It was a devastating moment filled with panic to many African countries when the United States of America President Donald Trump announced the cutting of USAID funds to Africa. 

The American taxpayer’s money has been channelled to a vulnerable continent for decades to assist in various areas. The news was a sudden shock to many Africans, and it has impacted a lot on the continent leaving a lot of leaders in limbo. 

Starting from the health sector stunted with the supply of medication, halting various American funded projects, fear of loss of employment under USAID funds and economic anxiety. 

While many still felt America should have some sort of mercy to the African continent, the aid cut exposes a tentative failure of African leadership. With great visibility, it lay bare how Africans are dependent on America and the external community. There are lessons to learn and pointing out these should be a priority of all Africans towards envisioning opportunities of change.

Firstly, Africa went through colonialism for a reason and that was to steal ownership and independence from its indigenous inhabitants. This was to ensure Africa’s economy and the continent’s people become controlled, serve and look up to the external community. The colonisation of Africa was a system of creating the continent’s dependence on the colonisers. 

It is undisputable that Africa is dependent on the international community. The act of constantly waiting for another country to provide medications and funds for free and for you to employ people with constantly donated funds, signals huge evidence of dependence. This shows another level of Africa being akin to a street beggar. 

Should we conclude that Africa is unable to revolutionize towards production of their own medications and that they should always buy or get it free of charge from the international community? 

What happens when the international community locks its gates? Will that not be the end of Africa? The issue of unemployment cannot be resolved by trusting employment creation on constantly donated funds. It is solved through taking actions and initiatives of exploring talent and skills of your own people towards solving your own problems yourself.  

Depending on yourself to tussle through your own hustle. Similarly, a person that produces his/her own food will never get bothered by food price hikes in a shop.  What happens to these people employed when the donor is unable to fund anymore? 

So, Africans ought to decolonize themselves and bury the mindsets of looking up to the international community to push their progression. In fact, we ought to act towards producing what the international community provides to the continent within the continent.

Secondly, the economy of Africa is still defined by the second Industrial revolution, where we are known for presenting raw materials to be processed by the international community and we wait for expensive finished products. After all, Africa being a continent dependant on aid, donations of food and medicines, the international community will not donate industrial evolution to Africa at all. 

That is for one reason and the reason of dependence. They will never donate nor teach self-dependency to Africa. They have programmed systems that Africa waits for finished products which serves as a market for the international community. This is what colonialism was all about, that we subscribe to shipping of wealth from African to the colonial powers.  Raw materials coming from within the continent. 

The act of exploring talent and skills within the continent towards processing of raw materials into final products, is our own responsibility as Africans and this will not only take us to the next Industrial revolution, but it will also create independence in Africa. 

Africa’s market is not yet saturated hence we import a lot and if we first work towards saturating our market by producing to consume, we will do good to future generations. Africa mostly doesn’t consume what it produces, and it produces what it doesn’t consume.

 If Africa is to get aid, it shouldn’t be for final products or monetary funds, it should be for the transfer of skills and machineries towards producing our own products that one day we improve on these skills and products on our own. This doesn’t mean Africans have no skills to produce, but the leadership has failed to explore and utilize its people’s skills and improve on it. This is what solves unemployment, and this is what the capitalistic international community is not willing to give for free.

Thirdly, Africa needs to decolonise and improve its education system. Africa doesn’t own its education and is not using it for the right cause. Basic education of Africans is filled with linguistic knowledge and testing of linguistic ability. If you cannot speak or write English/ French/Portuguese/Spanish/Dutch/German properly, you are regarded as stupid, laughed at, as a person of less value, a person of inferior knowledge and not even respected. 

A Chinese doesn’t need English to produce a product, but it seems Africans need the linguistic ability to produce, which I highly don’t agree with. Thinking of Namibia, the education system is even accredited as Cambridge education even after three decades of independence. Where is the independence there? Africa ought to decolonize education by improving basic education towards producing products to solve community problems. 

Africans must go to school to identify/learn about their community problems and how to solve them instead of general education of testing linguistic ability. We should have been studying towards scaling up food production, inventing machines, inventing medications to cure diseases within our communities, producing new tools to make our lives easier, etc. 

The education of producing tangible products such as vocational education should have been basic education to Africa. We have the raw materials here, why are we not studying towards utilising our own creativity to improve them already from our basics of education? You could imagine how many new products we could have been inventing as people look into advancing their basic education. Can you imagine how many products we should have been limiting to import, and should have been exporting instead. 

We ought to look at our community as Africans, define our problems and solve them through education that is concentrated on inventing solutions to address these problems. It’s a pity that a child attends school for 12 years, not thinking of what problems the community has and even worse, coming up with a solution to that problem. Other continents are learning to invent new products to solve their problems while in Africa we are learning to get employed. 

How is it that we are not innovators, yet we claim to have gone to school, and we are regarded as educated? If we are educated, this education is not doing us justice then. If African ancestors were able to mould clay into pots, make pounding utensils, smelt iron into spears and teach each other without books, without English/French/Spanish/Portuguese and a qualification, this means we have failed to adopt the right education as well as the right independent evolution of the African continent.

Indigenous African people used nature for their health, they did not wait for donation of medications from America, yet they lived for many years. We hear that nature is where all medications stem from. Should we not question the education system for failing to educate and improve on that? Do we need colonial linguistic ability to do that? The international community that we look up to is doing exactly what we have failed adopt from our indigenous people. 

I think Trump should really cut these aid packages to Africa to loosen the mental slavery of the African leadership and help Africans to think of fighting for total independence on their continent. To help African leadership to understand that they ought to fight for self reliance and explore creativity within their people to solve their problems. We are a nation that failed to understand colonialism and decolonising our mindsets is the first step to do us justice. 

The international community will never teach decolonisation, nor will it teach us how to fight for social and economic independence. They created the system of dependence; it benefits them, and they are, in the near future, not willing to give it up but rather advance it. 

What Africans must understand is that we have an origin, we have a history and if we do not care enough to dig deep into our origin, we will continue to be a shapeless nation with no ground to stand on and when wind blows, we follow the direction towards which it blows. A lesson taught is a lesson learned.

*Efraim Shimbali is Namibia YALI 2024-Partnership and resources mobilisation Coordinator