Six decades before Elon Musk decided to feed the US Agency for International Development “into the wood chipper” and Sir Keir Starmer announced swingeing cuts to an already eviscerated UK overseas aid budget, rich countries were questioning the efficacy — and even the point — of international assistance.
In 1961, a USAID report declared that South Korea, now one of the world’s most advanced economies, was “a rat hole [and] bottomless pit” of aid. In 1968, a major report commissioned by the World Bank opened with the chapter “Aid in Crisis” and concluded that there was waning support among donors and recipients alike. More recently, in 2009, Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian economist, argued in her book Dead Aid that Africa was “addicted to aid” and that “the notion that aid can alleviate systemic poverty . . . is a myth”.
Now, under Donald Trump, the US has turned against the very idea of giving other countries a leg up. Even before the Trump administration’s move to kill off USAID, JD Vance, vice-president, told Fox News: “We should love our family first, then our neighbours, then love our community, then our country, and only then consider the interests of the rest of the world.”