Three months after the Trump administration made drastic cuts to its aid agency, USAID, the effects are being felt across the world, particularly in Africa.
Donald Trump has long been a critic of foreign aid, arguing that it’s not aligned with American interests. But he is by no means the first person to criticise the aid industry. Debates about the effectiveness of foreign aid have rumbled on for decades, taking in everything from the way development assistance is distributed, to what happens to countries which become dependent on it.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Bright Simons, an African aid expert and visiting senior fellow at ODI Global, about where the decimation of USAID leaves the debate about the future of development assistance.
Bright Simons tells The Conversation that in broad terms, USAID spending in Africa is pretty small: “It’s about US$12 billion (£9 billion) roughly, so you’re talking about less than 0.5% of GDP in Africa.”
A lot of the aid spending on the continent was targeted at life-saving programmes in specific programmes, for example HIV programmes in Nigeria and Uganda. At the same time, some countries such as South Sudan or Rwanda rely heavily on aid. “ It’s not the same picture all across the continent, but there were specific spots that were very badly hit,” says Simons.
The USAID cuts come amid a general reduction in overseas development assistance by 7% in 2024 compared to 2023, the first fall in five years. The UK government has also announced its intention to reduce the percentage of gross national income it spends on aid from 0.5% to 0.3% from 2027.
No learning curve
Simons believes the crisis in aid is bigger than Trump. He’s critical of the lack of accountability in the way aid is spent both through the western model of development spending and through the more transactional approach of countries such as Russia, India or the United Arab Emirates. He argues that policies and programmes are often put in place and promoted with little scrutiny on the ground, and weak oversight on the way they’re delivered.
“ You don’t have a learning curve to get out of aid because you don’t know enough about what is working, what is not working, why it’s working, why it’s not working to chart a path that gets you away from that dependency,” says Simons.
Simons suggests that aid delivered through multilateral institutions does have advantages over bilateral agreements between countries. “ In theory, there is room for that kind of accountability. Whether or not you are allowed to actually exercise it as a different matter,” he says.
However, Simons suggests one response to the current reduction in foreign aid could be for multilateral institutions to borrow more money from capital markets and lend it on to low-income countries.
Listen to Simons talk about the history and future of aid on The Conversation Weekly podcast. The episode also includes an introduction with Adejuwon Soyinka, West Africa editor at The Conversation Africa.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Newsclips in this episode from CBS News, CBS Evening News and DW News.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts.
Bright Simons is Honorary Vice-President at IMANI, a think tank in Ghana. He is President of mPedigree, a technology social enterprise.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
