Will Trump’s aid freeze wake up Africa oligarchies?

This state of affairs is replicated in other African countries that have enjoyed US support for decades. The Trump freak train is bound to hit other types of support, such as preferential trade deals and bilateral assistance.

In November when Americans went to the polls, many of us could not have imagined just how high our stakes in the election were. Now we know, as will the Arabs, including Arab-Americans, who thought Trump was the better bet with regard to the Palestinian question. Trump’s pronouncements on Gaza this week are only a foretaste of what will be a wild, jingoistic and paranoid ride.

Trump’s freeze on aid has exposed our vulnerability, just like Covid -19 had back in 2020. When the scourge began, we did not have testing facilities for the virus, let alone treatment, or quarantine facilities.

Our research facilities, underfunded and dysfunctional like so many other vital institutions, were caught flatfooted. Africa was literally at the mercy of Western pharmaceutical companies, whose governments had ensured that they remained well-equipped to respond to apocalyptic outbreaks.

Faced with a deadly catastrophe, we asked ourselves: “What do we need to do so that another outbreak does not find us so unprepared?”. Many brilliant minds tackled this question and gave recommendations.

Their recommendations in effect called for not only an overhaul of our health infrastructure, but also, more fundamentally, a rethinking of the ethics and philosophy on which our governance is based. Effectively, the recommendations called for a re-invention of the African state.

We needed a Copernican revolution that would re-situate governance at the heart of the development project. The state as a means of wealth-creation for an oligarchy and its support systems had proved to be an existential threat.

Covid-19 had proven that wastage, plunder and mismanagement were not just economic factors; they were factors of life and death.

But we learned nothing from that near-death experience. We kept to the old ways of wastage, plunder and mismanagement. We have refused to create a post-nationalist paradigm on which to base the reinvention of our countries.

The other day, I listened to a somnolent functionary of the Ruto regime admitting to the disastrous effect of the Trump freeze. Then he announced, as if he was making an earth-shattering discovery: “We need to learn from this experience”.

If these functionaries had not been fattening their wallets and planning for re-election, they would have been working to actualise the avowals made during Covid. We will learn nothing from Trump’s freeze. The next disease outbreak will find our oligarchs campaigning or fattening their wallets.