By Kim Heller
On 20 January 2025, under the guise of fiscal austerity, US President Donald Trump issued an executive order to freeze foreign aid for ninety days. For those dependent on support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for their basic survival and health care needs, this executive order could well prove to be a death sentence.
The President of Oxfam America, Abby Maxman, expressed concern about Trump’s instruction to freeze aid.
She said, “We will see life or death consequences for millions around the globe, as programmes that depend on this funding grind to a halt without any plan or safety net. Aid experts are unable to operate or plan if they don’t know when funding will arrive, or how much”.
Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid is a reckless show of power. That it was executed without warning makes it an act of cold-hearted cruelty. For millions of people in Africa who are either wracked by life-threatening illness or have been displaced by war and conflict, the withdrawal of USAID could be a fatal blow.
Vulnerable people, including refugees in conflict zones across Africa, face a grim few months ahead as essential relief programmes and services are either being terminated or downscaled.
Many HIV/AIDS treatment centres face closure, and shortages of medical supplies are fast becoming an everyday pandemic. Decades-long advances in the effective treatment and management of HIV/AIDS could well be quashed, and new infections could skyrocket.
The Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAID), Winnie Byanyima, has cautioned that a withdrawal of support for global HIV/AIDS programmes by the United States could result in a six-fold increase in infections by 2029 and a 10-fold jump in AIDS-related deaths.
On 17 February 2025, physician and member of the Socialist Equity Party in the United States, Dr Benjamin Mateus, wrote about the serious political and social implications of Trump’s decision to freeze aid. He warns of a humanitarian catastrophe.
“The agency’s $44 billion budget is less than 1 per cent of the overall $6.75 trillion US federal budget,” Mateus writes, “But even this pittance accounts for a substantial portion of famine relief and disease treatment and prevention in the world’s second most populous continent”.
In 2024, Sub-Saharan Africa received well over six billion dollars in humanitarian aid from USAID. The majority of this aid was used to support health and food security programmes. The state of the region and the Continent is dire. The brutal funding cut comes at a time when Africa's health is in critical care.
The well-being of Africa is not the business of any foreign nation. Trump’s easy abandonment of Africa is unlikely to cause him any sleepless nights. His hasty withdrawal of funding, without any contingency plan or provisional care, is a testament to his merciless attitude and approach towards Africa.
The sudden and unexpected freezing of USAID is a very expensive lesson for Africa. It should be a wake-up call for the leaders of African countries that foreign aid is a precarious and often contaminated lifeline.
Often used as part of a modern-day toolkit to influence domestic African agendas, foreign aid, whether it is from the United States or any other world power, is not a healthy long-term tonic for the Continent.
The dangerous side effects of foreign aid include chronic and debilitating dependency and a lacklustre disposition towards domestic development and self-reliance.
In an article in the Peoples Dispatch on 18 February 2025, Nicholas Mwangi, a member of the Ukombozi Library in Kenya, wrote how Africa’s enduring “ neocolonial dependency” on the United States is being called into question under the second administration of Donald Trump. Mwangi writes of how this relationship has been largely one of dependence rather than benefit for Africa and pointedly notes how the withdrawal of USAID has exposed not only the depth of Africa’s dependency on foreign aid but also the fragility of its health sector, capacity, and infrastructure.
“While these funds have supported healthcare initiatives, they have not addressed the weaknesses of Africa’s health infrastructure, which stem from its neoliberal framework of the commodification of health services. Instead of developing self-sufficient health systems, many African countries remain at the mercy of external donors who can withdraw support at will,” Mwangi writes.
There is no quick fix for now.
Emergency measures will need to be put in place and may require a desperate pursuit of new funding partners to provide bridging finance as well as longer-term support. Countries in the Sahel region are actively building new partnerships with China and Russia as they move away from Western powers. While these new realignments may provide an initial booster of reinvigoration, they are infrequently the right prescription for lasting prosperity as they often fail to purge unhealthy and unbalanced power relations and the ills of dependency and servility.
Aid may bring immediate relief, but it is an unsustainable longer-term remedy. The African Union would do well to invest in more agile, ready-and-steady domestic emergency funding and crisis management mechanisms and networks.
Mwangi contends that effecting strong partnerships within BRICS and regional economic blocs could provide new avenues for growth.
The flourishing of the Continent will not be guided by a foreign hand or handout, no matter how benevolent and well-meaning the partner. African countries must be as fixed on building their economies and infrastructure as Trump is. They must dictate the terms of engagement just as Trump is in his development of a golden age for the United States.
If Africa fails to take charge of its destiny, it will continue to be caught in a desperate clutch of dependency. The solution is within Africa.
Africa requires an enormous dose of self-care and self-administration. This is the only tonic for sustainable well-being. It is time for a new prescription for Africa.
Kim Heller is a political analyst and author of No White Lies: Black Politics and White Power in South Africa.