By Sam Akaki
First, I must declare my own interest. I am unapologetically pro-British. Of all the European "comrades-in-crime" who met at the 1884 Berlin conference and carved up Africa like an animal carcass, the British were not only the least brutal; they were also the most committed to their social responsibility to their African subjects ("Rwanda Cuts Diplomatic Ties with Belgium over 'Neo-Colonial Delusions," March 17, 2025).
Let me elaborate.
Unlike the Belgians in the Congo, who amputated the natives who did not harvest enough rubber, the British did not physically punish any Ugandan who failed to grow enough coffee or cotton. Nor did the British carry away their victims' skulls, as the Germans did in Namibia.
And, unlike the Belgians, who left Congo mostly as they had found it—in the dark ages—the British built Milton Obote’s Busoga College, Mwiri, Museveni’s Ntare Secondary School, Makerere University, Nekyon Adoko-Akaki’s Ngora High School, and Budu King's College.
By independence, Uganda had thousands of British-trained doctors, lawyers, administrators, and other professionals, ready to run the country. For example, Yusufu Lule was the Principal of Makerere University.
Moreover, the British built Mulago, Mengo, and other hospitals; the Owen Falls Dam, Entebbe International Airport, and scores of other economic and social infrastructures that still serve us to this day. All these were a classic example of aid without strings attached—therefore, real charity.
Fast-forward to the post-independence era, and you find rent dressed as charity.
Desperate Ugandans screaming “bloody mass murder” because Donald Trump has cut their HIV funding, some must be thinking that Paul Kagame is crazy—not only for rejecting Belgian aid, but also for cutting diplomatic ties with them.
Do these Ugandans seriously believe that Donald Trump, or any US president, would abandon millions of Americans to drown in the HIV epidemic, drugs, and dehumanising poverty in Baltimore, Maryland, and across the country, simply to give charity to Ugandans and other African countries?
No!
According to The Diplomat’s Dictionary by Chas W. Freeman Jr., "rich countries have given subsidies and other forms of economic aid to allies for political reasons since the earliest recorded history...Such aid is usually given as rent for bases and material facilities, or to induce support for the foreign policy of the donor power...
No amount of aid will permanently bolster up a people that abandons itself – on the contrary, foreign help, too much and too long, will weaken the fibres of the assisted nation and will make its end as a free nation all the more certain and rapid."
In fact, the so-called foreign charity has come in many forms since the dawn of independence in Africa. At first, it was called "tied" aid. This required Uganda and other recipient African countries to use the “aid” to buy vital military, agricultural, pharmaceutical machinery, or other products from the donor country.
In other words, African “beneficiaries” of Western aid were borrowing and repaying huge interest, with the aid repayments only bolstering Western export markets.
As Obote and Amin found to their cost, failure to comply with any policy of the donor country would mean an automatic refusal to supply spare parts, leading to economic and social upheavals and regime change.
Today, Western donor countries are telling their electorate that foreign aid represents "soft power." In other words, foreign aid has replaced "gunboat diplomacy," which had previously been used to sponsor tribally-led military coups against communist sympathisers such as Patrice Lumumba, Sir Abubakar Tafawa, Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, and Milton Obote.
It was not by accident that all the coup leaders were trained at either Sandhurst or West Point.
If you are still in any doubt about the real purpose of foreign aid, please read 'The Development Set', a revealing poem by Ross Coggins:
“Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet.
I’m off to join the Development Set;
The Development Set is bright and noble;
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes;
Our thoughts are always with the masses.
In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations.
We damn multinational corporations;
Injustice seems easy to protest.
In such seething hotbeds of social rest...
We discuss malnutrition over steaks;
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.
We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution –
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting…
Enough of these verses – on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray God the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.”
That is why I believe Kagame must have read The Diplomat’s Dictionary and noted the sobering point that foreign aid is not charity, but rent for foreign interest. “Too much and too long will weaken the fibres of the assisted nation, and will make its end as a free nation all the more certain and rapid.”
I also believe Museveni must have read it too, but he prefers pragmatism, meeting foreign diplomats and discussing aid today, and telling his Bazzukulu tomorrow that Western countries are neo-colonialists.
Thankfully, his pro-business policies make him sound and look like a member of the capitalist British Conservative Party.
Dr Sam Akaki is a Ugandan citizen