Hippolyte Fofack

WASHINGTON, DC – Back in 2015, then-Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta warned the Pan-African Parliament about the dangers of development assistance. “The future of our continent cannot be left to the good graces of outside interests,” he said. “Foreign aid, which often comes with terms and conditions that preclude progress, is not an acceptable basis for prosperity and freedom. It is time to give it up.”

Kenyatta’s call for self-reliance seems prescient in light of U.S. President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and recent cuts to already-diminished foreign-aid budgets in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He had a point: as aid dependence became more entrenched over the decades, Africa’s share of global trade steadily fell, and now stands at less than 3 percent. National ambitions to build productive industries that can meet domestic demand have atrophied, and continent-wide efforts to strengthen regional integration have waned.

That is why, despite the disproportionate impact of these cuts on the continent, some Africans see the demise of foreign aid as an opportunity. An Afrobarometer survey of 34 African countries found that 65 percent of respondents wanted their governments to finance development with their own resources, rather than with external loans.

Self-reliance was an aspiration of independence leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and a co-founder of the Organization of African Unity (a forerunner of the African Union) – who viewed the foreign-aid system as a form of neocolonialism. Current Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama has taken up the cause, calling the destruction of USAID “a signal to Africa that the time has come for us to be more self-reliant.”

Africa’s muted response........

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