Travel is my guilty pleasure. It’s terrible for reducing your carbon footprint. The least I can offer is perspectives on my travels.

My previous column was a tribute to Tanzania’s magnificent Serengeti animals. The wildlife viewing was matched – perhaps surpassed – by the overwhelming feeling of being present where humanity began.

In Africa’s vast plains, canyons and waterways, early humans co-evolved with wildlife.

One warm afternoon we sat on a benched hillside overlooking Olduvai Gorge, where 20th century British archeologists Mary and Louis Leakey excavated.

In the gorge, reminiscent of Utah canyonlands, the Leakeys found 1.8 million-year-old human skulls and older pre-human ones. The museum, set back from the clifftop, featured fascinating exhibits on sub-Saharan archeology and paleoanthropology.

Semi-nomadic tribes like the traditional Maasai are integral to the region’s conservation efforts. They are proscribed from hunting in the Serengeti, but their pastoral lifestyle benefits the land with practices like rotational grazing, water conservation systems, and community-managed biodiversity and wildlife habitats.

Modern Maasai – a name our wildlife guide and driver applied to himself and his kin – can speak the Maasai language but are raised in the modern economy.

They often choose to study the earth sciences and biological fields. Maasai people represent one of Tanzania’s more than 120 indigenous tribes. Maasai, Hadza, Sukuma, Barabaig, Chagga, Sandawe, and others still practice some ancestral ways.

Our visit coincided with the continuing saga of the U.S. administration slashing international funding, particularly USAID. What will African nations do at this crossroads?

What has been the effect of decades of foreign aid from around the world, which some estimate totals over a trillion dollars?

Western nations have “fixed” Africa for centuries. Our interests have been an amalgamation of adventure, desire for resources, and guilt over colonial practices, especially slavery.

We meddle even when that’s not our intention.

My daughter and I joined an Earthwatch project in Kenya back in 2005. Under Kenyan biologists, we collected plant specimens in the field. When I learned one leader was a fellow Anglican/Episcopalian, I asked him what he thought of women’s ordination.

I naively thought we’d have a lively discussion, but he turned to me and said, “I think Americans should mind their own business.”

Point taken.

What about aid? Research over the past 40-plus years suggests that aid has a significant poverty-reducing effect through generating income-earning opportunities and providing social services. But evidence also shows dependence on aid can retard economic growth.

A recent Kenya Broadcasting Company panel addressed this issue. Joab Okanda, of Climate Action Network International, explained that the structure of aid can prevent their development.

It slackens industrialization and encourages the outflow of cash and resources, while foreign countries garner social authority over aid-dependent countries.

The African panel suggested several potential improvements on foreign aid’s delivery to achieve economic growth beyond poverty reduction. Ideas included increasing the agency of locally led organizations, encouraging experience-based development, and accepting contracts that pay for results.

Effective governance and strong institutions should also be incentivized they agreed.

Western countries have been reducing aid. The American budget cuts, however, are being applied at scale for the first time. It could plunge millions back into extreme poverty and cost millions of lives. It carries the potential for political instability and conflict.

Other influential powerhouses such as China may fill the gap.

The timing is terrible, as climate change is worsening conditions for those in poverty. It seems especially cruel since developing countries have benefited the least from the fossil fuel era.

Nevertheless, opportunities lie ahead. If transitions can be managed well, there is room for local industry and organic growth and development.

With local growth, governments will find more reasons to serve the interests of their taxpayers rather than trying to please foreign governments.

The IMF (International Monetary Fund) expects nine of the fastest 20 growing economies in 2025 to be African. Most of these are in non-resource-intensive areas including Tanzania and Rwanda.

That picture rings true with my brief observations. In traveling through Tanzania, Rwanda’s capital Kigali, and Nairobi, Kenya, the mood was positive. Economic energy was evident.

Humanity’s birthplace is beautiful and vibrant. I imagine that recognizing Africa and Africans on their own terms will bring valuable benefits.