Why Many Young Africans See Potential in Drastic USAID Funding Cuts

According to reporting by The Guardian on the African Youth Survey, roughly a quarter of young Africans surveyed believe the US gutting of USAID could be a net positive — because losing the leverage of foreign money might finally force their own governments to govern. Across 16 of the continent's 54 recognized states, with nearly 5,000 respondents aged 18 to 24, that sentiment runs loudest in Ghana (41%), Nigeria (40%), and Liberia (37%) — countries where the extraction of resources and policy direction has long been shaped by external powers rather than domestic accountability.

This is not an abstract debate. The Trump administration announced in early 2025 that it would eliminate more than 90% of USAID's foreign contracts alongside $60 billion in overall US assistance — a decision that has shuttered maternity clinics, starved health programs of medicine, and coincided with the UK cutting its aid budget from 0.5% of GNI to 0.3% by 2027 (the lowest figure on record, well below the UN's 0.7% target). Nearly half of African youth polled (46%) said the USAID closure would damage their countries — a figure that climbs to 76% in Mozambique, 63% in Kenya, and 63% in Rwanda.

The agency argument, and what it actually demands

Degan Ali, executive director of the African non-profit Adeso, called the cuts "hugely irresponsible and inhumane" — and yet she was not surprised by the optimism. Her read: aid has long been "demeaning," routed past the communities it claims to serve, and Africans are rightly demanding that their leaders carry the weight of their own material conditions. Ivor Ichikowitz, whose family foundation commissioned the report, put it bluntly: "African governments need to take agency and responsibility for their own reality."

We should sit with that. The demand for accountability is legitimate — and it is also being weaponized. The same Western governments that built the aid architecture as a tool of geopolitical leverage are now using their own withdrawal to frame African sovereignty as a moral victory, while the clinics close and the shelves empty. Structural critique cuts both ways: when the donor class pulls out, it does not cede power — it sheds accountability. The young people surveyed see through this, and their answer is that leaders must govern. Good. But we should not mistake the dismantling of an extractive system for liberation. Liberation requires the material capacity — public health infrastructure, food sovereignty, climate adaptation funding treated not as a favor but as a debt — to actually deliver.

What the numbers refuse to hide

Africa is the youngest continent on earth: 70% of sub-Saharan Africa is under 30, the median age is 19 and a half, and by 2030 the continent will be home to more than 40% of the world's youth. That cohort is asserting itself everywhere — in polling stations, in street movements, and on stages like Fnatic's flawless 13-0 run in the ESL Challenger League final, where young competitors claim the field without asking permission. They are not waiting on Washington, London, or Brussels.

The cuts also expose what "foreign influence" actually means. While youth demand their governments stop outsourcing policy to donors, those same donors built the conditions under which self-determination has become nearly impossible. The climate crisis, the debt crisis, and the health infrastructure gap were not produced by African governments alone. If we are serious about dismantling extractive systems, the work does not end with USAID's demolition — it begins with what replaces it, and who controls that. That is the question to watch as the African Youth Survey's findings move from poll to policy debate.