Donald Trump has cut USAID. Keir Starmer has vowed to slash the UK’s foreign aid within two years. They’ve halted over ten billion dollars a year spent on ridding developing countries of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and landmines littered over the Global South. For context, 49% of landmine casualties are children. 98% of neonatal deaths happen in low and middle-income countries. 95% of malaria deaths occur in the African Region, and 76% of them are children under the age of five. We aren’t letting corrupt, warring or rebellious populations die, we’re cutting off a lifeline to the world’s future population.

The Pardee African Studies Center defines international development as “a benevolent flow of resources and expertise from ‘developed nations to ‘developing nations.’” Yet this can be grossly reduced to foreign aid from developed nations to the Global South.

Whilst Getachew Fentahun and other proponents of ‘Dead Aid’ view international development as an inefficient, neocolonial, inequality-deepening instrument, this op-ed considers the short-term and potential long-term benefits of aid in a modern world. 

Aid is working. The caricature of African stagnation in terms of Sustainable Development Goals is mostly incorrect. In terms of education, aid has delivered funding to ensure drastic growth in numbers of children in school in Zambia, Tanzania and Senegal. Delivery in 2023 of healthcare, vaccines and pharmaceutical drugs alongside 227 million mosquito nets shows significant progress as 171 million malaria cases were treated that year and over 15,000 landmines were destroyed in Africa alone. That’s fifteen thousand children saved from the recklessness of adults. This can not be attributed to domestic policies but to foreign aid alone.

Dambisa Moyo counters this with multiple arguments in her criticism of foreign aid, notably dependence on such funding, corrupt or inefficient allocation and distortion of private investment and national objectives. Yet, according to simple Keynesian economic models, aid fuels production and consumption, creating higher wages and leading to a beneficial cycle of capitalism. Of course, if this aid isn’t allocated or used correctly, these theories are useless, but the principle of international development is completely functional. Furthermore, countries shouldn’t rely on foreign aid but use it to bolster their economies and become self-sufficient as seen in India, China and South Korea, each becoming economic powerhouses. 

Imrani Alhaji Buba criticizes the lack of consideration of Africans’ personal experiences of development. So, let’s look at Nandi Kachapila’s story. When his son Ethan turned five, he fell ill with malaria. His initial use of painkillers was useless. Three days after infection, the malaria had spread. He was rushed to the central hospital but sent home, diagnosed with uncomplicated treatable malaria. But brought back hours later, unresponsive, he was put on oxygen and told the hospital didn’t have the required medication to treat him. Nandi raced through every hospital and pharmacy in Mzuzu, unable to find it. Ethan died of kidney failure, as the hospital couldn’t provide the dialysis that would have saved him… Would foreign medication have undermined local economies? No. Would it create dependence? No, it would highlight need. Would inefficient allocation hinder this process? Perhaps, but for Ethan’s sake, and all these that follow, is it not worth trying?

Yet critics still believe that if people don’t suffer enough, we will be less incentivised to act, and governments will rely on aid. The Star Thrower, written by Loren Eiseley and readapted hundreds of times, tackles this dilemma. Loren walks along a beach covered in stranded starfish and sees an elderly man throwing them back into the sea, one by one. When asked why his tiny impact matters, he throws in another, stating: ‘It matters for this one.’ In the same way, we shouldn’t leave each human stranded or wait for them to escape but help them one by one.

Every dollar spent on aid saves another child from a landmine, another mother from grief, another family mourning at a daughter’s funeral. Do you prefer to watch chaos unfold as we ‘turn off the taps of foreign aid’ or have a positive, immediate impact? Calls to rethink aid, as suggested by Melissa Bonte, are entirely justifiable, but as long as aid saves lives, international development isn’t dead. 

Written by Alex, a British and French student of International Relations at the University of St Andrews. Alex is a part of the Foreign Affairs Society, Christian Union, and Rugby Club.