Africa and the opium of Foreign Aid
By Femi Olugbile
One of the developments associated with the ascendancy of President Donald Trump is the paring back of foreign aid, in the context of a rampaging disembowelment of governmental bureaucracy and human infrastructure through the agency of the Elon Musk led Department for Governmental Efficiency (DOGE). The two most visible entities at the centre of this dramatic change are the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
There were widespread howls of alarm and outrage from all over Africa when the news broke in Washington that foreign aid was being suspended. It was as if, for many people and their governments, the sky was about to fall. Video footage from BBC and CNN showed nooks and crannies of slums on the outskirts of Nairobi and Johannesburg and told human angle stories of orphans and whole families who lived with HIV, and whose survival appeared to revolve around the medicines and social initiatives funded by the American programmes.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in 1961 by President J.F. Kennedy as a vehicle for providing aid and development assistance to foreign countries. Its emergence was wrapped in the idealistic shroud of the ‘Camelot’ era, but it was really a powerful instrument for the propagation of American culture and foreign policy. If the USA was spending billions of dollars annually to bring potable water to people in villages in far-flung places from Afghanistan to Somalia, it was a logical quid pro quo that it should advance the strategic interests of America. Even the fact that most of the money expended on these foreign ‘philanthropic’ missions was retained in America as payment for US equipment and contractors, it could be said that, in touching the lives of people positively, the superpower was doing a noble deed.
That ‘do-gooder’ image has been tarnished somewhat by allegations, yet to be proved, that USAID millions were not just spent on providing roads and bore holes, but funding coups, insurrection and terrorism, possibly even Boko Haram in Nigeria. Whatever may be the facts, the government of President Donald Trump has decided to shut it down.
PEPFAR was initiated by President George W Bush in 2003, at the height of the HIV-AIDS epidemic which was causing untold hardship among the most vulnerable segments of the population in some African countries, especially South Africa and Nigeria. Operating in more than fifty countries, it has provided more than $120 billion for HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and research since its inception. President Donald Trump suspended the work but later granted a waiver for medicines and essential services to be continued. The future, clearly, is uncertain.
These two organisations have been used to illustrate the power and reach of foreign aid, which originates, not just from USA but also from Europe and Asia. It is a huge industry, involving billions of dollars annually from governments, but also from private sources such as Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The aid organisations operate directly in their target countries, or through affiliated local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).
Aid is a complicated emotional and economic issue whose seamy underbelly is best examined by starting from the basics.
It is the duty of every government to look after the health, welfare and development of its society. While temporary issues such war, natural disaster, crop failure, or longer-term challenges of poverty and under-development may make it necessary to take assistance from neighbours – near and far, it is understood that such assistance should, by definition, only be temporary. A man, in African culture, is not expected to feed his family permanently from the generosity of his neighbour, breeding dependency and entitlement.
Unfortunately, many African leaders appear to have outsourced the healthcare, welfare, and even developmental thinking of their countries to aid agencies. Between present poverty and future prosperity in a continent that is potentially the richest in the world, there is a journey that must be intentionally charted by the people themselves, and it cannot be delegated. It is called – em – Governance.
It is into this context that the discerning should fit the shady activities attributed to foreign aid organisations and their NGO partners in conflict zones such as the Northeast of Nigeria, as well the psychology leading to fake news about sinister designs and shenanigans attributed to Bill Gates in the social media.
About the corruption and ‘fitness for purpose’ challenges in the aid industry there is, unfortunately, no doubt. This writer once participated in ‘Donor Coordination’ workshops initiated by one State out of frustration at its inability to keep track of what its foreign aid ‘partners’ were doing in its villages and hamlets. They were notoriously reluctant to disclose their budgets, and the huge expenditure quoted on their parent websites were hard to correlate with the work seen on the ground. Interventions were often not synchronised with the State, leading to clustering of ‘projects’ in some places, while some other parts of the State were totally neglected. The aid culture in some places gave the sense of a gravy train from which foreigners and locals alike were invited to tap. There were also cultural and ideological issues such as the promotion of abortion and LGBTQ+ rights that might not sit well with local sensibilities.
At the bottom of it all is a fundamental requirement that foreign aid should be intentionally time-limited and fitted into a development process, not made into a way of life.
Perhaps Donald Trump’s actions with USAID and PEPFAR will serve as a wakeup call for African governments to at least begin the hard work towards true autarky. But perhaps the draw of the gravy train will be too strong to halt, or slow down, and African leaders will not learn the lesson that it is their duty ultimately to produce their own vaccines, food and medicines, and to do the thinking and management that will lead to true development of their countries.
