Rather than lamenting foreign aid cuts, African countries, often pushed to the sidelines by developed ‘core’ countries, should reconsider their role in the global economy and seek results that support their long-term growth, writes Susan Lado.
In January 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to reevaluate and realign US foreign aid. Since then, 86 per cent (£57.1 billion) of foreign aid, and 28 per cent (£3.3 billion) of foreign assistance grants have been cut.
Foreign aid and official development assistance (ODA) programs from Europe, the Americas, and Asia, have often been subject to reviews and reductions as donor countries’ foreign policies and domestic politics shift. However, none have resulted in such an immediate halt to aid flow as these latest US aid cuts.
In Africa, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania have each had over £150.4 million in foreign aid cut. Other countries, including Nigeria, Mozambique, Egypt, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Malawi, and Somalia, also had significant foreign aid cuts, ranging from £85 million in Somalia to £134 million in Nigeria.
Agriculture, education, civil society, conflict mitigation and reconciliation, good governance, infrastructure, and maternal and child health have seen at least 90 per cent of aid removed. The impact of this aid cessation varies from country to country. But the least developed countries and countries facing the worst food crises may be more vulnerable.
African countries have lost as much as 2.59 per cent of the Gross National Income due to the foreign aid cut. This will have debilitating ripple effects across many sectors of the economy.
Responses and critiques have flooded the media since the announcement of these aid cuts. The UN’s Secretary-General, António Guterres, and the UK’s Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, have described the actions as devastating to vulnerable populations and a strategic mistake that cedes soft power to competing political powers. Foreign policy think tanks Brookings and Chatham House, have highlighted the potential erosion of international trust in the US, which has, until now, played a central role in global humanitarian and development funding.
Over-dependence
Over the years, foreign aid has fostered over-dependence and limited recipients from fully achieving their full political, technological, and economic potential. The foreign aid may be devastating, but it should also provoke discourse on how Africa can look inward, identify and build its resilience, and chart its course going forward.
Critics of the Western model of foreign aid have long pointed to its tendency to perpetuate dependencies and over-reliance among recipient countries. These critics often refer to three prominent theories or schools of thought: dependency theory, modernisation theory, and world-system theory. These models explore the persistent challenge of underdevelopment and what transitions to developed status entail. Dependency and world system theories are used to reflect the role of external relationships (dominated by unequal exchange) in the development process. Relationships with developed countries (and their business corporations) are often viewed as barriers to economic growth, causing growth to be controlled by forces outside the developing nations’ economies. On the other hand, the modernisation theory suggests that underdevelopment stems not from external exploitation but from internal deficiencies, such as traditional social structures, cultural practices, and weak institutions. The path to development is for these to evolve through exposure to modern, often Western, values and systems.
These critical theory perspectives provoke discussion about how aid cuts may not be as devastating as they first appear. Instead, they might be better construed as wake-up calls that recipient countries should welcome. Drawing particularly from the world-systems theory, the current disruption invites African countries that have historically been relegated to the periphery by industrialised ‘core’ countries to rethink their insertion into the global economy. They can renegotiate outcomes that favour their sustained development as they define it. Rather than rely on the linearity and Westernised model of development favoured by modernisation theorists.
Africa must recalibrate toward internal, sovereign sources of resilience. This transition has long been advocated by dependency theorists to close the core-periphery divide. Institutions and policies at the national and regional levels are critical to this recalibration as they establish the foundations for economic autonomy, political coherence, and social investment.
Sound policies prioritising infrastructure development, technological innovation, and the nurturing of regional value chains will gradually reduce reliance on volatile global markets and aid. Robust institutions will ensure the enforcement of laws, policies and contracts; the protection of property rights; and the upholding of transparent governance, which are prerequisites for attracting sustainable domestic investments and foreign assets without ceding sovereignty.
Intra-African trade agreements and frameworks, such as the African Continental Free Trade Area, are crucial for consolidating fragmented markets, particularly in Central and West Africa, as well as in North Africa, whose markets are isolated from other African regions. These agreements will amplify collective bargaining power in global commodities and financial markets if amply supported.
Rather than lamenting the current situation, foreign aid cuts should encourage African countries to reconsider their role in the global economy and seek results that support their long-term growth. These will be based on their own definitions, instead of following modernisation theorists’ one-size-fits-all Western development model.
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