The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been the topic of much debate and discussion over the last few weeks. Ever since, Elon Musk, along with his DOGE staffers, had taken much interest in the agency. Initially, Musk and members of the Trump Administration had stated that they would institute a 90-day pause of foreign aid deliveries in order to perform an audit of the agency. They said that their aim was to discover and eliminate any potential waste.
Over the last week, we heard about case after case of alleged wasteful spending by USAID in countries around the world. Reports of USAID money being used for a DEI musical in Ireland (whatever that even means), or a report of thousands of dollars being spent on a “transgender opera” in Colombia or the revelation of thousands of dollars being spent on a transgender comic in Peru. Such stories have been coming out nearly every day over the last week.
Elon Musk has been blasting the reported wasteful spending by the agency on his social media site X. He would even go as far as to call USAID a “criminal organisation.” Musk, along with members of the Trump Administration, have begun laying out a plan for some major reforms they would like to implement at USAID. These plans included significantly reducing the number of staff working at USAID and incorporating the agency into the US State Department.
However, over the last few days, Trump and Musk looked to have shifted their positions from calling for the agency to undergo major reforms to looking to shut it down completely. Both Trump and Musk are now claiming that the amount of corruption present within USAID is too much to handle and that the organisation needs to be completely done away with once and for all.
To say that the complete closing down of USAID would be bad for many parts of the world, particularly in Africa, would be an understatement. Millions of people are dependent on aid deliveries from USAID across Africa. USAID is very involved in things like food deliveries or medical aid deliveries, as well as dealing with things around trade and the environment. The USAID budget for the African continent alone is typically around 8 billion dollars.
Now, the reality is that it is unlikely that Donald Trump and Elon Musk can simply end USAID by themselves. The money apportioned to USAID is allocated by the United States Congress. Therefore, the executive branch cannot simply get rid of the agency if they feel like it. However, the agency clearly has drawn the ire of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who have both described it as being corrupt, so it can be expected that significant actions will be taken to hamper the operations of the agency.
These actions will potentially have dire consequences for people across the continent who have found themselves dependent on this aid for their well-being. These actions have led to some interesting discussions around the continent in response to the pausing of foreign aid by the United States government. A consistent theme I have seen online has been from people saying that this action would hopefully be a ‘wake-up call’ for African leaders to get their act together.
Likewise, there have been many lamenting the fact that so many African communities continue to be so dependent on any foreign assistance at all. So it only makes sense that our countries should begin to make significant changes in order to make ourselves less dependent on foreign countries for our welfare. However, for that to happen, there would have to be a drastic change in the way our governments function.
While it is nice to imagine that elected African elected officials would be galvanised by the potential dismantling of USAID and begin working hard to improve our countries, the reality is that, in most cases, that will not happen. For any kind of real change to happen, it would mean that the corruption and abuse of power that so many African politicians take part in would have to be addressed, which is very unlikely to happen.
Time and time again across the continent, we have seen anti-corruption politicians campaigning against the abuses that take place in our governments, promising to tackle corruption in the country. Only for them to immediately carry on the same abuses as their predecessors once they get into power. This culture, prevalent throughout most African governments, is the reason so many within our communities are dependent on foreign aid in the first place.
The idea that because Donald Trump and Elon Musk have decided that foreign aid should not be a major priority of the US government doesn’t mean that all of a sudden, African leaders are going to change. If the high levels of poverty that are already present across the continent have not been enough motivation, then the shutting off of foreign aid is not going to either.
The ‘wake-up call’ should I instead be directed towards regular Africans instead. It should be a call for major political reform to take place across the continent. The corrupt, self-serving nature of our governments is unsustainable. The fact that so many Africans require aid for basic things like food is evidence enough of this fact. What we desperately need around the continent, even more than foreign aid, is a new generation of leadership that would actually put the need of our people first.
