ALL SOCIAL forces on the side of working people, especially in the global south, need to clarify and harmonise their perspectives on the current discussions and debates around the “pausing” of USAID activities. This is because the alleged “support of development activities” by USAID and other “foreign aid” organisations is typical of discussion agendas instigated by global hegemonic forces. The discussion agendas tend, invariably, to be designed to detract from fundamentals and to be superficial and superstitious!
At the very centre of the current crisis of capitalism is the escalating problem of the politics of managing global and regional inequalities. In the first place, there are the contradictions of bourgeoning inequality between the leader of the Western capitalist coalition (USA) and its basically European subalterns of the coalition.
There is indeed massive evidence now that it is indeed the poor world that actually give aid to the rich of the world via debt slavery, net outflow of skilled labour to developed countries, unequal exchange in trade, exploitation through discounted export value and overpriced imports, cultural exploitation via inbuilt world views that generate cultural dependence on tastes and consumption of material and values of donor countries.
In the second place, there are the growing contradictions arising from the inequality between capitalist metropolises (Washington, London, Parish, Tokyo, Brussels), and the peripheries in Africa (including Nigeria), Asia and Latin America arising from how, and in spite of, the virulent dominance of capitalist ideology which had remained largely primitive with the increasing hegemonic wars and regime-change instruments at international levels, and inside-country wars of private and primitive accumulation (privatisation, direct stealing, etc.) in the peripheries like Nigeria.
On top of all these, intense competition has escalated over accumulation among ruling class coalitions (in political parties) and within coalitions in the metropolises and the peripheries of global capitalism at the levels of political management.
Being a basically fraudulent, ruling-class-controlled mechanism, liberal democracy has been unravelling even in the capitalist metropolises which they claim to be “bastions of democracy”. It metamorphosed into events such as the 2021 Washington (DC) invasion of Capitol Hill. It also produced the 1999 return of Nigeria’s military dictators and their class to the pre-1979 scenes of looting.
The progress and triumph of capitalism and its characteristic political economy, had been enhanced especially by colonialism and colonial conquests, neo-colonialism, internal and settler colonialisms (in USA, Canada, Zimbabwe, Israel, South Africa), and the related occupation wars, not to talk of new proposals for annexation and occupation (of Panama, Greenland, Gaza, etc.). The hubris of capitalist hegemony also enhanced the unending resistance of the victims which had, overtime, forced new management strategies on the hegemonic capitalist forces. These dynamics have forced imperialism’s tactical retreat in colonised territories, which victims call independence, just as the underclasses in the metropolises have forced what became known as welfare-state ideologies post-1945.
Notwithstanding the general availability of information regarding various issues that pertain to the overall welfare of the peoples of the world, information deluge and the selective focus on, and deployment of these aspects, have created their own difficulties. In this regard, the isolation of the “USAID and AID” affair from Trump’s constellation of policies (general reduction of public-sector employment; reduction of public spending on welfare; crackdown on immigration, and generalised political vendetta, etc.). At yet another level, the fact is also that this entire “Trumposes” has not only exposed the crisis of capitalism but also the vulnerability of the contrived narratives valorising “civilisational state” generally presumed not just for USA but for Europe and its diaspora.
A whole lot of claims had been made of USAID institutions, as “development” partners or agencies especially vis-à-vis developing countries. They are said to give aids, loans, grants, etc. for education, health, agriculture, infrastructures such as roads, dams, power etc.
The pausing of USAID does not remove the enduring philosophy of control and exploitation that underpins its functions. The functions will continue to be performed by auxiliary state and non-state institutions (military-industrial complex, the plethora of state intelligence and espionage agencies, other cultural institutions such as religious missions, universities, “entertainment” industry, the armed forces, transnational financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, AfDB, etc. Trump is currently dreaming real-estate dream to annex Gaza; without USAID “legendary record” of development partnership! Nothing has changed!
Five very important facts are usually not made about USAID and other “development” and foreign policy/foreign relations agencies and about “aids” and development aids whether they are grants, gifts or loans.
With Mr. Trump’s “pause” of USAID and the alleged consequences for the beneficiaries of USAID programs and projects, we must reiterate these facts which have been in global, regional, and general public view for almost a century.
First, as foreign policy institutions, the purpose of USAID and its activities, stripped of its facades, is to influence other countries and peoples to the advantage of USA. Arising from the colonial antecedents and neo-colonial sequels of these relations, the advantages and benefits had remained asymmetrical in favour of USA and their allies.
There is indeed massive evidence now that it is indeed the poor world that actually give aid to the rich of the world via debt slavery, net outflow of skilled labour to developed countries, unequal exchange in trade, exploitation through discounted export value and overpriced imports, cultural exploitation via inbuilt world views that generate cultural dependence on tastes and consumption of material and values of donor countries.
In the second place, a significant portion of aids, including manpower, supplies, and equipment, are purchased directly from donor countries and their contractors and companies; thus sustaining and advancing the innovative capacities of donors and crippling those of recipients of aids. We see evidence for all these in the agricultural sector, education sector, security sector (including police, military and intelligence) infrastructural development, culture and even development of public bureaucracies and a governance sector pivoted on the myths of liberal democracy – rule of market forces and periodic elections.
Thirdly, the pausing of USAID does not remove the enduring philosophy of control and exploitation that underpins its functions. The functions will continue to be performed by auxiliary state and non-state institutions (military-industrial complex, the plethora of state intelligence and espionage agencies, other cultural institutions such as religious missions, universities, “entertainment” industry, the armed forces, transnational financial institutions like the World Bank, IMF, AfDB, etc. Trump is currently dreaming real-estate dream to annex Gaza; without USAID “legendary record” of development partnership! Nothing has changed!
Fourthly, some African “anti-corruption activists” have made such a heavy weather of (USAID) aids being stolen and otherwise diverted and misused by African leaders; to justify the Trump pause. Let us start by remembering that apart from corruption in recipient countries, corruption in USA is also one of the major excuses for the pause.
Beyond the point already made above about the central role of corruption, sensu amplo andaround the world, in the evolution of capitalism, the central role of corruption in the entire history of USA need not delay us here.
The long and short of the foregoing is that the more we look with the eyes of the exploiter, the less we would keep seeing UNTIL WE STRUGGLE TO SEE WITH OUR OWN EYES. The starting point of our task of restoring the dignity of our peoples is to create this perspective of liberation and maintain it.
On the capitalist institutionalisation of corruption in the peripheries like Nigeria, the role of corporations and agencies closely related to USA and European states and their transnational corporations is captured in “Neo-liberal Siege Against Nigeria” (Olorode, 2025: p. 117): “… the ramified corruption network run by USA and European corporations (Siemens, Julius Berger, Halliburton, Kellog-Roots, etc.) involving prominent Nigerians in public offices”. And “aids” (political, military, economic) are being given and will continue to be given by the ruling circles of the metropolises to corrupt, genocidal regimes and the felons that run them as long as they are on the side of the donors.
In the late 1980s, a theoretician of global capitalist hegemony declared “the end of history”. The Chicago “shock doctors”, the neoliberal economists, were sitting right inside the Kremlin when a “unipolar” world under transnational corporations and the international financial institutions declared the triumph of globalisation and the debut of the “global village”.
The capitalist and largely unipolar accumulation ideology that underpinned all these had since been unravelling at global and regional levels. This unravelling, as is characteristic of hegemonies, has created a mix of panic, hubris, and chaos in the global alliance that has pillaged the planet in the last one full century or so. It is this unravelling that had created the crisis of quality in the leadership of the global capitalist hegemony in the west and especially, in the USA. It is also this crisis of quality of leadership and the narrowing of its space for manoeuvrability, that we see concretely in the plethora of neo-con pauses.
Fifthly, the neoliberal chaos and policy of capitalist paradigm produced a major contradiction: the continued monopoly of state apparati by capitalist ruling classes for the purpose of private and largely primitive accumulation; and the “less government” ideology that had unleashed NGOs on the world especially as a substitute (or a corollary) for the “welfare state”. This contradiction produced a particularly effective illusion in the peripheries where ruling class governments abandon their responsibilities (less government) to basically pursue private accumulation while the largely youth and radical movements of the 1980s/1990s got seduced by the international NGO funds and the USAID-type funds.
The result of all these is that, even government activities (like the Constitutional Confab funded by Ford) and the activities of Nigeria’s MDAs like ministries, research institutes, University Research (like the so-called World Bank Centers of Excellence), regulatory authorities like Biosafety agencies depend heavily on foreign funds and non-state actors.
The long and short of the foregoing is that the more we look with the eyes of the exploiter, the less we would keep seeing until we struggle to see with our own eyes. The starting point of our task of restoring the dignity of our peoples is to create this perspective of liberation and maintain it.
Emeritus Prof. Olorode is member, Secretariat Collective, Movement for Socialist Transformation (MOST), and can be reached via mostng@gmail.com, omotoopo@gmail.com
