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President Donald Trump recently paused almost all foreign aid from the United States.
The executive order he signed reasoned that the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy” are not “aligned with American interests” and in many cases are “antithetical to American values.”
The action from Trump, alongside the attempted dismantling of USAID, caused weeping and moaning among leftists here in the United States, but also caused despair in the countries receiving funds.
At least some Africans are calling fellow citizens to embrace this pause on foreign aid as a unique opportunity for self-reflection and a chance to seek more independence from the West.
Africa for Africans.
Former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta mocked other African leaders for complaining about the pause in foreign assistance. “Why are you crying? It’s not your government. It’s not your country,” he said. “He has no reason to give you anything. You don’t pay taxes in America.”
“This is a wakeup call to say, okay, what are we going to do to help ourselves?” he said.
The blunt but true remarks were followed by comments from online influencer Janice Nkajja, a native of Uganda who expressed concern about the pause of some healthcare programs but likewise noted that the freeze on foreign aid is a wakeup call for the continent.
“The moment the owners of the money say ‘Let’s take a ninety-day pause that I audit where my money is going,’ suddenly the whole country goes into a frenzy,” the influencer observed.
“This should be a moment of reflection for Uganda and the African continent,” she continued. “We have been asking for a very long time to be liberated from colonialism and neocolonialism, and now that the opportunity presents itself, for some reason we are complaining.”
All of that seems sensible.
These comments indicate that the mature in Africa are able to recognize that they have no right to an unlimited slush fund of foreign aid, and that the entire institution is not only bad for Americans who have to fund the programs, but for Africans who become dependent on them.
There are very few downsides to the United States merely taking a few months to examine which of the foreign aid programs should continue and which should simply cease to exist.
Africans want their countries to flourish by no longer receiving free money from foreigners. Americans should much more want to stop bankrupting their country by shelling out their own money for those programs.
