When Donald Trump set about dismantling USAID, many around the world were shocked. But on the ground in Sierra Leone, the latest betrayal was not unexpected

Earlier this year, Donald Trump appointed a 28-year-old Doge alumnus, Jeremy Lewin, to oversee his administration’s approach to global aid. Lewin’s primary task has been to gut the US’s aid funding. In an interview with the New York Times, Lewin argued that the traditional approach, which he termed the “global humanitarian complex”, didn’t help poor countries “progress beyond aid”, instead keeping them dependent. The system, he continued, has “demonstrably failed”.

This isn’t just the Trump administration’s view. For decades, there has been a robust debate in academic and policy circles, discussed over drinks by development practitioners, written about by critical economists and postcolonial independence leaders, and percolating into the broader consciousness, that aid isn’t working, or at least not as promised. When the news of Trump’s USAID cuts broke this year, President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia told the Financial Times that cuts in aid were “long overdue” and would force countries such as his to “take care of our own affairs”.