WHY NOT BITE THE HAND ?

When Donald Trump announced a sweeping freeze on US government funding, including foreign aid, many saw it as a preview of the next four years. The move, framed as a bureaucratic review of federal spending, abruptly halted critical humanitarian and development assistance across Africa, disrupting healthcare programs, refugee support, and economic projects. By Will Shoki

Trump’s hostility toward foreign aid is not new. During his first term, he repeatedly sought to slash funding for initiatives like the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a program credited with saving millions of lives across Africa. While congressional pushback prevented the worst of these cuts, Trump’s ideological stance remained clear : foreign aid is a wasteful burden rather than a tool of global engagement.

The irony of the situation is almost too obvious. For decades, the US has positioned itself as the indispensable force in African development, pouring in aid while simultaneously enforcing the economic structures that keep African countries dependent on it. Now, Trump comes along and yanks the plug—not as part of some grand anti-imperialist awakening, but because he views foreign assistance as an affront to his brand of nationalist grift.

His supporters, ever eager to turn hypocrisy into a talking point, ask : Why do those who claim to be anti-imperialist panic when US aid is cut ? But this is a trick question. The problem isn’t just the loss of aid ; it’s that Africa was forced into a position where that aid was necessary in the first place. Decades of IMF structural adjustment programs, resource extraction by Western multinationals, and trade policies skewed to benefit the Global North have ensured that African economies remain precariously reliant on outside funding. If aid disappears overnight, it’s not because Africa failed—it’s because the game was rigged from the start.

Then came the Gaza mix-up—a moment that perfectly encapsulates the cruel indifference of US power. In attempting to justify his funding freeze, Trump and his administration claimed the US had been wasting $50 million on condom distribution for Hamas in Gaza. The problem ? The funding was actually allocated for HIV prevention in Gaza Province, Mozambique—not the Palestinian territory (where, to boot, his administration has just cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides essential services to Palestinian refugees). The mix-up wasn’t just a simple bureaucratic error ; it was an almost comical display of the sheer carelessness with which American officials handle foreign policy, particularly when it concerns the Global South.

So no, the issue isn’t that Africa needs to “wean itself off” US aid, as if this were some kind of bad habit. The issue is that the US shouldn’t hold the power to switch off entire economies like a lightbulb. Trump’s freeze isn’t an isolated policy decision—it’s a reminder of how fundamentally lopsided the global economic order remains.

The real challenge isn’t about finding new donors or appealing to the next White House occupant. It’s about reshaping economic structures so that an impulsive American president can’t decide, on a whim, whether millions of people in Africa receive life-saving medication or not. Trump’s crudeness only exposes what has always been true : foreign aid is less about generosity than control. And that, more than any funding freeze, should be the real crisis to address. Why not bite the hand that feeds ?