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This Week in Global Development
The new power players
00:31:29
In this episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, Business Editor David Ainsworth is joined by Managing Editor Anna Gowel and Deputy Managing Editor Fiona Zublin to discuss the launch of Devex’s...
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign My name is David Ainsworth, and you're listening to this Week in Global Development, hosted by myself, Ramitu Kamba and Adva Saldingham. Hello, and welcome to this Week in Global Development. I'm your host, David Ainsworth. I'm the business editor here at devex, and I'm joined by our editor and deputy editor this week, Anna Goel and Fiona Zublin, to talk about our new Power 50 list, which we've just launched to great fanfare and rapturous acclaim. So without any further ado, Anna, why don't you tell us all about the Power 50 list? What's in it, why we're doing it, all that sort of stuff.
- [00:43]
B
So I keep calling it a labor of love. Newsroom might have thought it's more of a labor than love, but we are very proud of this list. It was a lot of debate and deliberation, but we really feel like it's a list that represents people that our community should be aware of and should know about. One thing that's important to note is that it doesn't include a lot of the obvious names. I mean, we know President Trump and Elon Musk dismantled usaid. We know Secretary of State Marco Rubio is in charge of rebuilding it. But there's so many people behind the scenes that are big players in shaping the future of global progress and foreign assistance. And I think it's important to note that this. It's kind of strange to say, but in a lot of ways, this administration is kind of elusive. I mean, again, President Trump is not shy about expressing his opinion. Elon Musk certainly wasn't shy about the proverbial wood chipper. But again, there are a lot of people behind the scenes that people may not be aware of. Um, it's not, you know, the usual suspects, if you will, in kind of U.S. politics. And one thing that this year is different. We're moving also, I think, from elimination when we had Elon Musk and Donald Trump last year, to creation. And so the State Department is really in this creation mode. And so that's why we do have figures from the State Department, especially on the global health front, because that's where we're seeing a lot of action. So we've got, for instance, Brad Smith, who's helped design America first global health strategy. On the flip side, we have, of course, several African leaders, most prominently the president of Ghana, John Muhammad, because this also kind of stems from them rejiggering their relationships with the US Again, especially on the health front. So We've got John Muhammad really spearheaded this Accra reset, which started as a way to build health sovereignty, but is now a much larger initiative to kind of move beyond the development as usual kind of model. And obviously the US is kind of this center of power, center of gravity and it's still where a lot of money flows from. But the list is also not all administration people. I know I often talk about them because I'm from dc, but it's tech entrepreneurs, it's you know, AI folks, it's philanthropists, obviously it's leaders of multi development banks. It's really a pretty wide range of people. And so, you know, I will just mention two that kind of stand out for me and then I'll pass it over to Fiona. You can tell I'm very excited about this list. It was a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But one of the interesting ones I found is Ana Makandju who is president of global impact for OpenAI. And obviously artificial intelligence is going to redefine not just the world, but including the global south. I mean it could be a positive revolution, it could be catastrophic, it could be somewhere in between. I kind of describe her as like this referee in the race for AI. She's really pioneered guardrails and regulations in this process. Her background's fascinating. She's worked for both SpaceX and Facebook, but also National Security Council and Pentagon. So she's got that mix of tech and policy chops that I think personally is just so interesting. And so I think she's going to be one of these figures that we really look at as we figure out the rules of the road for, for AI. And then I'll end, I would be not to go back to the administration, but I'd be remiss not to mention our top pick, which is Benjamin Black who heads the U.S. development Finance Corporation. He's not a common name. He wasn't a common name in Trump world. He's the longtime investor but now he heads up an agency that I kind of describe as like the development agency of the Trump administration. It's got a much more beefed up portfolio. It can now invest in certain high income countries. And that lends itself to the question which we've been reporting on is will DFC continue to focus on its core mandate of development, you know, investing in lower income fragile countries or will it kind of go more into the range of middle to high income countries where there's more return on investment. So this is such an active question for the development community because there's a lot of money involved with dfc. So Ben Black is at the top of it. He's a longtime investor. He doesn't come from the world of development. So I just think that one is there's a lot of rationale for why he's at the top. And I think it's. He's going to be fascinating moving forward. I won't go through all 50, I promise.
- [05:43]
A
No, I think that'll do for now. But yeah, this is very much. It's. It's not a list of the most powerful people in development. We debated this internally. Should we just pick out who we think the 50 most powerful people are or should we try and look at it from a different angle? And in the end we've gone much more with the idea of kind of picking out some movers and shakers who are kind of coming powers behind the scenes. Some are quite well known names, some are not quite as well known. But they're all people who's, who are influencing what's happening right now. They're not people who've kind of got this long term access of power necessarily. Some of them do. Some of them do, but some of them are people who are right of the moment. Like an interesting name, for example, like that would be Keller Renardo Clifton. He's the CEO of Zipline. Now Zipline have been quite a powerful force in development for quite a while. But the reason that he's on the list is not because of his overarching power over everybody, but the fact that Zipline has just signed such a big deal with the State Department. It's very representative the new way that a lot of people seem to want to do business in development. So there's a lot of kind of people who are, who are representative in particular of kind of big trends that we see being very influential. A lot of people from the world of philanthropy because philanthropy is a growing forces, national donors step back. Some people from new donor groups from outside the kind of the main traditional kind of ODA donors. A lot of people from the world of investment, A lot of people from the global south who are pushing back about the way that aid has traditionally been delivered. Fiona, you worked on this for a long time. I put in a lot of work. Who are some really interesting names who jumped off at you?
- [07:33]
C
Well, it's interesting that you mentioned Keller Clifton because he was one that, you know, as we've been working on writing this for months, one of the really interesting things is that, you know, we've been writing about all of these people sometimes for years, and you find out so much new stuff about them when you just go in to write a little profile. And I definitely found myself digging around in old, you know, editions of Harvard magazine about articles that were written about Keller Clifton when he was a, like, very avid rock climber at Harvard about 15 years ago. So, so, so that was one of, kind of the joys of the list is, is finding things about people's backgrounds that you might not otherwise have known. One of the people that I found the most interesting on our list and actually, you know, including him on the list caused us to. To step up our coverage of him, is a guy named Jamie Donaldson, who goes by Mr. Beast. Anyone who's on YouTube knows who this guy is famous for extremely viral videos such as, you know, we. We gave people hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay in a grocery store alone for a month. Like all sorts of, like, strange viral challenges, but also like a lot of emphasis on a sort of viral philanthropy, starting from one of his sort of earliest, very successful videos where he just gave someone a lot of money and going on to starting a whole new philanthropy YouTube channel alongside his personal channel, which is the most subscribed on YouTube. And he sparked a lot of debates among people in philanthropy about, you know, is this a good thing? Is this showy? Is this actually making Gen Z thinking about. Think about philanthropy when they might not have otherwise? Um, and so, so getting a lot of people like that who are really changing a lot of conversations, but also have a lot of controversy around them, I think was. Was a real joy of putting this together.
- [09:32]
B
You went with joy. I love it. You're not only.
- [09:36]
C
I love to find out weird details about people. You know, I remember I've been editing stories about UK aid for five years and, and British International Investment since before it was called that. And the incoming CEO of British International Investment, Leslie Masdorp, you know, found myself listening to the old podcasts that he recorded about his background in the anti apartheid South African government, about you being part of the protest movement before the apartheid government was overthrown, about spending months and months in jail, having to take his exams from prison. Like, all sorts of just amazing background that really kind of gave me, and I hope the readers like some insight into what he might bring to his role as, like, this extremely powerful CEO of Britain's dfi, which is taking on an unprecedented amount of power in the UK aid scene, especially given all the cuts in UK aid over the last several years.
- [10:40]
B
And an interesting parallel because DFC is America's development finance institution and also very powerful. So you can kind of see where, where the money is gravitating to. So there's a lot of parallels in the list as well.
- [10:55]
A
Yeah, I was quite interested, like there were a couple of people here that I knew literally nothing about beforehand that I kind of felt like I should have done. One who jumps out of me is Rema Alabadi Radovan with the German aid minister. And it's still up in the air whether Germany is going to be the largest DAC donor in the coming years, depending very much on whether United States actually kind of puts as much money where its mouth is as it says it's going to do. And I think likely in 2025 when the United States spent very, very little, we'll probably see that the largest DAC donor was Germany. And this lady has now kind of snuck in under the radar really and become one of the most influential players in how the world's largest day donor spends its money. It's fascinating to research some of this stuff and find these people that we can't all be aware of, everybody who's powerful in the world of aid, but you look at and you think this is a really interesting character. We need to know much more about this lady. She's an interesting lady because she's the child of an Iraqi immigrant. She's kind of come from a Global south background herself. It's not at all clear what the policy of the German aid, the aid policy of the German government is going to prove to be moving forward. They've kind of traditionally been very generous, but they're starting to cut a lot of people like that that you, you find out more about any sort of trends that stood out to either of you as you looked through the list and you started to think about kind of looking at these people as a group.
- [12:43]
B
For my part, you know, when you mentioned Germany, I instantly thought of the kind of Persian Gulf donors, these emerging donors. So we talk a lot about the private sector led approach and the DFIs, but there's still traditional bilateral grant assistance in addition to the investment led approach. And so we have like, I think it's featured in Newswire today, head of the Saudi Development Agency. I think another interesting name is Sidi Ul Ta, who is the new president, relatively new president of the African Development Bank. And he has a lot of connections to Gulf Persian Gulf countries. So he's been acting as kind of this bridge between Africa and Middle east and specifically the Gulf in terms of, you know, Ramping up investment. And so I think that it's not just we can't completely say that the traditional world of development is dead and gone. You know, We've seen the $50 billion bill pass here in the US that we discuss, you know, very frequently. And so we've got Jeremy Lewin on the list. He's going to be in charge of like a $50 billion budget. So it's, it's on the one hand the trend is very much like private sector led investment approach to development. But I think it's important to note that there's also still more traditional foreign assistance. It's just coming from new people and.
- [14:12]
C
You are seeing a lot of changes that, you know, we might not have expected in the very sort of hidebound, tradition bound aid sector five years ago. I mean, one of the people on the list, Barham Saleh, is the former president of Iraq, but he's the incoming UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is traditionally a post that is only given to Europeans just based on the sort of norms of the UN and you know, we were following that race extremely closely. There were a lot of candidates and, and this guy, we're really interested to see what he's going to do. But that's showing a different kind of leadership from, from the Middle east as well.
- [14:55]
A
Yeah, I was really struck and really like this has been a theme that's developed over the last sort of year or 18 months is the kind of the rise of the multipolar world, perhaps because we're all Europeans and Americans and we're sitting here and we're used to a world that's very centered around our own worldview. But looking at the trends in development, it's clear that that's not really as helpful a worldview now as it was a couple of years ago. And it's probably going to grow less helpful as time goes by. We're seeing the rise of influential Chinese leaders and there are some of them in this list as well. We're seeing the rise of Gulf donors and we're seeing much more control and power taken by the leaders of African states as well. I know you mentioned John Muhammad. I think the Accra reset is one of the prime examples of that. We have a number of global health ministers from the Global south on this list as well. I think one thing, and interestingly I was editing an article about this just before we came on air is, is about how these, these countries are responding to a very different approach from Europe and the United States and starting to take control of their own destiny, starting to, to localize and starting to, to be much more forceful in thinking about how they would like development in their own countries to be run rather than kind of looking at the money that's coming in from the global North. And I think that's a very, this list is reflecting a very different picture of aid as well. Any other trends that you would like to discuss here?
- [16:43]
D
Thank.
- [16:45]
B
I mentioned City Ulta's African Development bank, but it's also like you said, I mean I think it's just echoing your point of view. These hotspots in the world that have not, you know, we've traditionally thought of the US and Europe and for instance, like in terms of MDPs, we have Elon Goldfan who's head of Inter American Development bank. And we know that the Trump administration is really focusing on Latin America. That's, you know, an understatement. And you know, so in the Western Hemisphere. So I imagine that Elon golfing and the idb, which has kind of been like a quieter ndb we always think of the World bank is going to play a much bigger role just given the fact that again, Latin America is kind of coming into the geopolitical scene. It's always been here, but much more so with all of the recent events.
- [17:44]
A
Yeah. Okay. I mean for anybody who hasn't checked out the Power 50 list, the top 10 are available for free to anybody to take a look at and you can pick up the kind of the write up and learn a little bit about our thinking. The whole top 50 is available to our pro and pro funding memberships. So if you're not a member yet, please sign up. We'd love to have you.
- [18:24]
D
Hi, I'm Kate Warren, Executive editor at devex. If you are listening to this podcast, you are likely working to achieve the sustainable development goals. But are you subscribed to devex Newswire? Global development can be a fast moving, complex sector. Our team of global reporters work every day to bring you the news you need to make sense of the it all. In devex Newswire, we keep you up to date on issues ranging from climate change financing to gender equality and global health to transforming the food system. All in a fun to read free newsletter delivered directly to you five days a week. Join the hundreds of thousands of global development professionals who receive Devex Newswire and visit devex.comnewsletters to sign up to this free newsletter today.
- [19:10]
A
Let's move on to talk about something which really echoes the themes we've just been discussing here. The kind of the move towards the Global south, trying to kind of define its own destiny and control the narrative. It's a very interesting series of narratives that we're seeing here. On one hand, we've got kind of America trying to assert its power and kind of primacy in the world, and on the other hand, a much more powerful Global south that's really pushing in different directions. And one of the stories that kind of highlights this is the attitude towards critical minerals, which are growing strangely more critical as time goes by. We're seeing the United States saying it wants to control critical minerals elsewhere in the world because it's vital, kind of strategically, geopolitically. And we're seeing a real pushback on that from other nations that have not necessarily thought about critical minerals in the same way. Anna, you've just led on and edited and published a very long and thorough piece about kind of critical minerals in Africa and how we're thinking about it. Well, and Fiona, you've been heavily involved in this as well. So again, why don't you tell us all about it?
- [20:19]
C
Well, so you probably have heard a lot about critical minerals in the last few months. We've certainly been reporting on it a lot. And it's, it's going to be a hugely important issue in 2026. And every country in the world understands this. And one of our reporters, Jesse Chase Lubitz, has written a really fascinating piece about attempts among African countries to maintain sovereignty over the loads of critical minerals that they have are under their soil. And so what that's currently manifesting as is limits on exports, sometimes outright bans on exports, basically what it is is an attempt from several countries individually. There have been new laws in Botswana, Malawi, Ghana, Zimbabwe, to keep the minerals from being exported in a raw form from African countries, processed elsewhere in places like China, and then those places reaping the profits from the raw materials that are coming from the African countries. The thing is, that does require probably a lot more processing power of these minerals into processed goods on African soil. That's something that takes longer than just enacting a law that bans them being exported. So these bans are seen as sort of a stopgap measure or a first step while these African nations get their ducks in a row. And like those, those ducks could manifest any number of ways. There's been a lot of discussion of essentially an OPEC for critical minerals of African nations that have lots of, lots of stores of critical minerals. Because the worry is that for minerals that have deposits across several countries, the countries that Enact export bans will simply get left behind when countries that want to import critical minerals will just go to another country. With, for example, Zimbabwe and South Africa, both have large stores of chromium. So if they don't collaborate on the laws to do with exporting chromium, then one of them could get taken advantage of, one of them could get left behind, and both could end up losing the fight. For a country like drc, which has most of the world's store of cobalt, then the calculus is a little bit different. One of the things that some of the sources that Jesse spoke to suggested was sort of regional compacts over specific minerals. There are legislative solutions like that on the African continent that could be repurposed to do something like that, but it is a bit complicated. So this is sort of the beginning of this battle. But it will be really interesting to see how it plays out, because I think a lot of these countries are absolutely determined to not be taken advantage of for resources in a way that they have been in the past for hundreds of years.
- [23:29]
A
Yeah, this is very much one of the themes that we're seeing in the. We've got the African Union, Union summit coming up any day is that African unity is an increasingly big theme in the world of development. I think we're still in the early days of it and living in a country that's had its own dubious records with supranational unions and how they might work. I can tell you that it's a difficult thing to do to set up a union among many countries to negotiate internationally. It does seem to be, though, increasingly, a theme that the kind of heads of Africa are really pushing that in order to negotiate effectively on the world stage. With large countries that want to throw their weight about naming no names, they may need to get together and to speak with one voice. And this kind of push on critical minerals is one way that they're going to do that. And I think we're going to see this increasingly as a development theme. We've seen a lot of the same stuff in food. For example, food attempts to move food processing back onto African soil, rather than having Africa produce the raw materials and it be processed elsewhere and most of the value be captured in other countries. African nations are asking themselves, how can we be in control of the resources that we actually have? How can we negotiate? And I think as a development theme, this is interesting because it's going to lead out into all forms of negotiation. Negotiation on money, coming in, negotiation on trade, negotiation on transport. It's going to be a defining theme in how development organizations are going to be doing business in Africa, that Africans are going to try to reassert their power and negotiate from a position of strength.
- [25:25]
C
Well, and many people have identified the sort of America first global Health Trump administration plan that came out recently as a direct attempt to head that off because of its, its huge focus on bilateral compacts. The idea is just get in a room with one country that has much less power and see what you can get out of that. And critical minerals are also part of that discussion because of the US focus on gaining access to those minerals.
- [25:55]
B
It's interesting actually just to jump in, like literally, literally this week there is here in D.C. critical minerals ministerial that the State Department is hosting. They've got like 50 country reps to basically talk about, you know, not having this reliance on China, which has a monopoly over a lot of the critical minerals, global supply chains. It's interesting because you have, there's obviously a lot of African countries, but there's also European countries and countries from elsewhere. There is some hesitation, I think, more among the Europeans than the Africans to go into alliances with the Trump administration because as we have seen that those are not always stable or reliable, as the Greenland incident has kind of shown. But there seems to be more progress in terms of African countries. The Democratic Republic of Congo signed a big deal with DFC and some other private investors. So there's been movement there. And I think that Democratic Republic of Congo is a really fascinating example because on the one hand, and Fiona, you kind of alluded to this is you definitely want to have kind of a regional bloc to increase your bargaining power. But DRC has a monopoly on several of these critical minerals. So it may not really have the need for this kind of arrangement. And I think DRC also represents kind of the multi layered side of this. You know, you've got foreign investors who may look at critical minerals from purely resource extraction perspective. But you also have these governments in Africa where like you mentioned, Fiona, they may not have the capacity for the regulatory reforms, for creating a solid industrial base. But corruption is also an issue, corruption and conflict. And you've got that in drc, you know, and will the profits not just trickle to African governments, but will they trickle down to their citizens? And so I think there is this kind of interesting phenomena with critical minerals in terms of trust. You have the trust among African governments to form a regional bloc. You have the trust within governments and their people to spread out the wealth of these critical minerals. And then of course, the trust between the west, which is eager to get its hands on these minerals, and Africa, which is home to a substantial amount of them. And again, just like you guys have said, not having foreign investors reap all the profit and having this value added manufacturing stay on the continent.
- [28:34]
A
Yeah, it's a pretty interesting set of themes. I mean, I keep coming back to the idea, to this concept of African unity. Possibly I'm more fascinated by them than I should be because we need to remember to focus on the development issues and not just stray entirely into geopolitics. But it does seem like an absolutely critical part of it. Extremely difficult to come up with a unified policy across a continent where you've got essentially a couple dividing it in two with countries that have kind of moved away from governments of varying levels of democracy and back towards kind of conflict in the last few years, splitting the entire continent from one side to the other. Very hard to then when you're divided in that way, to create a unified approach. I've quoted before on this podcast and will no doubt quote again, because it's a fascinating statistic to me that 30 years ago all but two African countries were richer than China. Now all but two are poorer. And that's very much a function of, of the Chinese operating from a position of unity and power. And I think the Africans have seen that and interested in essentially pursuing the same strategy. And we're now seeing whether that's something that can actually be done. And you made the interesting reference there, Anna, to the fact that the DRC is in a position in a lot of cases to just go it alone here to say we've got the monopoly, we're all right, Jack. We don't need to form a group with any of you lot to negotiate with the Americans or anybody else, because we've got all the cobalt. And you wonder whether those kind of dividing lines are going to continue to spring up. It's a very interesting well.
- [30:17]
C
And resources can be a blessing or a curse. Right? I mean, you can look at the oil boom in Norway versus the oil boom in Venezuela and how those two things were managed and what they've led to. And I assume these governments trying to manage their resources are looking to that as well and just saying, okay, how can we, how can we use this to create a stable society rather than just use this to create a lot of corruption at a big mess.
- [30:44]
A
I'm. I wish that the guys in the drc. Well, with that one. Right, Okay. I think we could probably talk about this for longer, but we're running out of time here. I think we'll call it a day. On this particular podcast, it just remains for me to say thank you very much to you, Anna and Fiona, and to all of our listeners, and to wish you all well. Sa.