During his first term in office, John Mahama, who returned as Ghana’s president for a second stint this January, floated the idea of “trade not aid”. That was in 2016. Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly, Mahama said: “Africa does not need your sympathy or development assistance.” Instead, he said, it wanted a “fair chance to trade with the rest of the world” and to increase trade and investment within the African continent.
Nearly a decade later, when it comes to aid at least, the world has taken Mahama at his word. Donald Trump, who has himself adopted the “trade not aid” mantra, has declared spending on aid pointless, even anti-American. In February Elon Musk, during his brief time as Washington’s efficiency tsar, immolated the US Agency for International Development and with it a good deal of its roughly $43bn budget.
The sweeping cuts are not limited to the US. Overseas assistance budgets have been slashed around the world. Even before USAID was ended by Musk, the UK had scrapped the Department for International Development, folding it into the Foreign Office. It also dropped its pledge to keep overseas assistance to 0.7 per cent of gross national income, reducing it to 0.3 per cent.