00:00 Please join me in welcoming to the stage,
00:01 I announced,
00:02 Mr.
00:03 Masoud Ahmed,
00:04 former president of the Center for Global Development,
00:07 who in his opening address will answer the
00:09 question that has surely crossed everyone's mind.
00:11 Are we facing the end of development cooperation?
00:14 Mr.
00:15 Ahmed brings
00:17 with him to the stage of a three decades of
00:19 experience in economic development and in his insights today,
00:22 uh,
00:23 hopefully he will help us frame
00:24 the challenges and opportunities for international cooperation
00:27 in the era of rising nationalism and shifting alliances.
00:30 Mr.
00:30 Ahmed,
00:31 wherever you are,
00:32 please join us.
00:41 Thank you,
00:41 thank you very much.
00:44 First of all,
00:44 before I start,
00:45 thank you to In the midst and
00:47 To the World Bank for
00:49 giving me this opportunity.
00:51 It's
00:51 always a pleasure
00:53 to come back to the World Bank.
00:55 Uh,
00:56 I spent 20 years here at the World Bank,
00:59 uh,
00:59 before moving across the street to the IMF,
01:02 and
01:02 as you said in the,
01:03 I had a chance to work with Stan.
01:05 Uh,
01:06 both here and
01:07 at the IMF and it was a
01:09 real privilege,
01:10 also a real privilege to be here at this ABCDE,
01:14 particularly because it's being
01:16 co-hosted
01:17 by the Center for Global Development,
01:19 so I have a
01:20 double alumni
01:22 association
01:24 with it.
01:25 I want to talk about
01:27 the current crisis in development cooperation.
01:31 What brought it about?
01:34 Is it temporary?
01:35 Is it a structural shift?
01:38 What does it mean for the work of people like us
01:42 who are interested
01:44 And concerned about
01:46 the lives of people who live in developing countries and in the ideas and actions
01:51 that could
01:53 have a positive impact on those lives.
01:56 Let me start off by
01:58 giving you my bottom line.
02:01 My bottom line is that
02:03 I do not subscribe.
02:05 To the increasingly popular view
02:08 that
02:08 the current crisis represents the end of development cooperation.
02:14 But I do believe
02:17 That the way in which
02:19 development cooperation has been organized
02:22 for the past 35 years or so
02:25 has run its course
02:27 and going forward
02:29 if we want
02:31 development cooperation to thrive,
02:33 it will have to be very different
02:37 in ways that will be uncomfortable for many of us,
02:40 but without which
02:42 we are going to become progressively irrelevant.
02:46 Now,
02:48 Why is it not the end?
02:50 I think for this audience that's relatively
02:53 easy to say and I won't spend time on it.
02:56 The first reason is that
02:59 I think countries recognize that
03:01 they have to cooperate.
03:03 To deal with certain problems
03:06 that affect
03:07 shared challenges either traditional ones like trade and we have
03:11 had rules for trade you've got to have some framework
03:13 governing it.
03:15 Or
03:16 more recent observation like climate,
03:18 pandemics
03:20 where people
03:21 across countries recognize that you can only solve these problems
03:25 through some form of collective action.
03:29 Second reason
03:30 is that contrary to what
03:32 the tabloids will say,
03:35 solidarity is a strong
03:38 and widely held
03:40 view feeling
03:42 in most rich countries,
03:44 most OECD countries,
03:46 and people want
03:48 to help
03:49 in the case of humanitarian crisis,
03:51 in the case of seeing people living in circumstances that they consider to be.
03:58 Unacceptable.
04:00 And they want their governments to also do so.
04:04 But
04:06 solidarity extends to certain things and not to others and we'll come back to
04:10 to what that means.
04:12 And the third reason
04:14 is that
04:15 development assistance,
04:17 development cooperation
04:19 has and continues to be
04:22 a
04:23 useful instrument.
04:25 For countries to engage bilaterally with other countries
04:29 in the pursuit of
04:31 programs which have either
04:33 mutual benefits and the degree of mutuality varies from project to project,
04:38 but it's sort of mutually useful and beneficial
04:41 for countries to cooperate so they choose to cooperate
04:45 to do certain things which they think are
04:48 mutually helpful.
04:51 But
04:53 Why is it going to be different?
04:54 Why can't we just carry on then,
04:56 if there are all these reasons.
04:59 I think what we have to recognize is that
05:01 the system that the framework that we now have
05:04 was
05:05 itself the product of a unique moment
05:09 in
05:10 History of the 20th century.
05:13 So I want to think back just a little bit of history if you like.
05:17 I think back to the mid-1990s.
05:22 The West had
05:23 won the Cold War,
05:25 Soviet Union had been dismantled,
05:28 economic conditions broadly favorable.
05:31 There was a bit of a peace dividend around.
05:35 There was a view that
05:38 Democracy in politics and liberalism in economics
05:42 was the shared destination for all countries.
05:46 So countries were at different stages on this journey.
05:49 There are some were closer to the destination,
05:51 some needed more time,
05:53 but we all sort of had a consensus view this is where we are heading.
05:56 Do you remember
05:57 Francis Fukuyama famously declared
06:00 it was the end of history.
06:04 And in that
06:05 world,
06:08 The project
06:10 of eradicating
06:12 extreme poverty
06:14 and
06:15 promoting economic development
06:17 captured
06:18 the popular attention,
06:20 captured the attention of politicians,
06:22 captured the attention of
06:24 of young people.
06:26 And
06:28 As a result,
06:30 Aid budgets went up.
06:33 Development ministries were strengthened in countries,
06:37 new institutions were created to deal with new problems.
06:41 And
06:43 the development technicians,
06:44 most of us sitting in this room.
06:46 were given a long reign to get on with the job.
06:51 So we were so like OK you guys go and do it and we at that time
06:54 maybe with a little more confidence than we should have had
06:57 said yeah absolutely we know how to do this.
07:00 We've got it covered.
07:03 Of course
07:04 developing countries,
07:05 most of them by then
07:07 had also put in place sound macro and dealt with a lot of their structural problems,
07:12 so the conditions were right
07:14 and then for the next 25 years we had extraordinary results.
07:18 I don't need to tell you the numbers,
07:20 you know them better
07:22 than I do.
07:24 You know,
07:24 basically if you look back,
07:26 look at that 25 year period 1990,
07:29 2015,
07:30 number of households living in extreme poverty goes from 4 in 10 to 1 in 10.
07:36 Um,
07:37 life expectancy in a generation goes up by 12 years instead of
07:40 the 4 that had been the case in the previous generation,
07:44 number of children dying under 5 halved.
07:47 I can go on and on
07:49 in broad ways.
07:51 You could see
07:52 really extraordinary progress,
07:55 success has many fathers.
07:57 So while the primary
07:59 credit for this needs to go to the countries' policies that they put in place,
08:04 you know,
08:05 there was a role that development assistance played,
08:07 particularly in the poorest countries where
08:10 financing had been
08:11 an issue.
08:14 But
08:16 By the early part of the last decade.
08:20 This model was sort of running its course.
08:25 Growth rates began to drop across most
08:28 parts of the world including developing countries.
08:31 Poverty became increasingly concentrated in fragile states and
08:37 didn't really have such a good model for dealing with fragile states,
08:42 not being able to help people,
08:43 but we couldn't really
08:45 find ways to put the countries in a different trajectory.
08:49 And also
08:52 Same time,
08:53 um,
08:55 We had to
08:56 Financial crisis.
08:59 It kind of shook people's faith in the liberal economics model.
09:03 Um,
09:04 democracy wasn't spreading quite in the same way.
09:09 So there was a sort of general sense of well have we kind of
09:13 reached the limit.
09:15 Along comes in fact if you think about 2015 you
09:18 know we could say wait hold on 2015 we agreed
09:21 SDGs we agreed the Paris Agreement,
09:26 we agreed on the financing for development.
09:29 Billions to trillions.
09:32 I mean looking back,
09:33 those were probably high points rather than platforms for going further.
09:39 So
09:40 the sort of development progress was slowing down but there was also
09:45 and this is what brings us a bit to this.
09:48 The topic of this this year's ABCDE,
09:52 I think was also growing unease
09:54 with the model of development cooperation.
09:58 Both in the
10:00 providing countries,
10:01 the rich countries and in developing countries.
10:04 So in the rich countries.
10:06 I would say there are 3 things that
10:09 I want to focus on about the model.
10:12 The first thing was that
10:16 Poverty reduction got
10:18 a little bit pushed to the side
10:20 by new priorities that emerged
10:23 and particularly climate change.
10:24 People became much more aware of climate change
10:28 and the consequences of climate change,
10:30 the need to take action to
10:32 deal with climate mitigation,
10:34 and you could see
10:36 the
10:37 popular
10:37 imagination was being captured more by the need to deal with climate.
10:41 It was going to be an existential threat.
10:43 We would all be dead.
10:44 And and if we didn't deal with this and so you know people kind of getting rallied and
10:48 poverty is still there but kind of a little bit to
10:51 the side of course along comes COVID and then climate change gets
10:55 you get
10:56 uh global health security is another issue.
10:59 So
11:00 the shared challenges started moving to center stage
11:04 as opposed to the traditional
11:06 focus on on poverty reduction on on development.
11:10 Second thing that happened is that uh.
11:12 Fiscal conditions started tightening in many rich countries
11:16 and during that period,
11:19 The budgets that were set aside for then development
11:22 assistance and particularly in Europe where there's a lot of
11:25 commitment to 0.7.
11:27 They became easy targets
11:30 for politicians and for skeptics to say look why are we spending money
11:35 and I remember in the UK,
11:37 the UK I used to work in the UK for 3 years at
11:41 DFID,
11:41 the glory days of DFID which no longer exists
11:46 in the UK this became a sort of daily
11:50 tabloid media discussion about why are we spending money,
11:54 especially when,
11:57 We have unmet needs for schools and for
12:01 housing domestically we should spend money at home
12:05 and the third thing that happened is that
12:07 I think development cooperation got wrapped
12:10 up in the broader anti-globalization backlash.
12:15 Developing countries began to be seen as competitors rather than partners
12:21 so if a job,
12:23 if you saw
12:24 a
12:25 factory being set up in Mexico,
12:27 you didn't say that's great,
12:28 you said hey those are the jobs that were going to be
12:31 here rather than
12:32 that have now moved so there was a bit of
12:35 and the development also became
12:38 development cooperation
12:40 got wrapped up in the anti-woke.
12:43 Seen as being woke.
12:45 That you know the development people are promoting ideas that are
12:49 partisan rather than
12:51 broad-based.
12:53 So there are all these things building up.
12:56 And then
12:57 At the same time,
13:00 In
13:00 the aid recipient,
13:02 the developing countries,
13:04 there have been these concerns for a while about the model.
13:08 So there were concerns about
13:10 the model.
13:13 Itself the way it was being done and they were concerned about the very notion
13:18 of
13:19 development aid.
13:20 Some of these go back a long time.
13:22 When I was an undergraduate I remember PT Bauer dissent on Development,
13:27 some of you probably old enough to remember that
13:29 um.
13:31 And concerns about
13:34 agency,
13:36 concerns about
13:37 whether or not
13:39 um
13:40 the agenda being pushed towards a donor agenda rather than the country agenda
13:45 hollowing out of government institutions um.
13:51 And
13:53 You know these voices
13:55 have been there for
13:58 A long time,
13:59 as I said,
14:00 but they began to get more and more traction
14:03 and a more fundamental concern that many policymakers
14:06 in developing countries started to raise was that
14:10 they thought development cooperation had lost its way.
14:13 That instead
14:15 of being an instrument to accelerate the transformation of their economies
14:20 to make the economies
14:22 richer,
14:23 it had become an extension of a global safety net.
14:27 To deal with the poor
14:29 in their countries
14:30 and but it wasn't that focused on making the
14:33 economies richer now we're gonna have a long discussion about
14:36 how the two are interlinked,
14:37 but there was this concern that was there
14:40 and developing countries also.
14:43 Began to see
14:45 that there was a huge increase
14:48 in alternative
14:50 partners coming up,
14:51 particularly China,
14:53 right,
14:53 so you all know the numbers,
14:55 mid 210,
14:57 China's
14:58 lending
15:00 and most of its lending to developing countries
15:03 often on terms that were financially less attractive.
15:06 Than what was being provided by say the World Bank,
15:09 but the numbers were larger than say World Bank.
15:12 It is the largest bilateral
15:15 trading partner of countries,
15:17 the largest provider of development,
15:19 sensible development finance.
15:21 It had a different model,
15:22 but it was also saying
15:24 you don't have to follow.
15:27 The model of development
15:30 that your traditional partners are offering there are other ways to develop your
15:35 societies which might be more suitable so there's a bit of a challenge
15:39 on that front
15:41 and then you remember
15:42 along came the COVID crisis and the way we dealt with the COVID crisis
15:47 and there was a sort of that accelerated and erosion of trust
15:51 and the erosion of trust
15:53 in terms of many developing countries feeling that
15:56 that.
15:57 They were the you remember the last in line for access to vaccines.
16:01 There was a sense that
16:03 the financial support that they receive is not being
16:06 adequate
16:07 and
16:08 and more than that.
16:11 There was a disconnect between the rhetoric
16:14 at summits.
16:16 And the reality.
16:17 Last year in you'll remember the ABCD last year was entitled The Great Incoherence
16:23 and part of what we were trying to get at at the time was that
16:27 you have all these reports.
16:30 that we produce and we talk about,
16:33 including some,
16:33 by the way that are produced
16:35 here.
16:36 Uh,
16:37 which show financing gaps
16:40 in the trillions of dollars every year.
16:44 And then
16:46 the reality after the summit is over is that it's
16:49 hard to mobilize even hundreds of millions of dollars.
16:53 So debt issues still sitting out there in
16:55 the mid rights periodically about how the debt crisis
16:58 is going to be
17:00 a systemic crisis,
17:01 but
17:02 5 years ago,
17:03 5 years later today,
17:05 any difference in the way we're dealing with this issue?
17:08 Not really.
17:09 So
17:10 there's a kind of erosion of trust in the sense
17:12 of saying there's no international community we stop pretending.
17:16 So what I'm trying to say is that I don't want to
17:19 go over all this history for the
17:21 To lament the past,
17:23 but to say that.
17:25 What we 2025 may well be the year when
17:28 the development cooperation system sort of visibly shatters.
17:33 But the cracks that have led to this have been there for a long time,
17:37 and unless we deal with those cracks,
17:40 the reasons for them,
17:42 We're not going to be able to glue it all back together by,
17:45 you know,
17:46 a bit of sellotape here and a bit of tinkering
17:49 there.
17:50 So let me offer you four reflections on what I think the next 10 years
17:54 will be like.
17:56 First is that.
17:59 The cutback in the volumes of development funding that
18:04 we are seeing now are here to stay.
18:07 So we need to recognize that we'll be working with
18:10 less money
18:11 for development for the next 10 years,
18:14 particularly grant concessional money I'm talking about.
18:17 than
18:18 many of our plants.
18:20 Currently assume.
18:24 Numbers have gone down last year 7%,
18:26 between 10 and 17,
18:28 9 and 17% this year.
18:30 There'll be more cuts to come.
18:32 Europe has to basically finance a huge buildup in defense
18:36 spending.
18:37 US is
18:39 unclear to me as to when it's going to come back and at what levels,
18:43 so we have to work with more realistic numbers.
18:46 And one implication of that is that we have to be
18:49 much more focused on how well we're using grant money.
18:52 Grants are the most precious form of development finance,
18:56 and we don't use them as well as we should.
19:00 There are still many examples
19:02 where we use grants,
19:04 one in one out model
19:07 institutions where you get grants in,
19:08 grants out dollar in dollar or actually less than $1
19:10 out because we use some of it for admin costs.
19:14 When we should be using
19:16 leveraging the grants up to do concessional loans and
19:19 and
19:20 uh
19:21 I think we have to stop that.
19:22 We have to really focus on where we use
19:25 grants without leveraging,
19:28 be clear that there is no alternative.
19:30 Second thing is we have to be much more
19:33 thorough
19:35 about.
19:37 And figuring out or or assessing
19:40 what is the likely impact of the project that we are doing,
19:43 it's quite striking for me that today
19:46 you still see lots of projects.
19:49 You can pick this in different fields,
19:51 but if you look at climate mitigation projects,
19:54 for example,
19:55 there is no number
19:56 of what is the expected.
19:59 Carbon reduction
20:00 that is
20:02 The plan for that project
20:05 or what is the cost per ton.
20:08 Of carbon reduction and it's not acceptable anymore we have to
20:11 be much more thorough and in areas where you can't do quantification
20:15 you can have a much more
20:16 thorough assessment of the theory of change and what it is that the impact
20:20 of those grants is going to be.
20:24 We also want to be
20:25 pulling back.
20:28 And changing.
20:30 Reallocating
20:31 limited grants when what we're trying to do doesn't seem to pay off.
20:36 There's a big controversy about,
20:37 you know,
20:38 blended finance in
20:40 in low income and fragile states.
20:43 Year after year we have not
20:45 been able to demonstrate
20:47 the kind of leveraging that we hoped we would get with blended finance in fragile
20:53 states and know and difficult
20:55 contexts.
20:57 We have to ask ourselves,
20:58 is the opportunity cost of using those grants,
21:01 the projects that are no longer being done,
21:04 worth paying?
21:05 And
21:06 the good news is there's a lot of evidence now
21:09 on what are best buys
21:11 best buys for the
21:12 money they spent,
21:13 best buys for the country
21:15 and we have to be much more
21:17 rigorous about using that.
21:20 The other big point I would make is that.
21:25 National interest.
21:27 As a
21:28 motive for development cooperation is now going to be here,
21:32 it's become respectable again.
21:35 So before it's always been the case that development
21:38 cooperation has been a mixture of altruism and self-interest.
21:43 But now
21:44 self-interest,
21:45 national interest is very much in the
21:48 Driver's seat for many countries.
21:50 If you look at the European Union's
21:53 development strategy,
21:55 it's very unclear about.
21:57 Doing things that are
21:59 promoting the
22:00 strategy and interests of the European Union
22:04 now.
22:06 Some of us are old enough to remember
22:09 that this is not new.
22:11 During the Cold War,
22:12 this is quite common to use
22:14 development assistances
22:16 as part of your foreign policy to
22:19 to
22:20 reward or or
22:22 your allies or or to
22:24 um
22:25 favor them.
22:27 Or to promote trade,
22:28 lots of aid for trade deals,
22:30 tight procurement.
22:32 But we also remember that the results of those
22:36 deals were generally pretty poor.
22:40 So,
22:44 But I fear that for the next 10 years
22:46 we're going to go through that cycle again of learning
22:49 and our job as development practitioners is to
22:52 accelerate the learning process so people see
22:55 the cost of it.
22:56 um,
22:57 actually some politicians feel that.
23:00 By saying that these
23:02 8 programs are in the national interest,
23:04 they're going to win popular support for them.
23:07 Actually,
23:07 the evidence from surveys doesn't back that up at all.
23:11 People are much more supportive of
23:15 aid programs for solidarity reasons
23:18 or to deal with shared challenges.
23:20 When you say national interest,
23:22 it doesn't really ring a bell.
23:23 It's a misguided
23:25 belief.
23:26 There's also the other side which is a lot of politicians
23:30 try to sell programs whose interest is not development
23:35 as development programs,
23:37 but
23:38 that just erodes trust.
23:40 It erodes credibility
23:43 both in the partner countries and with the
23:46 um
23:47 within the donor country
23:49 and,
23:51 My view is that
23:53 I think we need to be much more upfront if you're financing a
23:58 project because you think this is going to create jobs at home.
24:03 Say that's what you're trying to do.
24:05 And
24:06 at least if they're not saying it,
24:07 we should be saying that's what it's trying to do
24:10 and we should be clear about what the cost is for a job created
24:13 and suddenly very soon you'll find that in many cases.
24:17 These are not viable propositions.
24:20 Third thing I would say is that uh.
24:23 Next 10 years,
24:24 we have to get used to living with multiple overlapping development frameworks.
24:31 You know,
24:31 we love frameworks.
24:33 We love creating frameworks,
24:35 we love
24:36 refining frameworks,
24:38 we love new versions of frameworks that we create
24:42 and we get very irritated when other people don't join up to our frameworks and
24:46 why we want a single framework for each country,
24:49 actually we want the one that we have been most involved in.
24:54 I don't think that's going to be the case for the next 10 years.
24:58 More and more of the traditional donor programs,
25:02 first of all they're going to be a smaller part
25:04 of the total because there will be other players in the
25:07 in the field and not just China but UAE's largest investor now in Africa,
25:12 um.
25:13 And as we deal with these,
25:16 We have to recognize that our framework
25:19 will only be one amongst many and the country has
25:22 to deal with multiple partners at the same time.
25:25 Each of them will have their own framework,
25:27 and it's OK.
25:31 Actually,
25:31 one thing we'll discover,
25:33 you might not like it,
25:34 you can make progress without frameworks.
25:39 We confuse
25:42 Frameworks for as a prerequisite for progress.
25:46 Sometimes you know maybe you can actually make progress and
25:49 I do worry a little bit that this current preoccupation with country platforms.
25:54 Of which in earlier incarnations some of us have dealt with
25:58 other names for that
26:00 is going to be a little bit disappointing
26:03 when we
26:04 operate in the real world of
26:07 multiple partners.
26:08 Last point I want to make is the respective roles of
26:12 multilateral
26:14 organizations and bilateral assistance.
26:17 I'm not so clear in my head
26:19 about how the balance is going to come out.
26:22 On the one side.
26:24 If you want your
26:27 solidarity to be built up,
26:28 you want your
26:30 bilateral,
26:30 you want your assistance
26:32 to be visibly seen and associated with the country
26:36 that pushes you to doing more
26:38 bilateral.
26:40 Similarly,
26:41 if you want to use it to do national
26:44 economic strategy
26:47 that pushes you to more bilateral deals,
26:49 you know,
26:49 you don't particularly want.
26:51 To go multilateral
26:54 On the other hand,
26:56 You know,
26:56 multilateral institutions
26:58 give you leverage,
26:59 give you the ability to do things
27:02 differently
27:03 at scale.
27:06 If I were to put my money on it now,
27:08 I would say that at the margin we'll see some shift towards bilaterals,
27:13 towards bilaterals and away from multilaterals,
27:15 yes,
27:16 um,
27:17 and this would particularly be the case for those multilaterals
27:21 who depend every year or every 3 years on.
27:25 Budgetary contributions which compete directly with bilateral programs,
27:29 a lot of UN agencies.
27:32 A lot of INGOs
27:35 are going to be impacted
27:36 and you already see some of them
27:38 trimming their sails
27:40 in anticipation of
27:43 more choppy
27:45 waters.
27:47 But the MDB's,
27:48 it's worth spending a minute on the MDBs.
27:51 So the MDPs of course,
27:54 are
27:55 to a large extent self-financing.
27:58 And I think could be even more self-financing.
28:02 So MDBs rely on,
28:04 like the World Bank,
28:04 rely on
28:06 donors
28:07 for
28:09 funding for their concessional windows every 3
28:11 years we go for either replenishment,
28:13 and they rely much less frequently for money
28:16 from shareholders to
28:18 increase their capital.
28:22 But I think going the next 10 years,
28:24 we,
28:25 we,
28:25 I say we,
28:26 but I should say you,
28:27 the World Bank
28:28 needs to start becoming.
28:32 Living in a world where the donor funding will be harder to get,
28:36 I don't look at the IDA numbers.
28:37 IDA numbers last 10 years,
28:39 there's a little bit of a marketing thing here,
28:42 I'm sorry to say,
28:43 which is that every IDA replenishment has a higher total,
28:47 but if you look at the donor contribution,
28:49 it's actually flat and in real terms falling across the last 10 years.
28:53 So.
28:54 I think we need to live with that as the reality and
28:57 and work around that.
28:59 That's a separate conversation we need to do
29:01 how we do this,
29:02 but.
29:06 Couple of ideas,
29:07 you know,
29:07 one is
29:10 Can we at the margin of the MDBs are
29:14 doing too much in the form of grants rather than concessional loans.
29:18 If you,
29:18 if you,
29:19 if you either country can't.
29:23 Take on a 40-year loan at near 0% interest rates.
29:27 You have to ask yourself what faith you have in the development strategy there.
29:32 Are there ways in which you could generate more?
29:37 Funding for concessional
29:39 lending
29:40 through expanding
29:42 IBRD type operations and the better,
29:45 the more credit worthy countries and
29:47 explicitly targeting that money
29:50 for concessional lending.
29:52 Should the IBRD type operations take on a little more risk by
29:57 taking blended countries that are at the margin
30:00 between IDA and IBRD onto IBRD books?
30:03 Sometimes I feel that the IBRD type institution,
30:06 I'm not just picking on IBRD,
30:07 but I am picking partly on IBRD,
30:11 is that
30:11 we're a little too conservative about our balance sheets,
30:14 you know.
30:15 At the end of the day we have to live in
30:17 a world where it's going to be a second best world.
30:21 Are there ways?
30:21 Look,
30:21 these ideas might not be the best ideas.
30:24 I'm just saying to you
30:26 that you need to start thinking
30:29 more creatively about how to operate
30:32 in a world where donor funding will be tighter.
30:36 So let me end now.
30:40 I want to end by saying
30:43 This is all what I've been saying to you is from the
30:46 perspective of a development practitioner
30:49 sitting in mostly in the global north.
30:52 But recently I've been talking to some of my friends and I'm sure many of you have and
30:57 and colleagues who are policymakers in the global south and
31:00 asking them how do they see this current crisis.
31:06 And
31:08 I sort of struck by 3 things in particular they said.
31:12 The first is that uh,
31:18 Without minimizing the human cost of the abruptness of the cutbacks this year.
31:25 Most of them have largely moved on.
31:28 They move beyond this crisis.
31:33 They've sort of said,
31:34 and also they don't use.
31:37 The kind of extreme words about this crisis that many of us use,
31:41 and don't think of it as a catastrophe in the scheme of things they have to deal with.
31:47 They are ready to talk about
31:49 redesigning.
31:51 What comes next?
31:54 But they are very keen that what comes next.
31:58 Should not start from what existed before.
32:04 They want a conversation about how to deal with the issues where there is
32:08 cooperation,
32:09 but they don't want.
32:12 Us to come forward with
32:15 starting from what we had and sort of tinkering at the
32:18 at the margin
32:19 and.
32:21 In particular,
32:22 they see this
32:24 move to a mutual interest
32:27 paradigm,
32:27 self-interest paradigm
32:29 as a good opportunity.
32:31 To have an honest dialogue that starts.
32:35 But both sides laying out their priorities
32:39 and then trying to find common ground.
32:42 And one of them said to me that
32:44 it's time to move beyond the polite pretense.
32:48 that we all share.
32:50 The priorities,
32:52 which is really your way of getting us to say we share your priorities.
32:58 And I think we have to be conscious of that.
33:01 We also have to be conscious of the fact that
33:04 Sometimes
33:07 the development community in
33:10 the practitioners,
33:11 people like us
33:12 are seen as being a little too tied to the systems and institutions
33:17 and the frameworks and norms that we've created.
33:21 Than to
33:23 asking what's the best way to solve
33:25 the problems going forward.
33:28 The second thing that they've said is that the programs that they want
33:32 that they see as being important for cooperation
33:35 are the ones that shift the pendulum back a bit.
33:39 Towards
33:40 sustained growth.
33:43 And the accumulation of human and physical capital.
33:48 This back to basic score.
33:52 That we heard during the last
33:55 uh spring meetings
33:57 actually has broader support.
33:59 Than many of us in the institutions
34:02 would like to think,
34:04 so they,
34:05 they do want that focus to be on that but that but that
34:08 also means that they want a conversation
34:10 that doesn't just cover development assistance,
34:13 but all the channels of interaction trade.
34:19 Intellectual technology transfer,
34:21 intellectual property rights,
34:23 finance,
34:24 migration,
34:25 and they want they recognize that these things are now joined up
34:29 in policy and they want to have a conversation that covers the spectrum
34:33 and we need to be prepared to have that conversation
34:37 to be effective
34:38 and the last message I picked up is
34:41 I think much more of a recognition.
34:44 That
34:46 Now
34:48 the drivers of progress.
34:51 Whether they
34:52 or the pace of progress.
34:55 will be primarily determined.
34:57 By actions within the country,
34:59 it always has been,
35:00 but there is a much greater recognition
35:03 of that
35:04 and
35:05 what they want.
35:06 Is the best practice and the cross-country experience
35:11 that international institutions bring,
35:14 but not so much
35:16 this presented as prescriptions
35:20 so,
35:21 I think it's a very different
35:23 way of engaging.
35:25 I think the challenge for all of us is
35:27 how we then organize our own thinking and our mindset
35:32 to be able to contribute effectively in this
35:35 new framework.
35:37 I want to stop with that.
35:38 Thank you for your time
35:40 and look forward to Mohammad's.
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A video recording of the "Opening Address: The End of Development Cooperation?" on Day 1 of The Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics 2025 "Development in the Age of Populism."
SPEAKER: Masood Ahmed, President Emeritus of the Center for Global Development