US aid cuts were ‘long overdue’, Zambia’s president says

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Zambia’s president has branded cuts to international aid “long overdue”, saying the closure of the US Agency for International Development and reductions by other donors offered his country the opportunity to “take care of our own affairs”.

Zambia has relied on Washington for roughly a third of its health budget, with the bulk going on HIV/Aids treatment, basic and maternal health. But speaking to the Financial Times during a trip to London, President Hakainde Hichilema said his country had to learn to stand on its own feet.

“It forces us to grow our economies and to do the things we should have been doing,” he said, adding his mantra was “seek ye growth” as a way of raising the government’s capacity to spend on social programmes.

“It’s painful for now,” he said, adding the “instantaneous” nature of the cuts — which reversed funding Congress already allocated — left his government little time to adjust. “There is a shock. But longer term, it’s a good thing.”

In its 2026 budget, Zambia’s government raised spending on healthcare 13 per cent to K26.2bn ($1.1bn), though, at 11 per cent of total spending, that falls short of an international commitment to raise health spending to 15 per cent. It has also pledged to crack down on theft of donated medicines and has increased funds allocated for the purchase of drugs by 30 per cent.

Hichilema’s remarks echo those of other African leaders who have been less critical of sweeping reductions in international aid than many non-governmental organisations and public health campaigners who fear a rebound in diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. One study predicted an additional 14mn deaths worldwide by 2030 as a result of USAID cuts.

Hichilema said his stance did not mean there was no role for international solidarity, especially on issues such as public health and global security. “Countries cannot decouple themselves from one another,” he said.

Big countries also had a duty to keep the international trading system open so that smaller states including Zambia could export freely, he said. The US this year raised tariffs on goods from Zambia to 15 per cent, though it exempted many metals, including copper, the African country’s main export. China has responded by offering zero tariffs on all goods imported from Africa.

“We’re too small to get caught in the middle of [arguments between] bigger countries,” Hichilema said, urging the US and China to end their trade war. “When we’re in Beijing, we are not against Washington. When we’re in Washington, we’re not against Beijing,” he said.

Hichilema, whose four years in office have been dogged by painfully slow debt restructuring negotiations, said Zambia — which defaulted on its debt in 2020 — had cleared 94 per cent of its arrears in what he described as a “major milestone”.

A dispute with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), to which Zambia owes about $50mn, would be concluded under the rules of the G20 framework, he said.

The president said the economy was recovering as the debt crisis receded. The IMF expects Zambia to grow at roughly 6 per cent this year, up from 4 per cent last year when a recovery in mining revenue was offset by drought, which hit hydropower output and forced the country, normally a food exporter, to import staples.

Hichilema said his government had helped revive the mining sector by reversing what he characterised as the previous government’s erratic policies. In 2023, Hichilema unwound an expropriation of the Konkola Copper Mines from Vedanta, an Indian miner, making it a condition that Vedanta invested $1bn, he said.

The mining sector, he added, had received billions of dollars of new money, highlighting $1.1bn invested by United Arab Emirates’ International Resources in the Mopani Copper Mines since 2023 and Barrick’s $2bn expansion of the Lumwana copper mine.

Hichilema was elected on a wave of optimism in 2021 after he defeated Edgar Lungu. He described the debt inherited from his predecessor as a “python around our neck, chest and legs”. High inflation and a squeeze on spending have damaged the new government’s popularity.

Lungu died in June, but Hichilema, who will stand for re-election next year, has become drawn into a protracted fight with the late president’s family over funeral arrangements.

Lungu’s widow has gone to court to fight the repatriation of her late husband’s body from South Africa — where he died while seeking health treatment — saying she did not want Hichilema to preside over the state funeral. Hichilema was imprisoned under his predecessor.

The president conceded the dispute had been “very embarrassing” for Zambia. “But I believe sanity will prevail,” he said.