Sarah Salem
With the outbreak of the Coronavirus, several major donor countries announced foreign aid cuts to tend to domestic priorities resulting from the health crisis and the impact of lockdowns on several sectors. This seemed like the beginning of a new era where aid-receiving countries needed to revisit their dependence on foreign aid. Recently, the United States announced a suspension of all foreign aid contracts – a decision with which President Donald Trump kicked off his new term, as well as a 17% reduction of core funding to UN agencies. In addition, the United Kingdom decreased its aid budget from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%. Following suit, Germany slashed €2 billion from its aid budget in 2024, with additional cuts expected in the years to follow. Finland announced a 25% cut to foreign aid until 2027, and the Netherlands announced development aid cuts by €2.4 billion starting in 2027. Moreover, the Swiss reduced their aid by $282 million and the French by 18%. Sweden has also retracted its longstanding commitment to allocating 1% of GNI to aid [1]. Together, the cuts present a significant pressure on aid-receiving countries, as the need to revisit their aid dependency is becoming much more urgent. This rapid shift in development aid not only requires the attention of governments and decision makers, but also our input and critical engagement as development practitioners.
For years, there have been calls amongst practitioners to revisit the aid and development structure, going as far as demanding its decolonization. While these calls are becoming louder, they are not yet clear on how to decolonize development or what this means for the sector. As a development practitioner and translator, it is noteworthy that my preferred translation for decolonization as a word is “ديكولونيالية” rather than finding an Arabic equivalent. This is simply because in its current use, it is more or less forced by the Northern discourse, even if this discourse involves Global South scholars; their partaking in this discourse is through Northern institutions. These demands for decolonozing development and aid are always oblivious to the history of colonialism and the armed resistance it faced for decolonization to take place. It turns it into a buzz word fit for proposals only.
There have also been calls for South-to-South financing or even demands for a more neoliberal restructuring of African economies, where aid is completely abolished, as in Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (2009). There have also been efforts to restructure development aid towards a more balanced and equal relationship between donor and recipient countries. A glimpse of this could be viewed through the Global Fund for Community Foundations’ campaign #ShiftThePower, introduced in 2016 to push their conference in Johannesburg that year. This came as South Africa switched position from aid recipient to donor country, an interesting shift that raised questions about the improbability of functioning outside the aid sphere in the global economy [3].
Whatever the approach, we, as development practitioners, know first-hand by means of our field work that such calls, while important, are easier said than done. We understand the complexity of aid and that while many development projects did not yield as fruitful results as expected, others have impacted the lives of marginalized communities and individuals in life-changing ways. This dilemma needs to be confronted as we make these calls. The stop-work-effective-immediately brought this dilemma to the forefront of discussions amongst us. While it was brutally clear that the US administration views aid beneficiaries and workers as disposable, USAID workers still felt responsible for their projects. In friendly chitchats, two of our fellow ALUMNI, shared their sentiments of anger and grief towards what they called the humiliating decision. One of them has only worked for the USAID her entire career and was left traumatized by having to face young students with the fact that their scholarships have been revoked effective immediately, and that they needed to evacuate. Our other colleague was extremely frustrated as she really believed in the project she was working on, which focused on trade reform and development; she felt she was lucky to be part of something this impactful. Aside from the stress of having to look for a job in a shrinking market, they both wondered what struggles the beneficiaries of the projects they worked on were facing as a result of the decision.
The development field is changing fast; this is becoming undeniable. How we will approach this change as practitioners with a vast and diverse collective experience is the question of the moment. What if aid is dead? Should development follow? Or do we have a responsibility to find alternatives to rebrand development in a way that fits our true needs amidst global economic and political turmoil?
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[1] Hendra, J. (2024, September). Reductions, reallocations and replenishments – Will this be the year of the big squeeze on the UN Development System? Financing the UN Development System.
[2] Moyo, D. (2009). Dead aid: Why aid is not working and how there is a better way for Africa. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
[3] O’Riordan, A., & Stulgaitis, M. (2016). South Africa as a donor and southern Africa: The sustainable development goals (SDGs), emerging foreign policy and development themes in the post-Cotonou context. Transformation, (92), 84–106. https://transformationjournal.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/T92_Part7.pdf
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