Nabelou Ouologuem

…well, let’s dig seriously into this : …the central weakness of this paper is inferential: they measure micro-level disruption and they want to generalize it into a continental verdict. Let’s be serious : a nightlight decline within 500m–10km of project sites that disappears at 25km is precisely the signature of the aid-delivery apparatus itself going dark (compounds, generators, NGO logistics), not of host economies collapsing. And because their finding is spatially confined to the aid footprint, it cannot carry the macro conclusion the authors imply. I wish they really tried considering macro data instead of playing the white savior card. We don’t want this anymore!!! Then the horizon they are using itself compounds this. 15 months cannot capture fiscal adaptation, which follows budget cycles. And by the way these adaptations are well documented : Nigeria increased its domestic health allocation by US$200 million within a month of the shutdown; Ghana uncapped its NHI Levy and redirected an estimated additional US$347 million to critical social programmes; Ethiopia introduced a dedicated levy channelled through a new Disaster Risk Response Fund and nearly doubled its health budget, while Kenya legislated a new Social Health Insurance Fund to broaden access. And there are many other examples if they did a bit of serious research. All macro record points the same direction: IMF projections place 11 of the world’s 15 fastest-growing economies of 2026 in Africa, making our continent the fastest-growing region, and many countries, such as Ethiopia, revised their projected growth. Ethiopia for instance moved from 8.9% to 10.2%. So while localized humanitarian stress is real and I agree with their point, the continental crisis they are talking about is not the evidence. There is no data showing this. Now the methodology itself : this also is the problem. Counting radiance around donor sites and IPC phases is NGO lens made econometric: they are defining African welfare as proximity to aid. That lens is what by the way confined our policy thinking for four decades to tear-stained strategies of poverty reduction, from SAPs through PRSPs, debt relief and the SDG-humanitarian model, each managing deprivation rather than ending it. I always said poverty cannot and will not be defeated by measuring and mitigating it; poverty is defeated by wealth creation, which means accelerated industrialisation, increased agricultural productivity, better trade integration, better domestic resource mobilisation, and most importantly, public services rebuilt where they matter. And we are now doing exactly that. If they really ask us in Africa what we think of all this thing of USAID, we would tell them that the shutdown’s transition costs are the price of exiting dependency, and there is no way USAID should be restored. Let it rest in peace!!