In 2025 the world’s leading donor nations cut their development assistance to Africa at the same moment, and on a scale not seen in decades. The United States led the way, reducing its African aid from roughly twelve billion dollars to a fraction of that sum, cancelling around four-fifths of the projects run by its main development agency and dismantling much of the apparatus that delivered them. But Washington did not act alone.
Germany trimmed its development ministry’s budget by eight percent and cut its humanitarian assistance by nearly half — together more than two billion euros. France reduced its development budget by close to 2.3 billion euros, the largest single-year cut in its history, on top of an emergency reduction the year before. The United Kingdom lowered its aid commitment from 0.7 to 0.3 percent of national income. Sweden announced that it would phase out bilateral aid to Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Mozambique, Liberia and Bolivia, and redirect at least ten billion kronor — a fifth of the entire aid budget — toward Ukraine, even as the overall envelope shrank from 56 to 53 billion kronor.
Taken together, global development assistance was projected to fall by some forty-two billion dollars in a single year. For the first time in nearly three decades, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France were all cutting at once. If the announced reductions hold, it will be the first time in history that all four have cut for two consecutive years.
This is not a marginal adjustment. It is the unwinding of a model.
The human cost
The most immediate damage has fallen on health care. In Zimbabwe, projections suggest that if the loss of American funding for HIV programmes is sustained to the end of the decade, new infections could rise by almost four-fifths — some eighty-five thousand additional infections and twenty-five thousand additional deaths. The same projections carry a hopeful corollary: restoring the funding within a year could offset much of that harm. In South Africa, ending American-funded HIV services entirely would produce between 150,000 and 295,000 additional infections and tens of thousands of additional deaths over four years. Across the affected programmes, four million fewer people were tested for HIV in a single quarter of 2025 than in the quarter before. In eastern Congo, clinics treating survivors of sexual violence closed their doors as American supply chains broke down.
These are not abstractions. They are the visible, countable consequences of decisions taken in distant capitals.
Africa’s resilience
And yet the continent did not collapse. Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 4.4 percent in 2025 and is expected to grow faster still in 2026 — making it the fastest-growing region in the world, outpacing the global economy. Foreign aid is no longer Africa’s principal source of external capital; that role now belongs to private investment and to the money sent home by Africans working abroad.
The shock forced reform. Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria moved to digitise their tax collection. Kenya, Nigeria, Angola and Ethiopia began removing costly fuel subsidies. The withdrawal of aid gave new urgency to the African Continental Free Trade Area, and rising global demand for lithium, cobalt and copper lifted revenues for resource-rich states. A continent long described through its dependencies began, under pressure, to look more like an actor than a recipient.
Sweden’s particular path
Sweden’s choices deserve closer attention, because they capture the wider dilemma in miniature. Stockholm held its development budget at fifty-six billion kronor through 2025, then lowered it to fifty-three billion for the years ahead. Ukraine alone now receives more than ten billion kronor — a fifth of the total — in 2026. The minister responsible put it bluntly: there is no secret printing press for banknotes.
Norway, by contrast, expanded its humanitarian assistance — a striking divergence between two neighbours that usually move in step. Sweden’s own Defence Commission has argued that functioning supply chains, and the refusal to depend on any single external power, are matters of national security. By that logic, engagement with Africa is not charity but strategy — and cutting it is not a saving but a risk.
The vacuum others are filling
Where the West retreats, others advance. China and the Gulf states have deepened their infrastructure and trade ties across the continent, offering partnership without democratic conditions attached. Russia has extended its reach across the Sahel. At the Munich Security Conference in 2026, the American Secretary of State described the Global South openly as a contest for market share. Washington’s decision to extend, for one year only, the trade arrangement that gives African exporters access to the American market signalled a shift from aid to trade — but on tougher terms, and with no promise of permanence.
The competition for Africa is no longer about generosity. It is about influence, access, and the minerals on which the next industrial era will run.
Team Europe also gives Europe — and Sweden — a concrete tool for presence rather than classic clientelism: through Global Gateway, the European Investment Bank and the European development finance institutions, in which Swedfund is a member, the EU can combine investments in energy, digital infrastructure and health security with risk‑sharing, rule‑ and standard‑setting, and market access for African partners. At the same time, “aid influence” is often overstated and should not be confused with the more long‑term geopolitical mechanism now taking shape along critical raw‑material and industrial value chains, where the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act and Global Gateway partnerships with resource‑rich and processing countries are designed to secure and diversify those chains rather than to purchase loyalty — in line with Sweden’s own security interest in resilient, reliable flows.
The uncomfortable truth
None of this means the cuts were wise. Africa still contains nearly three-quarters of the world’s extreme poor and a disproportionate share of the world’s conflict-related deaths. The honest lesson is not that aid was unnecessary, but that the old model built structural dependencies that could be severed overnight by a change of government in Washington or Berlin. The reforms now under way are real. So is the suffering. The two should not be set against each other, as though progress in one column cancelled out loss in the other.
Looking ahead
For Europe, and for Sweden in particular, the question is uncomfortable but unavoidable: can the West afford to disengage from Africa at the very moment when China and Russia are deepening their presence, and when the supply chains for critical minerals are at stake? Sweden’s turn toward Ukraine is understandable, even right. But long-term interests are not served by treating a continent of 1.55 billion people — and rising — as a budget line to be trimmed. Africa will help decide the shape of the twenty-first century. The only real choice is whether Europe helps to shape it in turn, or stands aside while others do.
The author is ambassador, holds a PhD and is a fellow of RSAWS.
This text was published on Consilio International 2026-07-08
Sources for main assertions in ”Aid in Retreat”
Opening — donor cuts in 2025
US: reduced African aid from ~$12 billion, cancelling ~four-fifths of projects
-
European Parliament Research Service, Cuts in US Development Assistance, March 2025 — europa.eueuroparl.europa
-
Africa Practice, USAID Cuts: Six Months On, July 2025 — comafricapractice
-
Think Global Health, Life After USAID: Africa’s Development, Education, and Health Care, March 2025 — orgthinkglobalhealth
Germany: BMZ budget cut 8%; humanitarian aid cut by more than half
-
DW, Germany Slashes Aid, Development Budget, September 2025 — comdw
-
Devex, Germany Overhauls Foreign Office Amid Major Humanitarian Budget Cuts, December 2025 — comdevex
-
DevelopmentAid, Germany’s Deep Aid Cuts Threaten Millions, July 2025 — orgdevelopmentaid
France: close to €2.3 billion cut, largest in history
UK: from 0.5% to 0.3% of GNI (with prior cut from 0.7% to 0.5% in 2021)
Center for Global Development, Breaking Down Prime Minister Starmer’s Aid Cut, February 2025 — orgcgdev
Save the Children UK, UK Aid Cuts: Overseas Aid Set to Drop to Lowest Share of Gross National Income, February 2025 — org.uksavethechildren
Sweden: phase-out of five countries; SEK 10 billion to Ukraine; budget 56→53 billion
-
DonorTracker, Sweden to Phase Out Development Assistance and Redirect to Ukraine — orgdonortracker
-
United24 Media, Sweden Redirects Foreign Development Funds to Ukraine, December 2025 — comunited24media
Global ODA — fall of ~$50 billion, steepest on record
-
OECD / ReliefWeb, International Aid Fell Sharply in 2025, April 2026 — intreliefweb
-
Focus 2030, Historic Drop in Official Development Assistance in 2025, April 2026 — orgfocus2030
-
Devex, ODA Plummets by Almost a Quarter, Driven by Billions in US Cuts, April 2026 — comdevex
Human cost — HIV projections
Zimbabwe: ~85,000 additional infections, ~25,000 deaths projected
-
UNAIDS, Global HIV Response Facing Worst Setback in Decades, November 2025 — un.orgnews.un
-
Doctors Without Borders, How HIV Funding Cuts Are Undermining Years of Progress in Zimbabwe, August 2025 — orgdoctorswithoutborders
South Africa: 150,000–295,000 additional infections; tens of thousands of deaths over four years
-
Spotlight NSP / EWN, US Funding Cuts Could Cause Over 150,000 Additional HIV Infections in SA by 2028, April 2025 — co.zaewn
-
Spotlight NSP, US Funding Cuts Could Cause Over 150,000 Additional HIV Infections in SA by 2028 — co.zaspotlightnsp
4 million fewer HIV tests in 2025 vs. the year before (17% drop)
Africa’s economic resilience — ~4.1% growth in 2025
The vacuum others are filling
Rubio at MSC 2026 — framing Global South as geopolitical competition
-
US State Department, Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference, February 2026 — govstate
-
Global Policy Journal, Colonial Nostalgia, Neo-Colonial Extraction, or Domestic Protectionism, March 2026 — comglobalpolicyjournal
AGOA: one-year extension signed by Trump, February 2026
-
DW, Trump Renews Lapsed Trade Subsidy Pact with Africa, February 2026 — comdw
-
Wikipedia, African Growth and Opportunity Act — wikipedia.orgwikipedia
The uncomfortable truth — Africa’s extreme poor
-
World Bank, Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2024 — orgworldbank
*(Sub-Saharan Africa: ~67% of world’s extreme poor; rising to ~75% including fragile/conflict-affected states)*
Africa’s population: 1.55 billion
-
UN Economic Commission for Africa, As Africa’s Population Crosses 1.5 Billion, July 2024 — org