African humanitarian aid dries. It's hard but I see the opportunity to build something better

For decades, the global development script has been predictable: African countries are facing a crisis and Aid flows from the west to react. But nowadays, funding dries – and the illusion that this model was once sustainable.

As the US foreign aid contracts and donor priorities change in the UK and elsewhere, non -profit organizations navigate throughout Africa's quiet calculation. It was this week that the UN agencies reported that millions of refugees would be reduced by food aid. This is not an isolated event – this is a tragic symptom of global retreat and warning that has long been dependent on international solidarity to all of us to combat poverty, hunger and inequality.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently proclaimed “We are not the Government of the World”, which signals that the United States does not shoulder most of the global humanitarian aid. It can play politically well in Washington, but in places like Kenya, it lands as an inevitable reality control.

Instead of being grief, it is time to reduce our losses and focus on what we can build up – because when global help recedes, African ingenuity must step forward.

This spirit of local ownership is at the heart of the food4education – an organization I founded in Kenya to deal with the classroom hunger. Today we are feeding 500,000 public school children at a price of $ 0.30 per meal and so far we have offered more than 100 million meals. Our funding model is simple but systematic: government co-investment, parents' contributions and charity capital, which collaborates on pure energy kitchens, employs over 4,400 people and acquire 80% of the food from small farmers (like a woman named Mary, reducing a single motorcycle to 65 delivery).

It's not a charity.This is an infrastructureTo. And it already works.

But the work of African non -profit associations like me becomes harder, not simpler – not because we have no solutions, but because the language we use to describe our goals is increasingly under fire. We see a setback on words likeequityTo do,justiceand eveninvolvementTo. These terms are called political, disagreement or ideological fluff in certain funding circles.

But we do not have the vocabulary to discuss luxury – we are too busy with real work.

When 600 million African children stand due to hunger due to irreversible loss of development, the equity is not the concept or the slogan. It's a kitchen. This is the southern bowl. This is a difference between a hungry or ready -made child – a potential filled or potential wasted.

I understand that governments are priorities again calibrating. And they should – big choices come with leadership. But what we now need is not a retreat. This is an invention. If we want sustainable progress, the help conversation must shift from how much is given to the one who is trusted.

African leaders are not waiting. We design, implement, and scaling solutions that have already been administered to our communities and economies.

At F4E, we have seen that when local governments undertake to feed the school, it means real kitchens, actual budgets, actual political changes. This means that instead of the child to leave tomorrow, they can depend on something stronger – public commitment to their right to food and education. This is the kind of system we need to see throughout Africa.

In the end, partners, not patrons are needed. Capital that is patient and trusts the local infrastructure. Funding models that do not expire with election cycles.

This moment is as sobering as it is, a powerful opportunity: to rethink the architecture of global support not as a rescue operation, but as a divided investment in dignity, sustainable growth and endurance.

This is what we do every day in Kenya – creating new systems from the ground. And with the right partners, we can do it throughout the continent.

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