Can Africa Survive Without Aid?
Reflections from the Development 2030/AidEx “Beyond Aid” Dialogue in Geneva, Switzerland
By Prince Israel Orekha – Development Practitioner, Green Skills Sustainability Champion & Local Climate Governance Expert
For decades, aid has been central to Africa’s development narrative. It has helped build schools, supported healthcare, and provided relief during conflicts and climate disasters. But at the Development 2030/AidEx “Beyond Aid” event in Geneva, one question stood out for me :
Can Africa survive without aid?
Drawing from over 12 years of hands-on advocacy and local to global engagement in environmental governance, community organising, and people-centred sustainability initiatives, my response is simple:
Yes, Africa can survive without aid. But survival should not be the goal. Thriving to take her rightful place must be the target.
Africa can thrive fully. Our continent must shift its trajectory from reliance on aid, to realising its true potential as a land of innovation, resilience, and global relevance. Africa should no longer be viewed as a continent in constant need, but as the farm that feeds the world, the marketplace of innovation, and the heartbeat of sustainable development.
Rethinking Development
Aid was never meant to be permanent. It should support a transition, a short fix strategy plan, not become a substitute for development. Yet in many African countries, aid accounts for 40%–50% of their national budgets. This heavy reliance undermines sovereignty and often comes with conditions that divert focus from true community needs.
More often than not, the intended goals of aid are missed. It sidelines local actors and weakens systems that should be at the forefront of transformation. As a Niger Deltan indigenous community child, I have saw underdevelopment, cardiovascular disease as a result of pollution’s due to extraction of natural resources, development is scares, no alternative for the impact community to survive on but can we still depend on aids because government have failed in their responsibilities?
So, what should development look like for Africa, especially for front-line communities who have long been excluded?
It must be led by locals, for locals.
Why Local Voices Matter
At the grassroots level, where I work most closely, there’s no shortage of vision, creativity, or leadership. Indigenous communities have developed and managed climate-smart farms, organised youth-led energy cooperatives, and even created systems to hold polluters accountable.
These homegrown solutions are powerful, but they often go unrecognised and underfunded. Development still flows top-down, rarely reaching the grassroots where change is most urgent and effective.
We need to flip this model.
Local Voices, Local Power
Development must be localised, defined and measured by communities themselves. When people are in control of their resources, when they set their priorities and determine their progress, we move from dependency to dignity. Local development agencies can become engines of wealth creation, not just aid recipients.
Climate Justice Is Economic Justice
Africa’s frontline communities face the harshest realities of climate change: floods, droughts, rising seas. Yet the financial models designed to address these issues fail to reflect the continent’s unique challenges, especially those stemming from extractive industries, pollution, and the enduring legacies of exploitation.
Africa is footing the bill for a crisis it did not create.
To truly move beyond aid, we need more than adaptation grants. We need a reparative system that acknowledges and corrects historic injustices:
- Renegotiate exploitative extractive contracts that leave communities polluted and impoverished. More grassroots campaigns and voices from the ground are needed to continue amplifying their plights for the change they want to see.
- Accelerate technology transfer from research to policy and democratise renewable energy to create green jobs for youth.
- Finance loss and damage, and empower local actors to lead from the ground up.
Beyond Aid: What’s Next?
If Africa is to take charge of its future, we must organise around a bold, clear post-aid agenda:
- Trade with value addition: Shift from exporting raw materials to building eco-friendly industries on African soil.
Invest in local infrastructure with integrity: Prioritise climate-smart systems, indigenous knowledge, and bottom-up innovation, Empowering her next generation to drive local solutions thereby making the system work her people.
Champion good governance: True development requires transparency, strong civic voices, and policies that prioritise people over profit, letting the people lead , through inclusive participation in governance. Taking the que from our historic traditional system of leadership. - And let’s not forget the power of narratives. Africa is not a land of helplessness. We are builders, thinkers, farmers, coders, traditional caregivers, and earth defenders. Our stories must lead the development conversation, not just the statistics, or be told by the west, African should start telling their stories, mobilizing for system change. We are black but not to be second rated, Africa will save the world, if she gets organised and stay coordinated .
We must change our system narratives and walk on the path to self-develop.
Aid in emergence can play a role but cannot shape or determine a better future for Africa, so it cannot be a road we walk on continuously.
Africa should be ready to redefine her path in the global scale of thing, grounded in justice resilience and true radical self -determination to self-develop , because the change most come from within.
It’s time to stop asking if we can survive without aid. Let’s start building community power, to end energy poverty, underdevelopment and economic injustice, working towards a future that will be sustainable for all, where we don’t have to ask for aids.
Thanks for your kind attention, if this resonates with you, share your thoughts and experience on what moving beyond aids looks like in your community level. let’s continue to engage on the conversion, the future of Africa development must be written by those who bear the brunt and live in it every day.
