Foreign aid in the post-colonial Africa: Means for building democracy or ensuring Western domination?

Even though colonialism ended in the 1960s because of changes in the global political economy, imperialists’ influence and exploitation have been persisting in the post-colonial period. Securing flag independence without economic autonomy, Africa has been keen-jerked by lack of finance, capital, and technical know-how which forced it to rely on Western donors and its former colonial masters for development and democracy assistance. Accordingly, Africa has received sizable industrialization, poverty reduction, good governance and democracy, and MDGs aid packages since its independence. However, despite the huge foreign aid it has been receiving, Africa has achieved neither sustainable economic development nor consolidated democracy. This paper is thus intended to appraise whether foreign aid is the means for democracy or tool of domination in the post-colonial Africa. Claiming that the foreign aid Africa has been receiving is systematic aid with repressive political conditionalities designed to instill liberal values in an illiberal continent that celebrates social wholeness, this article concluded that foreign aid becomes a neocolonial instrument of Western politico-economic and ideological domination that trades off the continent’s sovereignty for aid and loan.