aid,