Africa faces a “distressing decline” in foreign health aid and should raise more money domestically, including via taxes on tobacco and alcohol, said South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.

“Our continent’s health sector is facing a phalanx of multiple crises,” he told an African Union event in Johannesburg on Thursday. Africa must “take charge in strengthening the resilience of our health financing whilst strategically weaning ourselves off external financing that is becoming less reliable.”

US President Donald Trump slashed aid for Africa after returning to the White House in January and Europe has also cut official development assistance to meet funding needs back home, including lifting defence spending at Trump’s insistence.

Still, Washington’s pivot creates an opportunity for Africa to flex its leverage as a vital source of critical minerals and other scarce resources, for which the West is competing with China and others from the Global South.

“Africa holds the keys to the solutions for the challenges the world faces,” Godongwana told the conference — which is discussing how to bridge Africa’s health financing gap — but it needs a new approach to development because “the era of aid is largely over.”

“This calls for new principles of global co-operation, more effective global finance for investment and economic transformation in Africa,” he said. “African countries must now approach development through the lens of sharper investment discipline.”

South Africa is part of the BRICS bloc of nations that includes powerhouses China and India, which expanded its membership in 2023 to provide a greater counterweight to Washington’s sway.

“The prospect of a multipolar world presents the African continent with opportunities to break free from old modes of development and trade,” Godongwana said. “New forms of multilateral cooperation and new partnerships for development are being forged, quite literally as we speak.”