Tag: USAID

Trump’s Commercial Diplomacy is Setting the Stage for a Multipolar World

Posted on by Musanjufu Benjamin Kavubu

After the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, Washington along with its Western allies was clueless of what would happen next. They had developed their whole systems to rival the Soviet Union, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was no longer worried about the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB), almost overnight the Gosbank State Bank of the USSR and Comecon were gone and the IMF had no opponent, the just ended U.S Agency for International Development (USAID) had a free reign because the Vneshconombank and Soviet Committee for Solidarity with Asia and Africa were no longer in place to further soviet foreign aid programs. For the last three decades, America/West has had no motivation to direct its global influence.

NATO without the opposition of the Warsaw Pact went to a senseless expansion that led to a hot war with Russia in 2014 with Ukraine being the battleground; the security organization accompanied Washington to Iraq and Afghanistan in military campaigns that cost about $ 8 trillion including long term veteran care, interest on the loans and the reconstruction pledges, funding that could have built 6 China’s Belt and Road Initiative. As the United States is leaving Afghanistan and Iraq one thing is clear: all those dollars bills were for nothing because they lost both the wars from a tactical and strategic point because all they did was to lead to deaths of millions of people.

How the west has behaved in the last three decades has only hastened its decline, and diminished Washington’s global influence as Nnando Kizito Sseruwagi a senior research fellow at Development Watch Centre put it in his “A better deal: Why Africa is turning to China for development” pointing out how empires that have tried to dominate the world have all ended up falling. The reality is that as Americas’ decline happens there is a gap being created, a gap to reshape the world order.

The undertakings of Trump 2.o are all being a catalyst to the decline of the west, he has officially decided to put an end to USAID after its 6 decades throwing away what looks like Washington’s biggest soft power tool. It’s becoming more and more evident that the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will not survive as commercial diplomacy is being President Trump’s path of international relations. Washington through its America first policy is rolling out Tariffs even towards its long standing allies like Canada, a member of NATO and G7 an indicator that AGOA is in its last days.

President Trump has always been unconventional and in his first term in office he went ahead to meet the North Korea leader for talks that never materialized into anything, he also negotiated the withdrawal of the American and NATO troops from Afghanistan and handed the country back to the Taliban an event that showcased America’s weakest point. Lately Israeli news outlets broke the news that Trump was in direct talks with Hamas, an organization that Washington officially considers as terrorists. In his many unconventional approaches to diplomacy he has sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader regarding a deal on Iran’s nuclear program after he withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that had seen Iran only use its nuclear program for peaceful purposes at the same time opening up the country to the world. Everyone knows the Iranians can never negotiate from a position of disrespect as though they are selling their country in a real estate deal. During his campaign to return to the white house Mr. Trump on the Joe Logan Podcast said America got nothing from protecting Taiwan, he linked the whole situation on how the Mafia offer’s its security, his commercial diplomacy then took the Mafia diplomacy outlook. It’s the approach he has taken to the Ukraine situation, after the shouting match in the oval office with the Ukraine president, Washington froze it’s military support to Kiev and further went ahead to stop any intelligence sharing with Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government until a deal promising $ 500 billion rear earth minerals to USA is signed. He is basically setting NATO to Auto pilot and the European Union knows it has to step up on its security. On security the African version of NATO AFRICOM survived being axed during Trump 1.0 but with developments coming from White house the writing is on the wall according to a scenario plan report by a French think tank Institut Monteigne.

In October of 2020 China’s President introduced the saying “the East is rising and the West is declining” words that resonated with the global south because of what is unfolding, currently BRICS is giving the G7 a run for its money, when it comes to demographics that define markets and labor force and on a bad day fighting force in terms of war. The manufacturing capital of the world is in the east, South East Asia are taking up their place on the global stage and they are influencing organizations like the G20. Beijing has put in place its Global Security Initiative (GSI), Alan Collins Mpewo a senior research fellow at Development Watch Centre outlines how the GSI can fill the security void in places like Africa in his piece titled “D.R Congo Problems: Time to try China’s Global Security Initiative?” a piece that can mirror the situation in both the Sudans, for Beijing it has also been its official approach to the war in Europe and it’s the framework that was used to restore diplomatic channels between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

China is better placed to fill up the gap left by the west but being on top of the world doesn’t mean it will necessarily run and police the world since it has invested in the global south through FOCAC and Belt and Road Initiative to have equally developed partners not allies to reshape the future of the planet, through multilateralism in a multipolar setting that respects all cultures and civilizations.

The writer is a research fellow at The Development Watch Centre.

 

Trump’s Global Aid Pause: A path to a New World Order

Posted on by Musanjufu Benjamin Kavubu

The world especially the global South anticipated Trump presidency and after his inauguration the world was excited by his many executive orders (EO). The President in Botswana summarized the mood, he said at a press conference that the world was more peaceful during Trump’s first term. In his own way as President elect he influenced Anthony Blinken’s State department to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza.

As time has passed the reality of Trump 2.o has set in, the world has a glimpse of what his world is going to look like, his Secretary of defense broadened the picture of how Washington is to operate. During the Congressional hearing to approve Pete Hegseth nomination, it turned out he can’t name a single country in South East Asia, something that is telling about Great Power Competition between Beijing and Washington.

For global South, Trump presidency is was denoted with his stroke of a pen on January 20th 2025, that issued an EO pausing foreign development assistance for 90 days to foreign countries, NGOs, international organizations and contractors. By 5th February almost all employees that run the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) were prepared to be laid off.

At the height of Cold war in 1961, US President J.FKennedy created USAID to be the USA’s vehicle for all nonmilitary foreign aid with the aim of containing communism, it was also the US’s moral responsibility and economic obligation as a rich country to assist others especially during the post world war. For six decades the USAID has propel America’s soft power across the world especially in places like Africa.

Trump 2.o largely happed because during the campaigns the Republicans promised to cut all wasteful spending and that is being led by Elon Musk in the new government agency called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that advised the slashing of USAID and it’s operations move under the State Department and in the process taking away US Soft power.

The term soft power was introduced by Joseph Nye in 1990 in his book “Bound to lead, the changing nature of American Power” and also further broadened in his  “The means to success in world politics” in (2004). He described soft power as a country’s ability in achieving its international goals through attraction and persuasion rather than through coercion. A country with substantial soft power influences others by projecting an attractive culture, political values, and foreign policies that are considered legitimate and morally appealing and this was the basic idea of President J.F Kennedy when establishing USAID.

According to Council on Foreign Relations (cfr) USA has been able to spread her wings through humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and it’s through such models that President G.Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) was operated. The Secretary of State Marko Rubio has said it was waived to go on but that has proved to be untrue because USAID systems were it’s back bone.

cfr also ascertains that USAID was a pillar to US’s development projects that are aimed at economic stability and capacity building to bring about America’s image as a promoter of progress and prosperity. USAID has also been a key vehicle in the promotion of democracy and human rights agenda by Washington for the last 6 decades. At the end of the day the agency has been at frontier of American diplomacy according to Jay Caspian Kang’s America’s Soft Power Retreat in the New Yorker published on February 7th 2025.

In Uganda USAID through PEPFAR has been providing antiretroviral therapy to 1.2 million people and credited for reduction in HIV prevalence since the early 2000s, under the same 28 million nets were distributed to fight malaria, the Feed the Future that benefits 2.8 million farmers is a product of USAID, in the 2021 elections 10,000 observers of the process were trained by USAID resources. USAID has also provided funds used for micro loans through its private partners since 2015 helping about half a million Ugandans.

It’s now clear that even after the 90 days set in motion by the President Trump’s EO pausing U.S. foreign development assistance, all the above will be no more. This creates a gap that needs to be field by the Private sector that was already contributing 40% of USAID annual budget according to the organization’s former chief Samantha Powers and known US diplomat.

The global South will be looking at Europe that has a war going on. The Gulf Nations that have soft power agendas that come into play but most importantly the Trump has created a vacuum organizations like the BRICS can seize and shape the new world order that is desired.

In a tweet Marko Rubio said he would not travel to South Africa for the G20, in the 2024 summit in Brazil the global South dominated the forum and it’s time for China and also other middle Powers like South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, from each region to garner others to ogfer Solutions from the perspective of the global South.

In the last decade 2013-2023 China contributed 45% of direct aid to Africa, and Beijing’s model is the best to bring about self sufficiency because it’s not free like America’s. The global South needs aid that is tied to infrastructure projects in terms of consensual loans that have to be paid back the moment the projects are up and running. There is a likelihood China will offer affordable alternatives to Africa’s health sectors, and already the African Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Addis Ababa is fully funded by China and was not affected by Washington’s revisions of foreign aid.

The Global South can better develop with transactional aid tied to economic returns, these returns can then be used to fund areas like education and health, there is no harm in aid being tied to Geopolitical interests as China will need the political backing from the global South at the United Nations and other multilateral organizations that desire reform to create a just world that may not have the concept of foreign aid in the long run because most countries would have the ability to achieve real wealth.

The fast changing dynamics in global aid that are gravely impacting the most poor and underdeveloped countries create a situation that needs solutions and an opportunity for organizations like BRICS, African Union and the G20 with withdrawn United States to reshape the world order.

The writer is a research fellow at the Sino-Uganda Research Centre

President Trump’s Aid Freeze is his gift to Africa: A lesson on Self-Reliance?

Posted on by Shemei Ndawula

I have recently learned  that when a United States of America agency funding an organisation tells it to stop working, it means exactly that. If the funding goes towards electricity or travel expenses, you are expected to turn off the lights and ground all the vehicles. I have a close friend in Kampala working at a John Hopkins University funded project who has been at home for close to a week now because of an executive order President Donald Trump signed last week.

Last week, on January 24th the US Department of State put a stop to almost all foreign aid while the new government initiates a review of these projects. This means most of the staff who where working on these projects are (at least for the duration of the review) effectively unemployed. The complication with this is that the majority of US funded projects in Africa are in the sectors of Public Health. Halting so many of these projects means that there will be real impact to the ordinary Ugandans and the shockwaves of these decisions will be felt throughout the health sector of the country.

It is estimated that the PEPFAR project alone impacts the lives of over 24 million people in the global south. This is not to mention the thousands of projects directly under USAID funding. This is perhaps the most brutal wake up call African governments could receive from the newly elected American president. This wake up call puts African nationals at a very important precipice of their development where they have to choose whether to keep relying on handouts and “Charity” from the west or pick themselves up by the bootstraps and develop their own capacity.

Indeed this decision has already been made for them because while the Makerere Infectious Diseases Initiative (IDI) in Kampala is drafting “stay at home” letters for its employees, the Chinese funded and built African Union Center for Disease Control(CDC) in Addis Ababa is operating smoothly. While many have in the past few years criticized African governments for taking Chinese loans calling these loans “exploitative”, history has proven that this is a sound economical structure for development because both parties emerge as partners in development with a win-win situation instead of recipients of charity. Partnership in development preserves mutual respect and accountability while charity keeps us in a perpetual circle of foreign influence because benevolence can always be retracted.

Interestingly the United States Mission in Uganda has for the past year used the tagline “real help not loans”. This is probably a subtle diplomatic jibe at the Chinese foreign policy structure that funnels a significant part of their development aid to Africans through infrastructure loans. However most of the loans provided by the People’s Republic of China are consensual loans which for he most part pay for themselves. For example road tolls are still being collected at the Entebbe expressway to cover the Chinese loan acquired to build the road after which all the money collected shall go towards national development.

In hindsight the real help(charity) as envisioned by the United States Mission in Uganda turns out to be an unsustainable development model because for the past 60 years it’s proven to be a panacea of the symptoms of underdevelopment without addressing the actual causes. This may explain why this year the mission changed it’s social media tagline to “Real Results, Real Impact” which is also a little ironic because one of the first impacts of the new administration was freezing funding of vital public healthcare and social welfare initiatives in the country.

But let us be honest, the real impact of this executive decision is the disruption of the flourishing NGO sector within Africa. African governments can; if they really want to, cover the deficit caused by lack of American funding for these vital healthcare projects. China has been showing them how to do this for decades now. The frontline victims of this freeze are the NGO workers like my friend who won’t be able to meet rent at the end of the month, or who’s children won’t be able to report to school at the start of the academic year because of salary delays for these three months and a possibility that their contracts won’t be renewed. The real victims are the government officers who won’t be going to the fancy capacity building workshops at the end of the month to sign for lucrative allowances.

This is definitely disruptive, especially to the fragile Ugandan middle class but definitely not disastrous and this is perhaps the best opportunity for African governments to realise that we are now living in a multipolar world and we need to get African solutions for African problems. Uganda was earlier on suspended from the AGOA initiative and the economy did not crumble. Key government figures have been sanctioned by the United States for decades but this has never truly affected government efficiency. President Trump has on a not so subtle way given African governments an opportunity to introspect on their national development and bilateral alliances and if we can use this period productively, Africa may emerge even stronger and more resilient from this aid freeze and the inevitable aid cuts even after the  review period.

Shemei Ndawula is a Senior Research Fellow at Development Watch Centre.

 

Anti-Western Backlash and the need to rethink governance in Africa

Posted on by Nnanda Kizito Sseruwagi

USAID has one of the most appealing organisational commitments ever encapsulated in a mission statement. On behalf of the American people, they commit to promoting and demonstrating democratic values abroad and advancing a free, peaceful, and prosperous world. They are devoted to supporting America’s foreign policy by leading the U.S. Government’s international development and disaster assistance through partnerships and investments that save lives, reduce poverty, strengthen democratic governance, and help people emerge from humanitarian crises and progress beyond assistance.

USAID aims to support its partners to become self-reliant and capable of leading their development journeys. They are dedicated to fostering sustainable development and advancing human dignity globally. USAID is also keen on inclusion, supporting programs that advance equality of all people in communities regardless of their gender, sexual orientation or physical abilities.

Europe and North America pour billions into Africa to promote good governance and support the fight against poverty and corruption. Western intentions seem genuinely supportive and innocuous for Africa. So, why are African leaders and an increasing number of African elites drastically reacting negatively to Western policies? Are Western values under threat by this backlash? If so, why?

Firstly, the West needs the humility to accept that they are ignorant of how Africa (by “Africa” I mean “Sub-Saharan Africa” to be more specific) functions and how Africans’ world view & values, despite deep Western acculturation through colonialism, remain traditional in fundamental ways. The assumption that Western values are inherently right and universal is simply wrong. The West needs to first put these assumptions at bay before they profoundly engage Africa if they genuinely intend to help it.

The U.S. and Europe should support Africa based on African realities, not their Western ideas of what Africa must be like. Doing otherwise would be like medicating a dummy.

As an African, I understand fully that democracy, inclusion, human rights and governance are very necessary for my well-being. But my living conditions, economic status and cultural sensibilities are the fodder out of which these values must be manufactured, not from lectures, statutes, or sanctions from the West.

The West should be patient with us as they were with themselves while developing these aspects of governance in a manner compatible with their cultural values and living conditions. Sanctions are not going to instantly groom African homophobes to love homosexuals or respect their rights. But there are so many Africans who respect and advocate for minority rights by virtue of their humanity, who are now unfortunately opposed to the West on nationalistic grounds because Western interventions under the guise of defending minority rights undermine an even greater ideal- the sovereignty of African states.

These states, with their elderly ruling elite class, have a fresh memory of colonial occupation and barbarity. They are therefore reasonably going to be opposed to the West, erupting into the backlash we see today.

Whereas well-intentioned, Western support for Africa with its intended effect of modelling African states in the image of modern Western states, especially about governance, is misplaced.  The West views governance in Africa generally based on cliches. Cliches always have an element of truth, which overrides nuance for the analytically feeble analysts who reproduce these cliches as the full picture of Africa in scholarly work, human rights activism, and social commentary.

There is a rational explanation for how African leaders behave and how our politics organizes itself. The West should not think of this organisation as backward or irrational. Though imperfect in several ways, often the ways our politics works are not intended or designed by our leaders based on their virtues. Rather, this politics curves itself out of the realities it finds on the ground.

Western governance values evolved out of political contestations on the ground. They did not befall on them like manna from heaven.  Both the ground and the nature of political contestations in Africa are unique from those out of which the Western experience was shaped. Therefore, we cannot function the same way, even though we find certain Western values attractive and indeed, we aspire to embrace them. But we need to embrace them on our terms, not on dictates and conditionalities.

We should not and cannot de-historicize the past realities out of which our current experiences emerge. But we can work together to shape a better future for governance in Africa.

If Western powers maintain the stance that African countries are in disarray and must first conform to particular Western governance models and principles to earn their aid, they will have failed on the first step for rendering transformative support. It may be that the constitution and functionality of the state in contemporary Africa will never conform to Western notions of political modernity. Yet, the same state could evolve synonymous values as those cherished in the West. The evolution of states in Africa will not necessarily take the form of modern Western states, and that should not be the basis for punishing us with aid cuts or economic sanctions.

The writer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Development Watch Centre.