By Anthony Muchoki

For more than half a century, Sweden stood as one of the world’s most unwavering champions of international solidarity, a donor nation whose moral authority matched its financial generosity. Across Africa and Latin America, Stockholm became synonymous with long-term partnerships, progressive diplomacy, and a distinctive model of aid that invested not only in projects, but in institutions, rights, and people. Today, that model is being dismantled.

In a sweeping reform that is already reshaping the global development landscape, the Swedish government has announced the complete phase-out of bilateral development cooperation with five long-time partner countries: Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Liberia, and Bolivia. The move, to be finalized by August 31, 2026, marks one of the most dramatic aid contractions in Sweden’s modern history. At the heart of this redirection is a single geopolitical imperative—Ukraine.

Sweden has pledged to deliver at least SEK 10 billion (USD 1.06 billion) annually to Ukraine starting in 2026, positioning its support for Kyiv not as development assistance, but as a cornerstone of European security and national survival. With the total Official Development Assistance budget shrinking to SEK 53 billion, the only way to fulfill this unprecedented commitment is through aggressive reallocation. And the Global South is paying the price.

A New Aid Philosophy: From “Water Sprinkler” to “Fire Hose”

The ideological shift is as stark as the budgetary one. Sweden’s historic approach, funding dozens of nations and sectors simultaneously, has been derided by the current administration as a “water sprinkler” spread too thin, too unfocused, and yielding insufficient results. In its place emerges the “fire hose” doctrine, concentrating massive resources on far fewer recipients to achieve measurable geopolitical impact.

Ukraine, facing an existential war, becomes the singular center of gravity. The five phased-out nations become, as Minister Benjamin Dousa phrased it, the unavoidable “somewhere” from which the money must come. But this is more than fiscal triage. It represents a fundamental reorientation of Swedish foreign policy, shifting from solidarity-driven development to security-driven alignment, combining aid with migration control, trade prioritization, and European defense strategy. For Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Liberia, and Bolivia, the consequences reverberate through every layer of society.

Tanzania: A 60-Year Friendship Unravels

Few partnerships embody Sweden’s historic development ethos more than its six-decade relationship with Tanzania. What began with Olof Palme and Julius Nyerere evolved into a deep technical, academic, civil society, and agricultural alliance. Now, half a billion kronor annually is evaporating, and the implications stretch across multiple sectors.

The Agricultural Markets Development Trust, a lifeline for Tanzania’s sunflower and pulses sectors, faces a solvency crisis. More than 190,000 farmers who benefited from improved seeds, aggregation, and storage services stand to lose critical support. The edible oils value chain, central to Tanzania’s import-substitution ambitions, risks stagnation. Similarly, the horticulture industry, supported through TAHA, may lose access to the stringent EU markets that Sweden helped them penetrate.

Sweden’s withdrawal strikes hardest at institutions that relied on core support rather than project-based funding. The Legal and Human Rights Centre, recipient of SEK 36 million for 2022–2024, is now scrambling to survive. Core support pays the rent, keeps lawyers on staff, and enables independent investigations. Its loss threatens the stability of Tanzania’s entire accountability ecosystem. Meanwhile, Sweden’s decades-long investment in the University of Dar es Salaam built generations of PhDs and sustained laboratories and libraries. Abrupt termination disrupts doctoral cohorts and undermines Tanzania’s ability to generate domestic knowledge for climate, economic, and marine policy. A historic chapter in Nordic–African cooperation ends not with ceremony, but with silence.

Zimbabwe: A Fragile Health System Faces New Peril

In Zimbabwe, where economic volatility and political repression already strain public services, Sweden’s exit has life-and-death implications. With one of the world’s highest HIV prevalence rates, Zimbabwe depends on donor funding for antiretroviral therapy distribution. Sweden’s participation in the Health Development Fund has been fundamental to securing essential medicines. As witnessed when USAID temporarily froze aid, even minor funding disruptions produce immediate stock-out fears. Permanent withdrawal heightens the fragility of the entire system.

Sweden’s leadership in sexual and reproductive health and rights filled a void left by both the state and conservative donors. Its departure threatens access to contraception, maternal health services, and safe abortion care, services disproportionately relied upon by the most vulnerable. The Ukuthula Trust and Solidarity Peace Trust, entirely funded by Sweden, will likely close. Civil society organizations facing hostile new NGO laws now confront a “double squeeze” of state restriction and donor abandonment. The closure of the Swedish embassy eliminates a diplomatic shield for activists and journalists. The cost of repression in Zimbabwe just went down.

Mozambique: Electrification Stalls Amid Conflict

Mozambique’s transformation hinges on two pillars: energy access and human capital. Sweden has played a defining role in both. Through the ProEnergia Multi-Donor Trust Fund, Sweden subsidized grid connections for rural households and clinics. Its contributions of SEK 150 million in Phase 1 and SEK 160 million in Phase 2 enabled the connection of approximately 500,000 households. Without Sweden, the “viability gap” grows. The state utility EDM cannot absorb the cost. Rural electrification slows, worsening inequality in regions already destabilized by the Cabo Delgado insurgency.

More than 100 Mozambican PhDs expected to graduate under Swedish scholarships now face uncertainty. These researchers were training in fields essential to climate resilience, engineering, and natural resource governance. Termination means Mozambique must outsource expertise, ironically becoming more dependent just as aid is framed as fostering self-reliance. With development actors receding, only military actors remain in the conflict zones. The withdrawal undermines efforts to address the poverty and exclusion that fuel extremism.

Liberia: The Rural Economy Risks Paralysis

Liberia’s progress since civil war has been slow, fragile, and heavily donor-supported. Sweden’s role in that recovery has been disproportionately large. The Liberian-Swedish Feeder Roads Project transformed the connectivity of remote agricultural communities. Without continued rehabilitation and maintenance, roads will degrade rapidly, cutting off villages during rainy seasons, worsening maternal mortality, and increasing food prices.

Sweden has funded the Liberia Land Authority’s efforts to formalize customary tenure through its partnership with Lantmäteriet. Cutting this funding halts rural registration processes, increasing the risk of land grabs and inter-communal conflict. Safe houses, legal aid centers, and psychosocial support services, many supported by Sweden, face closure in a country battling an epidemic of sexual and gender-based violence.

Bolivia: Environmental Protections and Indigenous Rights Undermined

Bolivia is the only affected nation outside Africa, but the withdrawal is no less severe. Sweden funded municipal green infrastructure projects and supported indigenous organizations safeguarding the Amazon. The withdrawal tilts the balance toward agribusiness expansion and accelerates deforestation in one of the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems.

Programmes at UMSS and UMSA, worth over SEK 80 million, built research capacity and supported doctoral exchanges with Swedish universities. Cutting these ties halts research on water management, climate adaptation, and glacier monitoring, critical areas for Bolivia’s future that cannot easily be replaced.

Ukraine: The Center of Sweden’s New Foreign Policy Universe

By severing five long-term partnerships, Sweden expects to free SEK 2 billion over two years, funds immediately earmarked for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Swedish aid will now focus on rebuilding energy infrastructure, civil defense and demining, humanitarian relief, and supporting Ukraine’s EU integration. This represents the highest concentration of Swedish development funding on any single nation in modern history.

The Global Consequences: Aid Orphans and Shifting Alliances

Sweden’s retreat from the Global South mirrors trends in the UK, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Development budgets are shrinking, security threats are rising, and donor priorities are migrating northward. But withdrawal creates aid orphans, high-need countries left without major development partners. Into that vacuum step China, Russia, and Gulf states, whose financial packages lack human rights standards and democratic safeguards. Sweden, long seen as a principled and reliable partner, now risks forfeiting decades of soft power, trust, and influence.

A Turning Point With Human Costs

The Great Decoupling is more than a policy shift. It is a moral and geopolitical rebalancing that redefines whom Sweden stands with and why. The consequences are visceral. Rural Tanzanian farmers lose access to critical markets. HIV patients in Zimbabwe face treatment disruptions. Mozambican households wait longer for electricity. Pregnant women in Liberia struggle to reach clinics. Indigenous Bolivian communities lose an international defender.

In redirecting its “fire hose” toward Ukraine, Sweden may fortify Europe’s frontline. But across Africa and Latin America, the water has stopped, and the fields are beginning to dry. The question now is who, if anyone, will step in before the drought becomes irreversible.