Foreign Aid in Africa: The Case for an Ubuntu-Inspired Relational Ethics

Even after all its nations have attained political independence, Africa still relies on foreign aid for economic development. Scholars are divided when it comes to the question of whether aid is good or bad for Africa. Through the use of conversational thinking as a method, on the one hand, we interrogate the views of scholars such as Sachs (End of poverty: Economic possibilities of our time. The Penguin press, New York, 2005), Easterly (2006), Collier (The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About it. Oxford University Press, New York, 2007), who believe that aid is good for Africa’s development. These scholars give the impression that Africa is incapable of economic growth without Western assistance. On the other hand, there are scholars such as Abuzeid (Stanford Journal of International RelationsXI(1):16–23, 2009), Moyo (Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is A Better Way for Africa. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2009), Deaton (The Great Escape: Healthy, Wealthy, and the Origins of Inequality. Princetown University Press, New Jersey, 2013), who argue for Africa to be self-sufficient and do away with aid, citing that it keeps Africa economically dependent, encourages corruption and conflict and discourages free enterprise. This position seems to neglect the global interconnectedness and lack of self-sufficiency of nations. Contrary to these two positions, Metz (2019) argues that since its nations are not technologically self-sufficient, Africa needs to enter into a relationship of interdependence with West in order to become technologically and economically viable. In this chapter, we seek to affirm Metz’s relational ethics which is informed by Ubuntu ethics and argue further that his notion of economic interdependence must be built on the idea of economic self-reliance in Africa and among Africans. The notion of economic self-reliance that we argue for is one that acknowledges the technological insufficiency of Africa that should warrant its borrowing technology from the West in order to grow its local economy, without depending on external economic aid.