By Global Press Journal
Africa-Press – Zimbabwe. HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Eliza Mandove was a child when her brother was killed during Zimbabwe’s war for independence. She was beaten during the same attack and sustained injuries to her hands and legs. Now 46, Mandove has no motor function in her left hand and struggles to walk and carry heavy loads. She suffers from chronic headaches. She can’t work in the fields. Her husband once farmed, but years of drought and erratic rainfall have led to diminishing yields.
Aid from the United States was crucial. It kept Mandove’s family of seven fed.
In January, that food aid abruptly stopped. On his first day in office, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order that ended nearly all foreign aid. Mandove and her family — and many others — were left with very little.
The end of US foreign aid was abrupt. In Zimbabwe, the sudden suspension put many at immediate risk of hunger. In Uganda, health workers told patients to collect their antiretroviral drugs before clinics shut down. In Bangladesh, tuberculosis specialists were immediately laid off, leaving people with that illness without care.
Stories like this emerged around the world.
The sudden pullout has left a crisis behind. The aid had been a lifeline for millions since the United States Agency for International Development, the US foreign aid agency, was formed in 1961. At the same time, it failed to transform the economies and governance of low-income countries. In the worst cases, it enabled corruption.
In Zimbabwe alone, nearly US$7 billion in US aid poured in between 1980 and 2025. But in the four decades since its independence from colonial rule, the country’s per capita gross domestic product has fallen by almost 10%. It is poorer today than it was then.
Foreign aid, in most cases, feeds people and offers them medical aid one day at a time.
Investment from China, on the other hand, continues to sweep across the continent. Overall, that investment is creating stable jobs and infrastructure that has the potential to upend decades of reliance on that aid. The question now in Zimbabwe, as in other African countries, is whether this new era will be the one that, at last, brings economic transformation.
Turning that corner won’t be easy, says Persistence Gwanyanya, a member of the monetary policy committee of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Reliance on aid led to the country’s leadership being “a bit relaxed” when it comes to economic responsibility.
“Donors were coming in to fill the gap,” he says.
Now, he adds, is the time for change.
“We just have to live within our budget,” he says. “We need to be more accountable.” ‘There was no food’
Zimbabwe was one of the last African countries to gain its independence from European colonial occupation. In 1980, following a bitter civil war, a revolutionary movement led by Robert Mugabe succeeded in overthrowing a white minority government that had itself seceded from the British empire in 1965. The country benefited from infrastructure built under the white-controlled government that, for a while, sustained society.
“Our parents could take care of us with ease,” says Tellmore Mutize, 63, a dressmaker from Harare who reached adulthood just as the country gained independence.
There were jobs, she says. Groceries were cheap, and schools were free. When she gave birth to her first child in a public hospital in 1980, she paid nothing and received top-quality care. When she had twins five years later, the experience was much the same.
From Colonialism to US Assistance
Colonialism left many parts of Africa in shambles and with an impossible task: emerge from decades of oppressive foreign control to effectively manage natural resources, maintain infrastructure and meet peoples’ health care, humanitarian and economic needs.
During the Cold War, a decadeslong showdown between the US and Russia, the US wielded soft power and won global influence with USAID. Since 1946, the US has budgeted over US$1.1 trillion in foreign assistance to Africa, for everything from emergency food aid to HIV/AIDS relief, from early childhood education programs to civil society development.
Deep corruption was beginning to take root, and human rights abuses were a real threat. Poverty remained a problem. But for many black Zimbabweans, life was easier than it had been for generations.
Abundant rainfall boosted agriculture, reinforcing Zimbabwe’s reputation as Africa’s breadbasket. The economy grew in bursts, and the health care system drew medical tourists from across Africa.
Then came disaster. The region’s worst drought set in in 1992, leading to a widespread food shortage. The price of groceries skyrocketed. The drought’s effects rippled through many sectors, including health care, where hospitals struggled to maintain adequate services.
As crops dried up, so did public spending. The World Bank began to require countries receiving funding to agree to market reforms, often characterized by privatizing state-owned industries, ending food subsidies and enacting user fees at hospitals.
Maize flour and cooking oil began to flow in from donors like the Red Cross and Save the Children.
“When they came, we were happy because in 1992, there was no food,” Mutize says.
Eight years later, Mugabe began expropriating thousands of large, white-owned farms dating from the country’s colonialism era.
Farm workers, villagers and veterans of Zimbabwe’s war for independence invaded those white-owned farms, leading to 40 deaths (34 black Zimbabweans and six white farmers) and countless assaults. Eventually, those large farms were converted into about 170,000 smaller properties. Much of the land was snatched up by powerful political players; other parcels went to ordinary people who reveled in owning land after generations of oppression.
The chaotic, rushed and violent nature of the land reforms led to a massive withdrawal of international investment. Zimbabwe’s central bank began recklessly
printing cash. Hyperinflation took root. Corruption ballooned. Public services collapsed.
By the time Mutize was ready to give birth to her last child in 2003, public hospitals had deteriorated. She paid out of pocket to give birth at a private hospital.
Two-thirds of the population required food aid in 2002 and 2003. US aid quickly grew, from US$42 million in 2002 to US$120 million in 2007 and US$260 million in 2009. Even so, between 1999 and 2008, Zimbabwe’s GDP dropped by 49% — the most severe economic downturn in a country not at war, according to a 2019 report from the African Development Bank.
Between 2014 and 2024, PEPFAR, a giant US health program aimed at treating and containing the spread of HIV/AIDS, supplied on average 18% of Zimbabwe’s national health budget. In 2019, amid chaotic inflation and massive cuts to the health budget, donor contributions to the health budget were 4.5 times larger than Zimbabwe’s contribution to its own health ministry’s budget.
Total US aid to Zimbabwe peaked at US$340 million in 2022. In 2024, the last full year before the US slashed foreign aid, it totaled US$290 million.
Nevertheless, over a third of Zimbabweans continue to live in poverty: Around 35% of Zimbabwe’s close to 17 million people live on just US$2.15 per day.
Stalled progress
Economists in Africa and throughout the world have struggled to understand why so much aid hasn’t brought about structural transformation. Though health aid has had some big successes — new HIV infections in Zimbabwe, for example, declined more than tenfold from a high in the early 1990s — the Zimbabwean economy is chronically unstable.
In February, Elon Musk, the unelected man who was tasked with dramatically downsizing the US government, claimed that USAID was corrupt. But there’s scant evidence of widespread corruption in USAID projects in Zimbabwe. In 58 audits of USAID projects in Zimbabwe, commissioned by the USAID Office of Inspector General between 2017 and 2024, three projects were flagged for having “unsupported costs” totaling US$660,000. In at least two of those examples, the corruption was at the local level, not within USAID.
The real corruption is in Zimbabwe’s halls of power. In 2024, the US sanctioned President Emmerson Mnangagwa and 10 other Zimbabwean leaders for corruption and human rights abuses. The announcement from the US Department of Treasury,
which implements such sanctions, noted that Mnangagwa, his wife and senior government leaders are engaged in corruption related to gold and diamond smuggling networks, as well as a host of other illicit financial schemes and human rights abuses.
And that’s just a small sampling of the known corruption.
“We need to deal with some nefarious activities that have been resulting in the leakages of the revenue from the fiscus,” says Gwanyanya. “We need to be more efficient as a government. We need to be more efficient in terms of operations… but also in terms of dealing with the wastages and leakages.”
That corruption ripples down into daily life. Bribery is rife. New mothers have to bribe nurses to get official birth cards for their infants. Ruling political party leaders give away land to their supporters. The black market is now the backbone of the local economy.
Everything happening in Zimbabwe now is a part of the economic crisis that began in the 1990s, says Eldred Masunungure, a retired University of Zimbabwe political scientist.
“We are still in that crisis,” he says.
Fragility, he says, has become the country’s defining feature: fragile politics, fragile economy and a fragile social order. When corruption is so routine, he says, “How do you uproot that?”
People are desperate, and those who can leave, do so. Masunungure’s children live in Canada.
Decades of brain drain have left the country with far fewer skilled people than it needs to fill the void left by aid agencies. Some African countries won’t be able to fill the gap, and even with the resources, they might struggle to manage services that were previously run by donors, says Ken Opalo, an associate professor at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. That, he says, “is my biggest worry.”
China’s promise
Economic transformation is possible — and China could make it happen, Opalo says.
“More than any other donor, China has been willing to partner with countries of programs and projects that have the potential to deliver structural economic transformation,” he says.
More than 70% of US funding focuses on health and saving lives, while more than 70% of China’s investment goes toward infrastructure projects like electricity, roads and bridges to drive economic growth, says Deborah Bräutigam, director of the China-Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University. China’s influence in Zimbabwe includes mining claims worth billions of US dollars in the diamond, platinum, coal, chrome and lithium sectors.
Between 2000 and 2023, China loaned about US$182 billion throughout Africa — ranging from US$3 billion to Zimbabwe to US$46 billion to oil-rich Angola — according to the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. Most of these loans were for either energy or transportation projects — in line with China’s US$1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative — and have an average interest rate of 3%, higher than World Bank rates but lower than private lender rates of 6–7%.
China’s approach is often called “debt trap diplomacy,” meaning that the intent is to overwhelm low-income countries with debt they can’t repay. But there’s no evidence that these Chinese loans are somehow predatory, Bräutigam says. So far, there are no examples of China deliberately entangling another country in debt, then using that debt to extract an unfair or strategic advantage, she adds.
China has also been keen to make symbolic donations. In 2022, China built Zimbabwe a parliament building at an estimated cost of US$120million. It’s one of 15 African parliament buildings that China has either built or refurbished, though it’s the biggest and most expensive to date.
More investment from China isn’t necessarily a good thing, says Sabiti Makara, a professor in the Department of Governance at Kabale University in Uganda.
“Seeing that America is withdrawing its influence, the Chinese might set new terms that may render Africa dependent on them,” Makara says.
On the ground, Chinese investment brings jobs. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in March at a press conference that China has created more than 1.1 million jobs in Africa over the past three years.
But Zimbabweans say those jobs aren’t necessarily good ones.
Nathan Chiwundo worked for a Chinese brick molding company in Harare. There were poor labor conditions and frequent regulation violations, he says. There were no days off — he worked weekends and public holidays.
But jobs are rare, Chiwundo says, so people will continue to fill them if China provides them.
For regular people, he says, more investment from China “will be meaningless if employees are not well taken care of.”
‘No need to panic’
Zimbabwean leaders say they’ve been able to respond to the country’s most urgent needs, despite the lack of aid.
There are enough antiretroviral drugs for all who need them, Dr. Douglas Mombeshora, minister of health and child care, told journalists at a media workshop in April. Spending has also been reprioritized to care for people who have tuberculosis and provide malaria treatment, and US$12 million has been earmarked to import medication.
“There is no need to panic,” he said.
Gwanyanya, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe committee member, says he’s confident that everything will work out. “We just need to adjust to the new reality,” he says. “Otherwise, we can’t survive.”
Mandove, the woman injured during the war for independence, isn’t so sure.
US aid helped ensure that countless Zimbabweans — and people across the world — had enough to eat. China might invest in roads and factories, but USAID kept food on tables.
Now, Mandove says, her family eats just two meals a day, usually wheat with wild okra. It’s cheaper than maize, the country’s staple food. Her youngest son, just 10 years old, herds cattle for neighbors to earn money. But the family doesn’t have what it needs.
“The food is not enough,” she says. “I am usually hungry.”
Apophia Agiresaasi, GPJ, contributed reporting to this story.
Source: NewsDay
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