Zimbabwe has declined a proposed $367 million health funding agreement from the United States, citing concerns about how sensitive health data and biological materials would be used.
Per BBC’S Report, the decision became public after a government memo from December was leaked. The document indicated that President Emmerson Mnangagwa considered the terms of the deal unfair.
Under the proposal, the US government would have provided funding over five years to support HIV/Aids treatment and prevention, tuberculosis and malaria control, maternal and child health services, and disease outbreak preparedness.
According to the US embassy, Washington has invested more than $1.9 billion in Zimbabwe’s health sector over the past 20 years.
Zimbabwean officials said the main concern was a requirement for access to biological samples and long-term health data.
Government spokesperson Nick Mangwana described the agreement as unequal. In a statement, he said Zimbabwe would have been required to share biological resources and data for research purposes without clear guarantees that the country would benefit from any vaccines, treatments or diagnostic tools developed from that research.
“In essence, our nation would provide the raw materials for scientific discovery without any assurance that the end products would be accessible to our people should a future health crisis emerge,” he said.
He added that Zimbabwe’s position should not be seen as hostility toward the United States, saying the government remains open to discussions on a revised framework that respects national sovereignty.
US ambassador to Zimbabwe Pamela Tremont confirmed that health assistance programmes would now be scaled back.
“We will now turn to the difficult and regrettable task of winding down our health assistance in Zimbabwe,” she said.
The US embassy noted that similar bilateral health agreements have been signed with 16 African countries, representing more than $18.3 billion in funding commitments.
The shift comes as US President Donald Trump has reduced foreign aid spending and closed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). His administration has argued that direct government-to-government agreements improve accountability and reduce waste.
Health professionals in Zimbabwe have urged both sides to continue talks. The Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians said it understood the government’s concerns about data governance but stressed that many HIV programmes depend heavily on external funding.
The group suggested that technical issues related to data protection and implementation could be resolved through negotiation and safeguards.
Zimbabwean officials also pointed to existing global systems under the World Health Organization, including the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing framework, which aims to ensure countries that share health data also receive fair access to resulting medical tools. For now, the funding offer remains off the table.