By W. Gyude Moore
The dismantling of USAID has sparked an increasingly polarized debate, particularly among Africa watchers. In Washington, supporters argue that decades of foreign assistance fostered dependency and failed to advance American interests. Critics counter that the abrupt withdrawal of aid is already having devastating humanitarian consequences.
Reports linking the dismantling of USAID to preventable deaths are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, humanitarian organizations, and researchers have documented the growing human toll, even as Elon Musk has rejected allegations that his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency, which shuttered USAID, bears responsibility for these deaths. Their recent exchange on X underscored the divide over the consequences of the cuts.
Many Americans have long accepted that a small fraction of their tax dollars should help keep vulnerable people alive overseas, particularly when the cost to them is negligible. That instinct is admirable.
In Africa, this conversation has been muted. But the debate should not end with whether the US continues to provide aid. The more important question is why so many African governments remain unable to provide essential services without it.
For decades, African economies have generated enormous wealth through commodities such as cobalt, cocoa, gold, oil, rubber, timber, and tea. Yet the communities where those resources originate often remain poor. Value leaves as raw materials, profits are realized elsewhere, and too little is reinvested in the hospitals, schools, and public institutions that would make aid less necessary. What often returns, instead of investment or development finance, is aid.
This is not simply an international injustice. It is also a failure of governance.
Development has its place and I saw its benefits firsthand as a government minister in Liberia, both in rebuilding basic health at the end of the civil war and in responding to the Ebola outbreak. But no country can permanently outsource the welfare of its citizens. External assistance can strengthen capacity, but it cannot substitute for a functioning state.
That is why the collapse of USAID should be viewed not only as a humanitarian crisis but also as a political reckoning. It is an opportunity to question a structure of exchange in which the geographies where indispensable value is extracted receive so little of that value. As Semafor has reported, the cuts threaten critical health and development programs across Africa while also dismantling one of Washington’s most effective tools of influence. Ghanaian President John Mahama has argued that the aid shock should compel African governments to strengthen domestic institutions rather than simply seek new donors. He is right.
Governments cannot build national resilience around decisions made in Washington or any other foreign capital. Those decisions will always be shaped by changing domestic politics in those faraway countries. African governments, by contrast, have a permanent obligation to their own citizens.
The lesson is not that aid has failed. It is that aid became indispensable because too many governments failed to build the institutions capable of delivering essential services on their own. Those who have tried to do so have been stymied by the continent’s negative terms of trade.
A new path means strengthening tax systems, managing natural resource revenues transparently, adding value to exports instead of shipping raw commodities abroad, and treating healthcare and education as fundamental responsibilities of the state.
None of this diminishes the responsibility of wealthy countries. Humanitarian assistance remains indispensable, and the US has every reason — moral, strategic, and humanitarian — to continue supporting vulnerable populations. The abrupt dismantling of USAID has already harmed both vulnerable communities and America’s standing in Africa.
But African countries cannot build their future on the assumption that foreign governments will always fill the gaps. Aid should help nations stand on their own, not become the foundation on which they stand. If there is one lesson from the USAID debate, it is that Africa’s greatest insurance against political shifts in Washington is stronger, more accountable governance at home.
Opinion/ W. Gyude Moore is Liberia’s former minister of public works and currently a distinguished fellow at the Energy for Growth Hub.
