We Aren't the World

Those of us in the usual age cohort for the Hall remember the "We Are the World" business. The song's 'collect all the celebrities and have them sing in no real genre to try to create a widespread emotional response' mode was mocked in the mockumentary Wag the Dog. In the real life version, Waylon Jennings walked out over the demand that he sing in Swahili, which it turns out is not even a language spoken in Ethiopia, a fact the celebrities were ignorant of at the time.

Probably all of us are also aware of how much aid money has been poured into Africa, and to how little effect, in the ensuing decades. I mention all this to draw your attention to an article from Arab News, which suggests that Africa may not need aid anymore: 

Abrupt donor retrenchment since 2025 has stripped away long-standing assumptions about who finances development on the continent. Economic data now tells a story that would have sounded improbable two decades ago: Africa no longer depends on aid to grow. Yet many African states still depend on aid to function.

Economic resilience in the face of shrinking donor flows has been striking.... Yet fiscal aggregates conceal structural fragilities. Aid once served as a parallel operating system for essential services... Roads can be financed through bonds and tolls; antiretroviral drugs cannot. Power plants attract investors; primary schools rarely do. The result is a bifurcated development model, one that sustains growth while eroding human capital....

Such contradictions define the current moment. Wealth exists, but systems to deploy it effectively remain uneven because governance sits at the center of this disconnect.

If you got the government out of the way in the "essential services" sectors, corruption would decrease and efficiency would improve. There may be enough wealth coming in without aid to make Africa work now; further aid only keeps the entrenched governments secure in their role of controlling those sectors.