New Delhi, Feb. 28 -- It is most welcome that external affairs minister S Jaishankar has said that India and Japan are well-positioned to support Africa's sustainable development, even as the US government has frozen the funds its aid agency, USAID, used to disburse, including for anti-retroviral drugs that prevent patients infected by the HIV virus from developing full-blown AIDS, demining operations and immunisation.

It is vital that African aid recipients do not find themselves stranded, without time to recalibrate their dependence on the Overseas Development Assistance of the rich world. It is also vital that those who step forward to throw them a lifeline are not donors who cynically leverage the aid they give to secure geopolitical...