Africa and the path to self-reliance

For decades after gaining independence, many African nations subsisted on a development model dependent on foreign aid and external support despite mixed results. Aid inflows might have helped build schools and clinics, but they also fostered a culture of dependence and complacency.
Now, as donors increasingly pull back, this arrangement is crumbling amid turbulent global geopolitics, coupled with a new generation of African leaders who are questioning the old reliance on handouts.
In 2015, Kenya’s president at the time, Uhuru Kenyatta, warned that the future of the continent could no longer be left to the good graces of outside interests, with foreign aid considered an acceptable basis for prosperity and freedom.
A decade later, his words ring more true than ever. In the past few years, several seismic shifts have rendered the status quo untenable. Now, global trade wars are escalating, not so long after the supply chain shocks of the COVID era, and coupled with the ripple effects from the war in Ukraine. In most cases, Africa ends up bearing a disproportionate brunt of disruptions elsewhere.
Now, however, the world that enabled Africa’s aid addiction is vanishing, forcing the continent to finally confront the hard business of self-reliance.
The US, for a long time a major aid donor, has slashed or rerouted funding due to partisan politics and voter fatigue over perpetual development projects abroad. European aid budgets are under pressure, strained by shifting domestic priorities and the growing costs of crises brewing closer to home. Meanwhile, remittances from a sprawling diaspora, often a lifeline for African economies, remain fickle, booming in good times but drying up whenever global recession hits or inflation bites into migrants’ incomes.
The security environment has also changed dramatically. France, the former colonial guardian of the Sahel, for instance, has wound down its presence after years of fighting militants in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. The French, once welcomed by beleaguered governments, were shown the door by new juntas and ceaseless protests, resulting in the tricolor being lowered at bases across the Sahel, signaling the end of “Pax Gallica” in Africa.
Meanwhile, the future of the US military’s Africa Command looks uncertain, with Washington preoccupied by great-power showdowns elsewhere. After all, Africa’s conflicts and security vacuums rank low on the Pentagon’s list of priorities, even though US special forces and drones remain active in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. But for how long? If a more isolationist mood prevails in successive US administrations, Africa could experience an even greater strategic vacuum.
That vacuum is already beckoning opportunists. In places such as Mali and the Central African Republic, gun-for-hire outfits have swept in to replace departing Western troops, trading security services for mining concessions and geopolitical leverage. Their encroachment is a sobering reminder that if Africa does not resolve its own security problems, someone else — possibly far less benevolent or benign — will.
China, too, has shifted from being a mere investor to a strategic operator on the continent. Beijing remains Africa’s biggest trading partner and a major builder of its infrastructure, but it has grown more hard-nosed. Chinese loans are drying up after debt crises in Zambia and Ethiopia, even as Beijing secures long-term control of strategic ports and key mines. The People’s Liberation Army Navy now frequents the waters off Africa’s coasts, and a naval base in Djibouti signals that, for China at least, Africa is no longer only a business destination. 

Africa’s aid addiction is vanishing, forcing the continent to finally confront the hard business of self-reliance.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

The upside of these external shifts is a renewed continental resolve to become self-sufficient. Across Africa, a slogan long confined to speeches — “African solutions to African problems” — is finally gaining some traction. The African Union and other regional organizations are spearheading ambitious initiatives designed to reduce external dependencies.
Top of the list is the African Continental Free Trade Area, which was launched in 2021 to knit together 54 African countries into the world’s largest free-trade zone. The idea is simple: tear down the internal barriers that make it easier for an African country to trade with Europe or Asia than with its next-door neighbors. Only about 15 percent of Africa’s trade is intracontinental, a pitiful figure compared to nearly 70 percent with Europe.
The free-trade zone hopes to change that through the elimination of most intra-African tariffs and standardization of trade rules. If fully implemented, it could unlock economies of scale, boost industrial supply chains across borders, and create a truly regional market of 1.4 billion consumers. In practice, progress has been halting — negotiating schedules and customs regulations is painstaking work — but a start at least has been made.
The momentum is there: Ghana has exported its first shipment of goods to Kenya under free-trade provisions, which is symbolic of the new possibilities. As of 2023, nearly every member of the African Union had signed up to the zone, and more than 45 have ratified membership. Africa’s leaders now routinely talk of “trade not aid,” reflecting a shift in mindsets at the highest levels.
Likewise, there is a continental push for industrialization, to finally break out of the colonial pattern of exporting raw materials and importing finished goods. Countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda have crafted industrial policies to attract manufacturing, and the free-trade zone is intended to support this by ensuring that once a factory is set up in, say, Kenya it can easily sell its products across borders to Nigeria or South Africa, for example, without prohibitive tariffs or red tape getting in the way.
Another pillar of the self-reliance agenda is the digital economy. Africa missed previous industrial revolutions but it is determined not to lose out on the ongoing tech revolution. The continent is already a global leader in some areas of financial technology; mobile money services, born out of Kenya’s M-Pesa system, now handle more than a trillion dollars in transactions annually across Africa. By 2022 there were more than 780 million mobile money accounts on the continent, nearly half of the global total, providing financial access for tens of millions of people who never had bank accounts.
Underpinning all of these efforts is a philosophical shift: an embrace of self-reliance not as isolationism but as pragmatic empowerment. This does not mean Africa is shutting itself off; foreign investment and partnerships are still welcome and needed. Rather, it means Africans are asserting control over their development priorities, beginning with negotiating tougher trade terms by insisting on local content and addition of value.
For perhaps the first time since the 1960s, there is renewed pride in the idea of standing on one’s own two feet. This is captured in the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which envisions a continent that is integrated, prosperous, and self-determining. This is lofty rhetoric for now — the organization is infamous for grand visions that go unrealized — but the difference is that circumstances are forcing action.
With the life raft long provided by donor support shrinking, Africa will either learn to swim or it will sink.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.
X: @HafedAlGhwell