Life after aid cuts
Trump’s aid cuts have gutted HIV programs across Nigeria — forcing local women-led groups to rebuild health and dignity from below.
Aid
The global gateway to nowhere
Europe’s flagship development plan promises investment and partnership — but delivers debt, displacement, and old colonial patterns dressed up in green.
As aid ends, empire endures
Western donors are cutting budgets, but the aid model they built — rooted in control, dependency, and depoliticization — still shapes Africa’s development.
The business of empowering women
Despite decades of donor funding, the push for women in politics in Nigeria often sidelines real change in favor of workshops, buzzwords, and photo ops — leaving power structures intact.
Liberal internationalism after USAID
As US aid falters, the crisis of liberal internationalism deepens. What comes next when even its strongest institutions can no longer hold the facade together?
The wrong way to end aid
The humanitarian industrial complex should be dismantled — but not by a billionaire-backed administration with no plan beyond abandonment.
Aid, dependence, and ideological warfare
Foreign aid has never been just about assistance — it enforces political, economic, and social control, keeping recipient countries in a cycle of dependency.
Not that complex
A new HBO documentary exposes the harm caused by unqualified aid workers in Uganda, but its attempts to complicate the narrative ultimately fall flat.
Ms. Harris goes to Africa
For all the coverage about Kamala Harris' Afrobeats Spotify playlist, or her search for her grandfather’s house in Lusaka, her African trip is about shoring up US positions.
Endless war in Somalia
Somalis have enough to worry about. The last thing they need is more war, especially one sponsored by the United States’ War on Terror.
This is my country
The Liberian academic and writer talks about citizenship, belonging, and what unites her fragmented nation.
The irrelevance of NGOs in Tanzania
NGOs have been notably absent in the fight against COVID-19, despite claims they exist solely to ensure accountability and transparency by government.
When bad reporting mirrors the thing it wants to criticize
A new film about Kony 2012 is a lesson in how not to fight simplification with more simplification.
Why western donors love authoritarian leaders
In recent years, Rwanda and Ethiopia have been some of the largest recipients of aid money from the UK and US governments, as well as some of the West's leading philanthropies, including the Gates Foundation.
The tyranny of good intentions
Scandals like the one at More Than Me — the US charity that failed to protect school girls in its care from rape by staff — are common in even the most elite aid organizations.
Silent Aid
The time is ripe to ask not "does aid work," but "how does aid work?"
Collective guilt
The disfunction with American voluntourism and Christian outreach in Africa, that in some cases have led to abuse.
Germany’s Marshall Plan for Africa
What are the political dynamics that may have led to the adoption of Germany's ambitious framework to reinvigorate Africa's development.
The crisis around Lake Chad
The world's most extensive humanitarian crises is currently playing out in northeastern Nigeria and around Lake Chad.
‘Doing good’ in an age of parody
Why does being in on the joke not slow down the desire to save Africans?