I have followed with genuine interest the responses of some sub-Saharan African (SSA) writers to the collapse of foreign aid in 2025. Whether they reside in SSA or enjoy a diasporic life in the Global North, they have argued that the loss may be an opportunity gifted to the Global South. While millions will die, SSA will at last be able to throw off the multi-billion dollar shackles to which it was so unwillingly chained. How awful to have been placed in the position of choosing between the “n”-word—“no”—and the “y”-word—“Yes!”—when offered money.
The tenor of the writing suggests that in making the offer of aid, countries in the Global South were stripped of agency. They could only rediscover agency when they were stripped of the money. The evil aid system by which the Global North klept [sic] them enthralled has at last been dismantled. The opportunity, long denied, has finally emerged to build health and development systems that “work for Africa”.
You will, I hope, forgive me if I do not join that cheer squad or Greek chorus.
In left-wing politics, there is an aphorism that it is better to suffer exploitation than starvation. To cheer unemployment for the liberating opportunities it provides from the excesses of exploitative capital is as short-sighted as it is stupid. That does not mean exploitation is acceptable. It is not. It must be resisted and fought. But starvation is not the solution.
If foreign aid was a shackle, its sudden removal should be freeing. But stripping away the existing system does not automatically lead to something better. Stretched governments cannot replace the wreckage of collapsed health programs overnight. What may look like liberation on paper is abandonment. A just transition requires negotiation and genuine collaboration. It requires time.
If the goal was to end aid, donor countries could have managed future aid through a phased reduction. The process could include such things as a shift to loans on beneficial terms combined with early debt management and relief. The development of capacity, systems, and infrastructure would need to be a part of it.
When you reach into the water to remove a life-jacket from a drowning man, you have not provided him with an opportunity to learn to swim, nor have you (passively) “let him die”. You have killed him. He may bob above the waves for a few minutes, even an hour. You may helpfully scan the horizon for a bit of passing flotsam for him to cling to. But when exhaustion finally overwhelms him, and he slips beneath the surface, you are a murderer.
When, with the snap of the fingers, a country closes HIV antiretroviral programs—leaving the drugs to rot and expire in warehouses and shop lots—it has not (passively) let people living with HIV/AIDS die. The donor country condemned them to death and waited.
The personal relationship with the individual drowning and the anonymous one with the hundreds of thousands of people on foreign-aid-funded antiretroviral does not change the moral calculus of the death, and it does not mitigate the callousness and wanton cruelty of the murder.
Aid programs are not light switches that donor countries can (or should) turn off on a whim. Cutting funding overnight destroys systems that took decades to build, leaving chaos in their place. The systems may not have been perfect; they may have needed greater local ownership in the design; they may have supported corruption. However, if the goal is genuine self-reliance, the responsible course is a phased, predictable transition that allows for capacity-building, infrastructure development, and systems design and refinement.
Millions have been condemned to death, others to lives of increased hardship and misery. If donor nations refuse to acknowledge their historical responsibility, then at the very least, they must be held accountable for the consequences of their actions today.
The world’s wealthiest countries’ substantial and immediate reduction in foreign aid turns their backs on the international human rights, their international obligations to support the SDG, and the obligation to leave no one behind. The United States (U.S.) led the pack when they put USAID “through the wood chipper”, but others have followed.
“The UK, the Netherlands, and Belgium have announced the largest cuts in [overseas development assistance] ODA history, and the European Commission, France and Germany are expected to follow soon. These cuts are not just minor shifts, but cliffs: at least USD 60 billion by USA and GBP 6 billion by the UK, EUR 8 billion over four years (2025-2028) by the Netherlands, and a possible EUR 20 billion by Germany.”
What is the unifying historical theme of these donor countries? Empire. They did not build their wealth on ingenuity or fair trade alone. Conquest, forced labour, and resource theft was there. They racialised the right to development. The UK drained its colonies of raw materials while imposing economic structures that prioritised British interests over local development. Belgium’s rule over the Congo was so extractive and brutal that its legacy still echoes in governance failures and economic instability today. France has reluctantly and only recently relinquished control over its former colonies, where it maintained economic dominance through ‘Françafrique’ policies that benefited Paris over Dakar.
Slashing aid is not an opportunity. It is abandonment. Do not let them disguise it as anything else. Do not allow the wealthy nations to pat themselves on the back for their cruelty. It is an outrage, and it must be named as such.
The outrage does not erase the agency of recipient countries that agreed to destructive conditionalities attached to receiving aid. It does not forgive the naked corruption that sometimes occurs. It does not excuse the capacity of poor countries to exploit their even poorer neighbours, nor the exploitation of social stratification within their societies.
But none of these realities justify the wholesale destruction of life-saving programs without a plan, without accountability, and without justice. Nations that built their wealth through exploitation cannot now walk away and abandon vulnerable countries, whether they were directly plundered by them or by others. If they do not uphold their obligations, civil society, recipient governments, and international institutions should demand an ethical transition rather than an overnight abandonment that costs millions of lives. Anything less is complicity in death.