Aid Is Dead: How The Global South Can Turn The Tables On The West

Led by the US, the wealthy West is eliminating foreign aid, precipitating what the World Food Programme has called a "death sentence" for millions in the Global South. But the coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, Dr. Solange Bandiaky-Badji, tells me that in the midst of this tragedy lies an opportunity.

In February 2025, the US government announced the end of USAID, the programme that had been responsible for administering American civilian foreign aid and development assistance since 1961. Enacted with the help of Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, the move has been described by the World Food Programme as a “death sentence” for millions of the world’s poorest people. In the aftermath of the US announcement, Britain’s Keir Starmer also announced sweeping cuts, reducing the UK aid budget by almost half. EU nations, likewise, have been slashing development assistance budgets. As the cuts bite, Global South communities and civil society organisations have been left desperately scrambling for resources.

The old order is no more, says Dr Solange Bandiaky-Badji, coordinator of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global network of 200 organisations across 39 countries advocating for Indigenous, Afro-descendant, and community land rights. As a regional expert on gender and climate change at several United Nations agencies including the Africa Adaptation Programme and the UNDP Gender Team, Bandiaky-Badji believes Global South nations must chart a new course without the West—and that only through such a reset can the world's most exploited communities achieve emancipation.

Dave Vetter: It’s been four months since the US administration began dismantling USAID. When you talk to RRI’s network organisations now, what are they dealing with?

Solange Bandiaky-Badji: It’s all changing rapidly and drastically in a way we never imagined. Those of us working around climate, around gender, around justice—it’s all interrelated. So what we’re seeing around the funding cuts is definitely what is keeping me awake at night. Most of our local organisations have been impacted in one way or another. Most used to receive funding from USAID to do their work, and suddenly it has been stopped. Some, in the Indigenous movement, are now in debt because they’ve already contracted work on the basis of USAID income, and now those contractors need to be paid, but there’s nothing for them.

The other thing is that our organisations' advocacy programmes, which were based on USAID funding, are not going anywhere. Many governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America depended on USAID funding; it was the biggest source of development aid in the world. Now they've lost it. The social services that governments used to provide to communities, those are gone. Now, community and local organisations are asking themselves “okay, how do we fill up the gap? What do we need to do?”

And yet, something else people have been saying is: look, maybe this is an opportunity. An opportunity to reimagine development from the ground up. And what they’ve been saying over and over is that it’s a wake-up call for governments in the Global South, countries that are rich with natural resources and cultural heritage.

DV: In what way is the ending of aid an opportunity?

SBB: When people say “now it’s all about ‘America First’”, they forget that USAID was all about prioritising U.S interests. Look at the way they were doing procurement: it had to be with US companies: they would get the contracts around the work they were doing on the ground. If you had to fly, you had to use US airlines.

So in today’s changing geopolitical climate, and with these foreign aid cuts, we have an opportunity to lead by supporting more localised, original initiatives. This means investing directly in community-led solutions and amplifying Indigenous and local governance. It means trusting and resourcing community-based organisations, supporting local entrepreneurs, and treating Indigenous groups as counterparts in national strategies, not as bystanders, to build sustainable communities. This post-aid world must prioritise local ownership. And it means transparency around how we deal with countries' critical minerals because, whether we want them or not, those are the assets they have. They need to see the possibilities for a win-win solution, to really bargain for what people need.

DV: To do this, you say governments must ensure communities have secure legal rights. But how do you go about convincing governments—the holders of power—to grant these rights?

SBB: I’ll speak from the perspective of critical minerals and from the region I know best, which is about Africa's mining boom. The global energy transition is driving unprecedented demand for critical minerals, and we know that [at least half of that] lies under Indigenous and community-managed land. If we get it right, this moment can deliver prosperity and climate progress. But it requires upholding land rights. It means ensuring free, prior and informed consent, but also protecting human rights defenders. Without that, we risk repeating the mistakes of extractive models that left communities displaced and ecosystems destroyed. [See here for an introduction to the UN manual on Free, Prior and Informed Consent]

The other thing is that, for the private sector, what they need to know is that when rights are secured and communities are consulted, from conception to implementation and monitoring, this is part of securing their investment. But if those rights are not respected, we have seen in the past that communities can really challenge those private companies, who end up shutting down projects after investing so much money.

If companies can see this from an investment perspective, they’ll start to say “we want to engage with communities; we want to be transparent with them so they understand”. This is a win-win situation.

DV: What we saw over the 20th century is that, once an elite group takes power, they're no longer interested in the needs of regular people, still less Indigenous communities. So in a grand narrative sense, are you saying this is an opportunity to break away from the legacy of colonialism?

SBB: For sure. I mean, colonialism has always been based on extractivism. Just looking at Senegal at the beginning of the colonial period, it was about taking the land for agricultural production, and that model has been reproduced by the post-colonial state. That’s what we’ve seen over and over. But I think, right now, the governments of the Global South are realising that that's not the right model. They need to come up with new ways of doing things and that we don't need to repeat history.

Coming back to critical minerals—because that's what it's all about these days, like it or not—we are seeing diplomacy becoming very transactional. "You give me your minerals, and I'll give you peace." So how can we avoid doing business as usual? And that’s where legal recognition of the rights of communities is foundational, and governments must modernise land governance to reflect realities on the ground.

DV: And presumably it would confer legitimacy on governments to do so?

SBB: Of course, because now, if development aid is cut, they need to rely on their own resources—and indeed, more on their own communities. And governments must signal to Western countries that that extractivist, colonial approach can no longer be there. Take a country like Niger, which has some of the largest deposits of uranium in the world, or the DRC [Democratic Republic of the Congo], 70% cobalt in the world comes from DRC. That's huge. Ask: how can you use that for bargaining power? You must say: "We don't need your aid, but we know that you need our resources for your energy transition, for all the technology you're putting in place, so now it's our time to define the rules."

DV: Where is this model being developed? Are there examples of best practice out there that Indigenous and local communities can follow?

SBB: I’d look to Latin America, mainly in Brazil, where Indigenous communities have been developing protocols to engage with mining companies. [The 1988 Brazilian Constitution recognises Indigenous peoples’ rights to the lands they occupy, and their natural resources, according to their traditions, uses, beliefs, and practices.] In these protocols, the communities define really clearly what needs to be done and how they should be involved. And I think that kind of protocol can be replicated and used by communities and other Indigenous movements around the world.

Latin America has a long history of social justice movements, perhaps more than any other region in the world. So they've done a lot of advocacy and there are many territories under Indigenous ownership. The tribal nations in the US and the First Nations in Canada have a long history of fighting for their rights. Now, there are community forest enterprises [see here for a study on community forest enterprises in Cameroon]. Of course, there's still a lot that needs to be done to avoid rollback. But why don't we learn from our brothers and sisters who have been struggling with this for centuries and now understand what needs to be done?

That’s what RRI is trying to facilitate: we want to help fill the global leadership void in climate justice. In the absence of US leadership and the shrinking of foreign aid, we are building South-South coalitions. And I do believe that’s where the future of climate action is going to be driven: it has to be rights-based and inclusive.

DV: What about funding? Can these organisations achieve change without financial support?

SBB: It's not really about the money. It's about connecting people together and using the ideas that work best. On the ground level, communities have lived for centuries without development aid, right? Development aid came in as a post-war kind of approach.

But these communities have everything they need, they have their own resources, they have the forest, and on their land they have critical minerals. Do they really need development aid? Of course, we have been used to it, and when you get used to something it creates dependency. But once you lose it, you tend to look at what you have; what is yours. So the question becomes how can we strengthen our communities in a way that they can develop their own livelihoods using their own resources? And how do we make sure governments use their bargaining power?

In the end, we’ll not need development aid anymore. Instead we just need the assets that people have in their communities.

DV: Looking ahead, what’s the key task for RRI now, and for civil society in the Global South?

SBB: What we need to see is a wake-up call. We must say: we are in a new reality. The West has told us “you cannot depend on us”—and we should not. Many of our countries are 50, 60 years past colonisation now; we’ve studied in the West, we know what that is. Now, we must invest in our own communities and make sure they are self-reliant. We need to turn the clock around and shift the power. And I would like to see, one day, the West coming to Africa and asking for aid.

At the end of May, Solange Bandiaky-Badji joined hundreds of Indigenous leaders from around the world in Brazzaville, in the Republic of the Congo, for the first ever Global Congress of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities from the Forest Basins. Together, they established an international network to coordinate action to protect the ecosystems of the world’s three largest forest basins: the Congo, the Amazon and the Borneo-Mekong. You can learn more about the work of the Rights and Resources Initiative here.

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