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AS AID ENDS, EMPIRE ENDURES  
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Marjorie Namara Rugunda
May 29, 2025
Africa is a Country
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_ Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they
built—rooted in control and dependency —still shapes Africa’s
development. As aid shrinks, the work ahead is not just to survive the
cuts, but also to refuse the system that made them matter. _

Residents of Agege community gather at an NGO event in Lagos, January
2024, (image © Tolu Owoeye via Shutterstock).

 

In recent months, Western governments have been loudly rethinking
their aid strategies. The US
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a dramatic reduction in foreign assistance, claiming that the
“foreign aid industry” destabilizes world peace by promoting
values “inverse to harmonious and stable relations.” Meanwhile,
the UK
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slashed its aid budget, citing the need to prioritize defense
spending. Germany
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the world’s second-largest aid donor, has also signaled reductions
in its aid spending following its recent elections. These moves have
sparked debate about what these cuts mean for African countries.
Some commentators
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them as wake-up calls, urging African governments to become
self-reliant and finally build sovereign systems without leaning on
Western donors.

However, calls for sovereignty
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be separated from the history of aid and the role of NGOs on the
continent. This is not just a moment of budget cuts. It’s a moment
that demands a deeper reckoning with how aid and development have
functioned as tools of control—how they hollowed out the African
state and replaced political struggle with donor-led projects. Aid is
more than a line item in a budget—it is a system of power. These
cuts, rather than a break from the past, expose the deeper structures
of dependency that have long defined African engagement with Western
development models.

The idea that foreign aid is about support or solidarity has always
been a carefully constructed illusion. Back in 2002, Firoze Manji and
Carl O’Coill, in their article _Missionary__ Positions: NGOs and
Development in Africa_, called out NGOs as “the missionary arm of
neoliberalism”—not neutral helpers, but key players in a system
that restructured African states under the banner of reform. Their
work is still relevant today. What they laid bare was how, especially
in the wake of structural adjustment programs (SAPs
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introduced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF
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public spending and privatized state functions, gutting local
infrastructure and leaving a vacuum that NGOs quickly moved to fill.
Non-governmental organizations became the main interface between
African people and their governments, except that the state had been
replaced by development agencies and international donors.

Importantly, Manji and O’Coill also show that the rise of NGOs was
not just a story of soft power—it was a continuation of colonial
control by other means. As African countries gained independence in
the 1960s and 1970s, former colonial powers didn’t disappear; they
rebranded. The overt racial hierarchies of empire gave way to a new
language of “development.” NGOs emerged at this moment, filling
the vacuum left by retreating colonial administrations. The discourse
of development replaced the language of civilizing missions, but the
dynamics of domination and paternalism remained. Under the guise of
helping, NGOs continued to manage African populations and territories,
only now with the moral authority of humanitarianism.

Non-governmental organizations in Africa, mostly backed by foreign
donors, offered schools, clinics, food programs, and even roads. But,
as Manji and O’Coill show, this wasn’t a neutral or benevolent
intervention. The NGOs replaced the political with the technical. They
reframed poverty as a problem of skills and resources, not as the
outcome of global inequalities or failed economic models. Development,
once a political project of liberation and redistribution, became a
managerial task outsourced to foreign-funded organizations.

This shift was not only institutional but also linguistic. As Manji
and O’Coill highlight, the very language of development was
transformed. Buzzwords like “empowerment,”
“capacity-building,” and “participation” were stripped of
political content and repackaged as apolitical tools of governance.
The discourse no longer spoke of justice or structural inequality—it
spoke instead of efficiency, best practices, and deliverables. In
doing so, development became something done to people, rather than
something done with or by them. This helped legitimize NGOs as neutral
actors, even as they worked within—and helped reproduce—structures
of global inequality.

USAID played a key role in institutionalizing this model
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It has long been one of the largest funders of NGOs across Africa.
Unlike direct support to governments, which comes with expectations of
transparency and political engagement, channeling money through NGOs
gave donors like the US and UK more control, fewer complications, and
less public scrutiny. It allowed them to shape development priorities
and implementation while bypassing state institutions altogether.

This logic persists today. Even as political relationships between
Washington or London and countries such as Uganda, Kenya, or Ethiopia
become strained, the NGO infrastructure funded by their aid programs
remains intact. In Uganda
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example, USAID has funded hundreds of initiatives in education,
agriculture, and health. Although some of these efforts have delivered
services, they are also emblematic of a development model that
sidelines governments and treats African publics as recipients, not
agents.

This is why the current moment feels both urgent and misleading. Yes,
African states must build independent systems. But the real issue
isn’t just the loss of money, it’s the legacy that money has left
behind. For decades, foreign aid has helped shift accountability away
from elected governments and toward foreign donors. It depoliticized
poverty and institutionalized dependency, all while claiming to
promote development.

What emerges, then, is not a model of sovereignty but of structural
dependency. Manji and O’Coill describe NGOs as “instruments of
pacification” rather than mobilization. Far from empowering people
to demand justice or transformation, they defuse dissent, redirect
energy into professionalized service delivery, and ultimately protect
the very global systems that created underdevelopment in the first
place. The withdrawal of USAID or UK aid does not undo this reality;
it simply reveals it more starkly. What, then, is to be done? This
moment invites not just critique, but a strategy. As aid recedes, the
urgent question is not how to replace it, but how to move beyond
it. Sovereignty
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mean swapping Western donors for private investors or new geopolitical
patrons. It must mean rebuilding public institutions, confronting the
neoliberal wreckage of the SAP era, and rejecting the NGO-ization of
the state. But that vision won’t materialize automatically. It will
require political struggle—inside African states, across civil
society, and in global fora. If aid helped depoliticize development,
moving beyond it means re-politicizing it again.

The NGO model outlasted the aid flows that created it. It lives on in
the clinics, schools, and community programs scattered across African
countries—often doing necessary work, but always within limits
defined by donors. Manji and O’Coill warned us not to mistake this
for liberation. As aid budgets shrink, the work ahead is not just to
survive the cuts, but also to refuse the system that made them matter
so much in the first place.

_Marjorie Namara Rugunda is a writer, researcher, and PhD student at
the University of British Columbia._

_Africa Is a Country offers a critical perspective on various social,
political, and cultural issues affecting Africa that push back on
continental legacies of colonialism and exploitation. Our editorial
viewpoint emphasizes the complexity and diversity of African
experiences, challenging stereotypes and simplistic narratives. Our
work highlights local voices and perspectives, focusing on
contemporary issues in politics, economics, and culture, as well as
the usable past. We often engage with broader global discourses while
remaining rooted in specific African contexts, advocating for nuanced
discussions that reflect the realities of life in Africa._

* Africa
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* U.S. foreign aid
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* NGOs
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* colonialism
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* neocolonialism
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