Recently, Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo, President of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), published an essay in The Wall Street Journal titled “Africa Needs American Generosity; the Aid You Send Us Isn’t Wasted.” He expressed Africa’s gratitude to the American government for supporting the continent’s path toward self-reliance. He rightly rejected aid that promotes abortion, population control, or the erosion of African cultural values. As he put it, “cultural colonialism needn’t be the price exacted for a moral, strategic, and humanitarian partnership.”
Yet he left unasked a deeper question: Can Africa truly flourish if it remains tethered to Western aid? Should the Catholic Church continue to model this dependence?
It is striking that the Cardinal describes “a great admiration for American freedoms.” Many of us, however, struggle to admire the current state of American politics. There is little to commend in the growing despotism, erosion of the rule of law, and the weaponization of Christianity to serve nativist and racist agendas. We see cruelty toward immigrants—especially Latinos, Africans, and Middle Easterners—and discriminatory policies that target entire African nations. Under the Trump administration, tariffs were imposed on South Africa and Lesotho, and visa restrictions and travel bans were expanded. These measures reflected a broader strategy: dictating terms to Africa while extracting Africa’s resources and exploiting her people.
Even in diplomacy, contempt has become routine. The Liberian president, Joseph Boakai was condescendingly praised for his English, while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa endured lectures about unfounded claims of racism of blacks in South Africa towards white South Africans and expropriating white lands. African leaders are often summoned to Washington not as equals, but as subordinates expected to accept instructions.
There was a time when American presidents traveled to Africa or welcomed African leaders to Washington with pomp, pageantry, dignity and respect. Now, they are herded into the White House in blocs, treated as if their nations were indistinguishable. Russia and China do the same, convening African heads of state in Moscow and Beijing under the banner of “Africa Summits.” One wonders why these summits cannot take place in Addis Ababa, Kinshasa, or Monrovia.
This condescension extends beyond politics into international aid—and, sadly, into the life of the Church.
More than 20 years ago, the World Bank’s Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? argued that reducing aid dependency was essential to development. It urged African nations to craft homegrown strategies rooted in their people and resources.
Take Liberia, home to the world’s largest rubber plantation—185 square miles owned by Firestone Liberia, a subsidiary of an American company. Since 1926, Liberia’s wealth has flowed abroad to the U.S, while Liberians remain mired in poverty. The world’s largest rubber plantation in Liberia is a major supplier to the world’s largest tire making company in the U.S, Brigestone with over 13.2 billion USD annual revenue. This example shows why Africa must prioritize trade over aid and invest in her people instead of clinging to mendicant diplomacy and borrowing that strip the continent of dignity and agency.
The Church has not been immune to these patterns of dependence. To be clear, I do not argue against mutual support among churches. The Acts of the Apostles (Acts 5: 1-11) tells us of the dire consequences for Christians who failed to share with those in need. Charity remains central to Christian witness. Yet there is a difference between solidarity and the chronic subordination that so often shapes too many relationships between the churches of Africa and their Western partners.
Dependency rhetoric also changes meaning depending on who invokes it. When wealthy nations cite “dependency” to justify withholding help, it becomes a moral cover for indifference. But within African churches, the concern is real. Catholicism in Africa was built on European resources and missionaries who spread images of the continent at the end of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade as helpless, benighted, and dying in their heathendom images still used in fundraising campaigns today. Gaunt children rummaging in garbage dump, women in despair, scenes of hopeless poverty—these narratives are false, but they remain effective tools for attracting donations. These are used not only by Western do-gooders, but sometimes by African church leaders and development experts.
Dependency is not only financial; it is a form of control. Many Western donors use grants to set priorities and direction of what happens in Africa and impose conditions to reflect their priorities rather than the priorities determined by Africans on the ground. Their funding often frames Africa as “a church in need” instead of a growing Church rich in human and spiritual resources. Too often, this money sustains bloated ecclesial structures and institutions and, in some cases, the unsustainable lifestyles of local development and social justice agents, rather than empowering communities to become self-reliant.
This is not a new conversation. Between 1971 and 1974, African churches debated how to break free from aid. The All Africa Conference of Churches’ Lusaka Declaration called for a moratorium on foreign mission money. Its authors wrote:
“To enable the African church to achieve the power of becoming a true instrument of liberating and reconciling the African people…our option as a matter of policy has to be a moratorium on external assistance.”
Although the Catholic Church was not part of that conference, African Catholic bishops at the 1974 Synod likewise called for the Church to assume responsibility for its mission and social ministry. Yet decades later, that vision remains unrealized. Many dioceses and church institutions still rely on Western donors, with their priorities shaped by foreign funding rather than local discernment.
Cardinal Ambongo has been a courageous voice defending Africa’s moral agency on life, family, and culture. As he concludes his service to SECAM, he has an opportunity to champion another dimension of that agency: freeing the Church from chronic aid dependency.
This transformation will not be easy. It will require reforms in how churches fund their work and set priorities. It will demand honesty about corruption and the discipline to build institutions that serve local communities first. It will require local churches to find alternatives to aid dependency through building on the assets of the people, agriculture, micro-credit, social capital, and cost-saving measures and literally cutting their coats according to their sizes. But it is essential that Africa does this now. As long as the Catholic Church in Africa continues to model dependence, it cannot credibly call African societies to dignity and self-reliance or hold political leaders accountable for the unsustainable debt they are piling onto future generations.
Africa is not a welfare continent. Her people are not perpetual wards of wealthier nations or churches. Mendicancy is foreign to African traditions. As the freed enslaved African, Olaudah Equiano, wrote in 1789, Africa is “uncommonly rich and fruitful,” a land where “everyone contributes something to the common stock,” where idleness and begging were unknown. Fast forward 230 years later, African church leaders and change agents are all caught in this beggarly condition and there seem to be no end in sight. Not many of us are thinking critically and strategically about how to change this trajectory of history.
Africa does not seek pity. She seeks partnership—rooted in respect, shared responsibility, and recognition of her abundant assets. The future of Africa, and the integrity of the Church’s witness, depend on ending the illusions of benevolence that sustain dependency. The time has come to reclaim our dignity and stand on our own feet.
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