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The devastating conflict in Sudan is just beginning, and it is not over.

According to international NGO ActionAid, public spending cuts in six African nations have caused health and education workers’ salaries to decline by up to 50% in five years, leaving them without the means to make ends meet.

According to the report Human Cost of Public Sector Cuts in Africa, 97% of the healthcare workers in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, and Nigeria were unable to pay their basic needs like food and rent on their wages, according to the report released on Tuesday.

According to the report, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommends drastic cuts in public spending to pay back foreign debt in these nations. More than three-quarters of the world’s low-income nations spend more on debt servicing than healthcare as the debt crisis continues to worsen throughout the Global South.

“Investments in healthcare and education across Africa have been severely hampered by the debt crisis and the IMF’s insistence on cutting public services in favor of foreign debt repayments. For instance, according to ActionAid Nigeria’s Country Director Andrew Mamedu, only 4% of its national revenue went toward improving its health in 2024, compared to a staggering 20.1% of foreign debt.

The report made it clear that chronic shortages and a decline in the quality of care had been the result of the healthcare system’s insufficient budgets.

Additionally, it seems as though women are disproportionately affected.

“I’ve seen four women give birth at home in the past month because of unaffordable hospital costs. Since they are not offered in public hospitals, the community is compelled to seek out vaccines and immunisation in private hospitals. Our [local] health services are only able to accommodate pregnant and lactating women, according to a healthcare worker from Kenya, who was only identified as Maria.

According to the NGO, malaria medications are now ten times more expensive at private facilities, which is still the main cause of death on the African continent, particularly in young children and pregnant women. Due to lengthy travel distances, rising costs, and a shortage of medical professionals, millions of people are unable to access life-saving care.

Because many people are now unable to get medication, malaria is an epidemic in our area. A community member from Muyakela Kebele in Ethiopia, who only gave herself as Marym, told ActionAid that while 50 birrs ($0.4) could be purchased for [antimalarial medication] for 50 birrs ($0.4), it now costs more than 500 birr ($4) in private health centers.

It’s nearly impossible to provide high-quality education.

The state of education is equally dire, with budget cuts causing failing public education systems plagued by rising costs, a shortage of learning materials, and overcrowded classrooms.

Overcrowded classrooms, according to teachers, cause stress for some with more than 200 students. Additionally, 73 percent of teachers claimed to have purchased the materials themselves, while 87 percent claimed to have lacked basic classroom supplies.

Teachers’ wages have been steadily declining, with 84 percent reporting income declines of between 10 and 15% over the past five years.

A Liberian teacher, known as Kasor, said, “I frequently struggle to put enough food on the table.”

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, four of the six nations’ national budgets for education are only authorized to cover one-fifth of their national budgets.

“I now consider teaching to be the least-preferred profession.” Delivering quality education is nearly impossible because of the 200 students in my class and the lack of quality teaching and learning materials, according to a Maluwa primary school teacher in Malawi’s Rumphi District.

According to Action Aid, its report demonstrates how severe the effects of IMF-approved policies are. According to the statement, healthcare workers and educators have a severe cap on the work they can do, which has a direct impact on the level of services they can offer.

Countries in the Global South and low-income countries are especially affected by the unfair global economic system that are perpetuated by outdated institutions like the IMF, according to Roos Saalbrink, the global economic justice lead at ActionAid International. This results in additional burdensome debt for the most underprivileged. There must be a conclusion to this.

Forces&nbsp, that&nbsp, promote&nbsp, conservative social agendas with roots in colonial and missionary legacies are increasingly influencing debates about cultural preservation and traditional values in Africa. These movements aim to impose rigid, exclusionary values that are incompatible with the continent’s diverse and historically dynamic cultures and are frequently supported by  generous  Western  funding .

This dynamic was most recently demonstrated last week in Nairobi, when the Africa Christian Professionals Forum’s second Pan-African Conference on Family Values sparked controversy by claiming to defend “traditional” African family values.

The event’s foreign supporters include Family Watch International, the Center for Family and Human Rights, and the Center for Reproductive Health, both of whom are known for opposing comprehensive sex education and LGBTQ rights.

Despite having a strong connection to Western conservative funding, these organizations frequently present their positions as being inherently African. Some of them are regarded as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States.

Prior to the conference in Nairobi, it was revealed that the speaker list was made up entirely of white men, which highlighted this duplicity.

Participants were urged to “resist growing trends that seek to redefine marriage, weaken the institution of family, or devalue human sexuality” and rise up in the fight against a “new colonialism” during the event.

The conference’s narrative of preserving tradition, which was on display in full, is not at all organic, though. It itself, in contrast, continues a pattern established during the colonial era, when strict social hierarchies and patriarchal norms were imposed by imperial powers while attempting paradoxically to preserve and “civilize” indigenous cultures.

Missionary and colonial institutions did so by reimagining and rearranging African social structures in accordance with Victorian ideals, incorporating rigid gender roles and heteronormative family structures, and creating supposedly antiquated and unchanging “traditions” to support them.

The latter were themselves based on the selfish notions that Africans were “noble savages,” living in peaceful conformity with supposedly “natural” values, trapped in petrified “culture,” and undisturbed by the moral issues that plagued their civilized Western counterparts, whose corruption they needed to be protected.

As the conference demonstrated, local political actors and governments frequently support these agendas because they feel this is politically expedient or because they are in true agreement with their conservative worldview. The movements receive support from some levels of the NGO sector, which gives them a sense of legitimacy while obscuring their colonial roots.

The Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) was accused of endorsing the event by allowing it to take place at the Boma Hotel, which it co-owns, in the wake of the Nairobi conference. Even though KRCS has denied having any direct involvement with the event and pointing out that it was not involved with the hotel management’s daily operations, the controversy highlights the difficulties and dangers that even well-intentioned humanitarian organizations face.

Humanitarian institutions have historically been involved in colonial activities, so it’s not surprising that they struggle to interpret narratives that attempt to bolster colonial goals while promoting the preservation of indigenous values.

There is growing disagreement over how to respond to growing calls to “decolonize” the aid industry’s activities, which is a part of the issue. Recognizing the importance of local practices and indigenous values in this process is one aspect.

However, when organizations fail to critically examine whether the values labeled as indigenous or, in this case, “African,” actually reflect and embed colonial assumptions and beliefs about indigenous societies, they risk unintentionally perpetuating harmful agendas.

Decolonization and decoloniality are two terms that need to be understood when confronted with stories like those that were presented at the Pan-African Conference on Family Values.

Although closely related, the two frameworks differ. The first focuses primarily on transferring power to the colonized, while the second focuses on colonization’s legacy logics and values.

Many African nations were burdened with elites, states, and governance arrangements that upheld colonial frameworks and approaches as a result of the 1960s’ decolonization. A prime example of this was Kenya itself.

A prominent Kenyan politician’s representative Masinde Muliro said in 1967, “Today we have a black man’s Government, and the black man’s Government administers exactly the same regulations, rigorously, as the colonial administration did.”

Similar to aid, which is focused solely on supporting local actors and not onempowering local actors, may end up reinforcing the deliberate shifting of colonial-era values into true African traditions.

By allowing them to masquerade as cultural preservation, decolonization is a recipe for legitimacy. Not just for humanitarian organizations, but also for societies as a whole, it is crucial to acknowledge the historical roots of these alleged traditions. Without this awareness, movements that use tradition as a means of oppression rather than as a tool for reconciliation and unification run the risk of becoming successful.

The lesson is clear: to move forward, we must be willing to constantly consider how contemporary cultural and social norms and debates are shaped by colonial legacy. Only then can we create a future that is truly diverse and inclusive, regardless of nationality.