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This Week in Global Development
What does 2026 hold for global development?
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In the first episode of the year, we look ahead to what we expect to happen in 2026 in global development. From more foreign aid cuts by traditional Western donors to a more transactional approach to development, we discuss what trends are set to...
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Foreign.
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My name is Rumbi Chakamba and you're listening to this week in global Development hosted by myself at the Saldinger and David Ainsworth. I am joined by our President of EDU 9, Chief Rajkumar, as well as our managing editor, Anna Gawal for the first edition of this week in global development for 2026. And this this week, I called in the big guns because we're going to try and predict what's going to come in 2026. So welcome, guys.
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Yeah, New Year. I can't believe it. Ranvee. And. And a lot happening here last year was so overwhelming in the volume of news, the number of things that happen in our space. It doesn't look like it's slowing down at all though, in 2026.
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I don't think it will. No, it's going to be another fascinating year. Leave it at that.
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So for me, I would describe last year as a movie. I could not have predicted half the things that happened last year. But Raj, you do this prediction piece every single year where you kind of look at the trends that are happening and what you think is gonna happen for, for the following, the year that we're in, which is 2026 right now. And you actually predicted changes in global development. You've been predicting this for a couple of years now. I don't think anyone could have actually predicted the scale and the speed that it happened with last year. You have this analogy of an iceberg that's melting and it's been melting all along and you say that it happened faster last year. I would say someone took a bomb to it last year and there's no way we can actually go back to what it was before. Can you take us through some of the trends you had been seeing before and what last year meant and if there's any way we can ever go back to what it was.
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Yeah, you know, writing this predictions piece is like one of the scariest things I do here at devex because you have to put it out on paper. Here's what I think will happen. And I assumed when I predicted peak ODA peak Official Development Assistance last year that, you know, I might have a big quibble with a bunch of the audience members who might look at the numbers and say, well, you're technically wrong. You know, the, the differences might be very small one year to the next. No, not at all. As you say, you know, the peak ODA idea, the prediction turned out to be more true than I could have ever imagined. You know, 2024, we saw a drop of about 6% according to the OECD. OECD is predicting that 2025 would be another 9 to 18%. And when I look forward into 2026, I don't think we've hit bottom. I think there's a sense maybe for many in the development community that with USAID getting wiped out, with the UK announcing 40% cuts, that we must be near the bottom here. I think there's actually still little ways to go. And that's one of the core things I talk about in my 2026 predictions piece, is that even though I called Picoda last year, that trend is not done. And I think that's the case partly because of the politics really like the politics that are roiling the donor countries. Those are pretty systemic. These are not just one offs. There was one election and one person was voted in. And they happen to have a different view on foreign aid. Not really. I think what we're looking at our countries now in the global north with aging populations, with major health and pension requirements for those populations, with really big debt burdens that grew a lot during the pandemic and no clear path to getting out of that, besides significant spending cuts and tax increases. You've got people, I think, feeling like income inequality has gotten a lot worse. And this word affordability became really popular in this last year or so. People are really feeling squeezed and they're politically polarized. So it just works to go out as a politician and say, let's not send money overseas. You know, we need the money at home. That's always worked to some degree, but it's like, wow, it really catches fire today when you say that. And so even though we've gone through this really tough period in 2025, lots of cuts, one of my core predictions for 2026 is it's not over. In fact, I predict that we will end 2026 with overall aid levels below the period when we created the Sustainable Development Goals.
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So that part shocked me. That part shocked me. But then it's also understandable because if you look at European donors, their cuts are still to come. Bas, Anna, are you seeing the same sort of trends? And we've talked a lot about this in the newsroom, about how development property didn't make the best case for itself. And so that's why it's been so easy to let go. Are you seeing a lot more of this and what are your predictions?
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Mine are pretty simple, My predictions. But before I go into that, to answer your question, I mean, I fully agree we haven't seen the bottom drop out just yet. And I think that's certainly the case in Europe. And I think there's so much uncertainty in the U.S. you know, I think Raj makes a very good point that the writing was on the wall not just because of the U.S. you know, you had to look at Europe, especially the UK which was cutting aid years ago. So these changes, you know, again, the writing was on the wall and then the US came. So I also don't think we can minimize what happened to usaid. I mean, it was so deep and so sudden. I think it was, you know, unprecedented. I don't think it's hyperbole to say it was unprecedented in modern day development history. But, you know, so we are where we are. I think it was. There was good and bad and I think we need to learn from that in 2026. The good is tough to see, I think, overall. But, you know, in terms of the way it was done, we talked about this a lot. Is, is it was done very rapidly. I think in the future, when we do see aid cuts, hopefully there'll be a little more well thought out. There won't be as sudden because we had, you know, very real life repercussions on the ground because of how sudden they were, you know, medical stockouts and things along those lines. So hopefully they'll be more thought out and staggered. But, you know, I also think in terms of what will happen next, my own opinion is that aid will be far less just like we've talked about, and it will look very different. And we see this now with the State Department. You know, we see a much more commercial approach to global development. We've seen it as we talked about with the signing of these African or bilateral health compacts with many in African countries and growing number of African countries. And so I think this speaks to the fact that we're going to have a very different type of aid. I think it's going to be less. I think it's going to be much more transactional. It's going to be much more based on self interest. Again, I don't think that's necessarily just the U.S. it's the EU as well, especially when it comes to issues like migration, critical minerals and all of that. But I think especially to me, the US is the more extreme example of what we might see in 2026. And I think we're going to see. This is something Raj talks about in his piece. It's going to be chasing the money trail and finding new money trails. So I think that's my biggest prediction as well, is, you know, some people will go under, some organizations will innovate, adapt, do more with less. But at the end of the day, everyone's going after a shrinking pie of bilateral assistance, which isn't completely dead just yet. But then you have to do, you know, you have to be looking at MDBs, you have to be looking at philanthropy especially. And the US Is no exception. I think it's. It's all over the world. Development. All organizations all over the world will have to get creative in 2026.
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I want to jump to chasing the money trail, but there's something that you said there that was quite interesting. The good and the bad. I struggle a lot with articulating how I feel about the Trump administration's strategy. But one person, in reference to the health deals, actually said, this is the most honest US Administration that we have seen. And this is like in the health space. And this is speaking about moving to a more transactional nature. And I guess the thought is that there were these conversations happening behind closed doors, and this administration is being upfront about what it wants in exchange, and maybe that's easier for people to understand and work with. And I also feel like a lot of people felt the speed and the scale was somewhat dangerous, and I'm probably one of those. But then there's also an understanding that changes needed to happen. And because of this big event that happened, it's forced, this change. And I have somewhat of a respect for the fact that there was some movement, because I think it would have probably taken us ages, maybe decades, to move towards what needed to happen. But this is now sort of forced, and it's now a situation of, okay, how do we now think this through? But speaking about what comes next and chasing the money, I think different players are going to become more important. And Raj, you allude to this, looking ahead, what players are going to become, become more important in this new environment?
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I think we're basically moving from an aid model to an investment model. So an aid model is a lot easier to understand. Right. It's the idea that we're going to just give money through grants or contracts. We're going to hire organizations, grant money to NGOs to go and deliver health services or other kinds of services. And that's kind of the core way that the development sector has been structured for a really long time. And I think we're now moving to a point where the investment focus, so investing in a social enterprise or creating a new big industrial Transformation, like trying to electrify hundreds of millions of households in East Africa as the World bank is now trying with partners. That sort of thing is the new core direction of development. And so it's a little bit tricky, I think, for people who've been in this space for a long time, because our mindset goes to institutional models and business models that are now rapidly shrinking. And these investment models have existed for a really long time. It's not that they're totally new, but they've never really gotten to the scale that they're getting to now and that they're forced to get to now. And I think that's, that's what we're going to see. So it's a really different mindset. It's about putting money at risk. It's not about giving away money, it's about investing and doing a deal, which is a very different thing than doing a project. And so I think that mindset shift is going to be very hard for people in the development community to kind of get through, but that's where we're going. And so institutions that play in that are the ones that are going to grow a lot in this era. So that's going to include private companies that operate in these markets, in these geographies. It's going to include the guarantee instruments that are inside the multilateral development banks that are inside some of the development finance institutions that help to reduce the risk to get private companies to actually invest. It's going to include those MDBs and DFIs, not just kind of waiting for the phone to ring and doing like one off little projects here and there alone there, you know, but instead actually thinking really big and ambitiously, you know, with governments of course, to say how do we totally revolutionize your energy sector, you know, critical minerals, how do we go and like build a critical mineral supply chain with processing in your country? That kind of big thinking where you have to bring together multiple development finance institutions, multiple MDBs, where they don't really get to call all the shots. Because in the end there's probably more private money than public money and there's a lot of players involved. I think that's sort of the direction we're heading. And so even though I'm saying we are likely to see official development assistance go down to pre2015 levels this year, I also think if, depending how you kind of draw the circle around what is global development, this is a sector that's going to get bigger if you consider private money as part of it, if you Consider philanthropy as part of it, and that's growing fast, too, and has a lot of potential for future growth. This is actually probably a bigger space than it was before in 10 years. From here to there is a really big challenge. Right these few years where aid is suddenly dropping and the new model hasn't quite kicked into gear is a period when you're going to see a lot of retrenchment. You know, a lot of kids who would have gotten vaccines, not getting vaccines, a lot of kids who needed, you know, emergency food assistance simply not getting it. You're going to see a huge, you know, backsliding on core development gains that we've gotten over the last 20 years in these few years. And maybe if this new model can be done in a way that works, you know, maybe you get through it and you once again get to gains. But for that reason, it's a really tricky period to understand right now.
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I think just to chime in, you know, I absolutely agree that we're going to be moving toward an investment model. I think the caveat, and you mentioned this as well, Raj, is this will take time. I think it will take. Personally, my opinion is it will take a lot of time. You know, NGOs, development organizations don't. Haven't traditionally spoken the same language as the private sector. And of course, they're trying to. Now we're all talking about, you know, private sector mobilization, domestic resource mobilization and so forth. But I just think it, it's not going to. It will go way beyond 2026, the process of this. I think eventually they will come to some kind of similar language. You know, necessity is the mother of invention, as I always like to say. And there's certainly a ton of investors out there who are not only looking for roi, but doing good. And global development certainly offers that pathway. But it's kind of like philanthropy in a way of. I keep kind of always saying this, like, broken record. It's easier said than done. You know, we certainly have. You know, you mentioned in your piece, Raj, there's trillions of dollars in collectively among today's billionaires. And certainly the rich are getting richer and they're more and more. There's new generations are going to be a new generation of billionaires. But I don't think that necessarily means that those billionaires are going to part with their money. And I think that's going to be one of the most crucial questions of 2026. Some will step up, especially those kind of who recognize the urgency of the moment, who are already Givers and very charitable. But will the rest of the step up? I think is to me one of the big questions of the year.
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I was going to say I think speaking the right language is a big question because I did see a lot of organizations sort of changing their language towards the last, the end of last year, sort of making the business case for development as opposed to just doing good. It's like the business case. Why does this make sense for you financially? But we have been talking about bringing in this private capital for a long time. What actually needs to happen for, for that change in language, for that understanding to actually happen and for develop an organization to be able to make this business case.
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I think a lot of it are the reforms you're seeing happening at the idb, at the World bank, at the dfc, you know, where they're saying, you know what, we used to be this sort of quiet, clubby world. We used to, things were easy, you know, we didn't have that much pressure on us. In fact, we could be pretty risk averse and that was okay. And now they're in a place where their board is telling them you've got to actually take more risk than you are now. We need you to be the tip of the spear because we don't have the aid money we used to have. So your organization has to just do a lot more than before. So these institutions that are traditionally very slow, very bureaucratic are starting to move and they're starting to do things like take internal units at the World bank, they have multiple different guarantee units and merging them to make one kind of client facing guarantee office that if you're a private investor, you know who to call and you understand how it works. I think they're also starting to say, you know, how do we extend the value of our assets? So the IDB has taken, you know, loans that it would normally hold on its books and sold them off to the private sector, which frees up money on their own books to go and do some more loans. Right. So they're starting to do these kinds of things to expand their scale. I think a lot of it's a culture and a people challenge. They have to change the mindset from lending to governments to deal making. But they're getting there, they're increasingly getting there. And we saw the World bank just last year announce big initiatives in water, in agriculture, in addition to their big electrification initiative. So I think we're starting to get there. There's a lot of details that are pretty knotty, like, you know, in The United States. There are banking regulations that make it really hard for investors to actually invest in global south countries. And so those will have to be tweaked and changed and there are real efforts underway to make that happen. There's a lot of creativity that's going to be needed. I remember we had Samaela Zubairu, who's the president of the Africa Finance Corporation, on our stage at the World bank meetings and he talked about how he and his team have identified a few hundred billion dollars of African capital sitting in African institutions, but invested in US Treasuries and actually didn't by law or by regulation need to be. And so if you could figure out the right mechanisms to safeguard that money with guarantees, et cetera, you could invest in an African infrastructure. And that's what they're chasing. So I think we're entering a moment when the need is so acute and these institutions have a lot of the tools and now there's the political pressure pushing them to figure it out. It is going to take time to get there, but they're starting to move to get there.
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It's interesting on the point specifically of MDDs and the pressure they're under. It's kind of a double edged sword because obviously you take the World bank for example, it's beholden to its shareholders. And on the one hand those shareholders are indeed pressuring the World bank to get a lot more creative to step up in this moment, but they're not necessarily putting in more capital for that to happen. On the one hand, you have the Trump administration which has contributed to, for instance, ida, the World Bank's concessional lending arm, and it hasn't come under fire like other multilateral institutions have. So I do think that's important and a plus for these MDBs. But you know, they're going to be under fiscal constraints, just as the shareholders are under fiscal constraints. So I think it's going to be they have to get creative and they're going to step up within reason of the financial constraints that they're also under. But yeah, I agree, I think, you know, they're going to think more long term projects, there's going to be a lot more innovation taking place. We see this at the World bank. There's going to be a lot more reforms, there's going to be a lot more pressure.
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But.
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But will it be backed up by capital? That's going to be an interesting question.
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That's why bringing the private capital is so important. Because you're right, they're not going to get backed up by more public capital. Right. It's very tough to do that in this environment. But the question is, can you attract the private money? And if you can do that, and if you can build, as they say, the capital stack, where you're using concessional money at the bottom, you're reducing risk. You can make it possible, theoretically anyway, for even big pension funds to take a. To play a role in something like electrification of Africa and to invest in those projects and get a reasonable return with safety. Those are the instruments that exist on paper. They exist in real life in some examples, but there's not enough of them yet. And the institutions, theoretically, they've got these tools, they can make that happen. So it's not about going back to governments, necessarily for more money. That would help, and they will try, but it's about using the tools they already have to crowd in much more private money. Now in the dfc, they actually have gotten reauthorized by the US Federal government at the end of last year. It's quite a big deal to dramatically increase the potential portfolio size of the institution to over $200 billion. That's massive. And that means they can put up to $200 billion at risk. Right. Of US taxpayer money at risk in investments around the world. It doesn't mean they're giving away $200 billion. These are investments. They're going to get that money back, most. Most likely, most certainly. And they'll get a return on it even. But they're allowed to put at risk that much capital. And they have a lot of these instruments guaranteed and do equity investments they can make. They make loans where they can crowd in private money. They can put in $100 and get $200 of private money to go along with them. And that's one way they can suddenly become quite a significant player in the space. Right. They could rival the Chinese one day with this kind of scale of capital that's now available to them. Now being able to actually use it, deploy it, is another story. It's not an easy thing to do for a small organization, but that is the direction of travel.
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This portion of this week in Global Development is brought to you by Pivotal.
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Which works to accelerate the pace of.
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Social progress for women and young people in the US and around the world. We are proud to spotlight pivotal's Action for Women's Health initiative that awards innovators who are shaping the future of women's health from North America to Southern Asia. So I'm here with Sophie Jenkins, international programs Director at Child Fund Australia. So, Sophie, can you tell me what inspired your work and what challenge were you trying to solve?
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Thank you. And wonderful to be here. I think for us at Child Fund Australia, what really motivates our work overall is that we have a very simple vision, and that's that every child and young person can say, I am safe, I am educated, I contribute and I have a future. And for us, over the past decades of our work, we have really seen health, particularly health for children, for adolescent girls and for women, as such a critical underlying factor of all of those aspirations. And so what motivates our work is knowing that when we partner with communities, when we partner with women, we can address these preventable health challenges that continue to perpetuate in the communities that we work here in Asia Pacific.
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And from your perspective, what are the most urgent priorities to ensure girls grow up with equal access to health education and opportunity?
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Yeah. So Child Fund takes a lifecycle approach across our health programming. So we really see the critical need to have tailored health approaches that meets people where they are, in their different life stages. So we prioritise from preconception through to adolescence and adulthood with a particular focus on children, on adolescent girls and on women, because we know that those voices has typically been marginalised in health policy research and practice. So in terms of those critical issues that we address, we really start by looking at child and maternal health, supporting those early days and years of a child's life through nutrition, through immunisation and through supportive family environments that are safe and provide a protective environment for those children. Then, really critically, we have a strong focus on adolescence. We see those adolescent years, particularly for girls, as just such critical years in development that bring unique health challenges and needs, but also a critical juncture that sets young girls up for their adulthood. In those years, we have a really strong focus on respectful relationships and gender based violence prevention. We also look at sexual health and reproductive health and rights, and we also look at menstrual rights, with an overarching focus on social and emotional wellbeing. I think critically, what we're seeing in our region is these critical health challenges that have perpetuated for a number of years are only worsening, both as funding for women's health is decreasing. At the same time as emerging risks such as online safety, are further exacerbating issues around gender based violence. But also in the Asia Pacific, where we're seeing climate impacts having such a devastating impact on women and adolescent girls health. I think here in the Pacific, this is obviously one of the most climate vulnerable regions globally. And already there is a huge body of evidence to suggest that women and girls are at the front line of those impacts in terms of water, sanitation, food scarcity, not to mention the frequent disruption and displacement due to increased frequency of climate induced disasters. So through our work, we're really trying to address these sort of core issues around child and maternal health and adolescent health, but also looking at how these emerging threats continue to undermine children and girls rights to access healthcare at different stages of their life. And how will this award help strengthen.
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Your impact in the communities you serve?
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Yeah, I mean, it's been incredible to have this recognition and this investment in our, in our women's health programming. I think for us this is a real opportunity for us to continue to scale up our existing investment. But really critically as well, we see this as an opportunity to pilot new innovations or explore new models to address some of those urgent health needs that are really impacting women and children in the Pacific. So we're really excited to look at opportunities to partner around looking at the impacts of climate change on women and girls health, particularly in the Pacific. We're also really excited to pilot more innovative approaches bringing our child protection and gender based violence work in more intentionally with our health programming, recognising the intersection of those two issues. I think as well, what is really exciting for us is that Child Fund is uniquely positioned where we have this really strong network of local partners and community partners and government partners across the Asia Pacific. But we're also part of a global Child Fund alliance network of 11 members operational in across 66 countries, reaching around 36 million children and their families every year. And so I think what we're really excited about is the potential to, to inspire other collaborators and partners who can see how we can potentially scale some of these really community driven and community led models across that broader network.
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Well, Sophie, thank you so much for.
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Sharing more about your work.
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Another group that's supposed to play a really important role in this new era is philanthropy. And I think initially there's been a lot of talk about how philanthropy can fill the gaps. And everyone I sort of talk to who's associated or works with any philanthropy is like, no, no, no, we can't fill the gaps. What role do you actually see philanthropy playing, Raj?
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Yeah, I think philanthropy has gotten so big and official development assistance has shrunk enough that actually it can play that government level role. And I write about this in the piece, I give some examples and show just how big philanthropy is now. It's at the scale of many governments. Individual philanthropists are giving as much as major governments are. And yes, they're dwarfed by the US or they're dwarfed by Germany, but, you know, not that much. And the scale of wealth at the top has grown so dramatically in the last five or six years. There's so much wealth there that you just need a few more individuals to get in the game and start giving at the kind of levels that you've seen others, famously the Buffetts or the Gates or the Bloombergs or Mackenzie Scotts and others. If you get a few more at that level, it's like adding a few more OECD countries to the, to the mix. Smaller countries. Okay, but countries. Right. And so I don't think the argument holds anymore that, well, philanthropy just has to play at the margins. It has to be catalytic. It just can never replace government. I think it's going to have to get a lot bigger. And so it gets to the question you asked earlier, Anna. Why is it that 90% of philanthropists haven't signed or billionaires haven't signed the Giving Pledge? And why is it that many who have signed it aren't giving that much away? And how do you unlock that? And there have been lots of carrots trying to unlock that money for years. But I think what's coming into the picture now in a bigger way are the sticks where billionaires around the world are seeing the politics shift. The populism is on the right and the left and they're talking on both sides about wealth taxes, about increased tax. I mean, Steve Bannon famously in the United States is a proponent of increased taxes on billionaires and millionaires. So, you know, you start to see if you're in that billionaire class, the writing on the wall. And I think that stick is coming where they're starting to think we've got to put more money into philanthropic vehicles that we can control or it's going to go to governments through taxation. And so there's more money going to philanthropies through donor advised funds, which they don't have to spend the money right away, but at least it's in a vehicle that ultimately will get given away. Some of them are opening, you know, sending more money overseas, overseas foundations. But I just think you're going to see more and more money moving into philanthropic vehicles in 2026. And that money will take time to be given out in actual philanthropy. But there is a wave coming just simply based on the scale of money that exists at the very top. There is a Wave of philanthropy coming with lots of challenges to lots of warts. This is not such a simple picture, but it's a reality we all have to contend with. It's going to be a major force in global development going forward.
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C
Yeah, no, I agree. I was just going to say. Sorry, I was just going to say. You're also going to see, I think the sticks are important. The foundations narrowly escaped significant tax increases in President Trump's one big beautiful bill last year. And like Raj said, there's tremendous inequalities and that's a huge issue for, for the world's billionaires. But I also think in addition to new giving, you know, you mentioned Mackenzie Scott. We did a story on the fact that she gave, you know, a record 7.2 billion last year. A lot more going to the global South. And so I do feel like the multi, the, the Michael Bloomberg's of the world. We certainly know that Gates is sunsetting and giving away 200 billion over the next two decades. I think the current crop of billionaires will also increase. They're giving and I do think it will make up for a lot of the smaller countries, your Netherlands and so forth. But I'm still less convinced on the US Front. I guess I'm a little more cynical on, on that front.
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A
Yeah. Mackenzie Scott's a great example. Right. She's given away so much. She's like one of the most philanthropic people in history. She can't give it away fast enough. And she's richer today than when she started giving it away because just the value of her stockholdings in Amazon and her overall wealth, you know, the stock market has gone up so much that her wealth has increased faster than she can give it away. The same is true for Bill Gates. And he's so philanthropic, but his wealth is higher now than when he started giving away money. So, you know, there is just a lot of money at the top and you know, it's kind of unfathomable money at the top. And it's going to start to go. I mean, maybe someone like Elon Musk might not be the first big philanthropist. He is possibly going to reach a trillion dollars in net worth this year. I mean, it's a. He's at 750 billion. I don't think there's ever been a human person on earth with that level of wealth. Certainly never a trillionaire. So I don't know that it'll be him. But there's a dozen other people richer than Bill Gates and you just need a few of them to say, this is the year I'm going to step up and do more. Interestingly, you see some of the billionaires like Larry Page has just bought a couple of properties in Florida because he's worried about the wealth tax that might come through in California. And he's of course, much wealthier than Bill Gates is today. So, you know, somebody like Larry could get more engaged in this. In fact, I believe he's been a donor to that lead initiative that USAID was involved with last year. So, or the year before last. So, you know, there's, there's potential, there are green shoots there beyond even the existing philanthropists.
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And one of the other trends that you mentioned, Raj, that's sort of shaping this new era is it being locally led. And I think we see that a lot and the health agreements that are happening with the U.S. but my question is what role should low and middle income countries be playing in trying to shape this new era that we're coming into right now? We've seen lots of agendas coming up like the Accra Reset. We've had previous AU agendas that are sort of talking about what needs to shift, but what role and what leverage do they actually have in shaping this new agenda?
- [31:04]
A
I mean, they have a lot of leverage, in theory, in their own countries. And so the kind of perfect abstract idea that you'll hear from the proponents of a lot of the changes that were made in the US, the Doge team and others, is countries should take care of their own people. And it's hard to argue with that at that abstract level. It sounds completely logical and rational. And so they will have, in theory, plenty of ability to make decisions for their own country. And there are going to be cases where that's a positive, where countries, some of them involved in the AKA reset, say, you know, we're going to spend a little less on defense or we're going to, you know, crack down on corruption. We're going to do what it takes to get more money into our health system of our own money. And that will be a really positive result where and when that happens. But there's also a lot of countries that face real political dysfunction that are run by autocrats that have, you know, major marginalized communities, maybe ethnic divisions where the central government isn't going to, you know, equally provide services to everyone in the country. So if you come at this with a humanitarian lens, you think of this from a long term perspective and you think, well, every kid who's born in the world ought to have a basic chance at life. Just saying that each country is going to have a lot more say in their own future. It's not very satisfying because it's not going to go well everywhere. There will be plenty of places where it just doesn't. And again, in the abstract you can say, well, the people will then rise up and they'll have a revolution and they'll change the government. We've seen how that goes. It doesn't always land in a positive direction. In the short run, maybe in the very long run, the arc bends toward justice, as Martin Luther King famously talked about. But in the short run, you have things like the Arab Spring, which looked a bit hopeful in some places in the beginning, and that didn't end up that way. So I think the proponents of this sort of shock therapy, cut the aid, give governments more authority, let them provide services to their citizens. I don't think that argument's going to age really well. I think the world is unfortunately more complex than that, more nuanced than that, and you'll have some places where it works out okay and many others where it doesn't.
- [32:58]
C
I think, you know, an interesting kind of point to make, you know, Rimbi, on your question of locally led development is, you know, there's, there's, the US Is not, the Trump administration is not giving people a lot of choices. It has been very vocal and upfront about the fact that, you know, he, it doesn't think that foreign aid should be channeled through large international NGOs, through for profit contractors. So, you know, this by default, it's, it's going to go to governments. And I think you will be kind of missing or a key question is, will there be that monitoring and evaluation that has come with, that did come with usaid. And in terms of the money flows of, of going to governments, you know, will they be going to autocratic regimes? Will they be, you know, ramping up corruption inadvertently or, you know, on purpose? So I think that's an interesting point. Is, is. But I think a lot of people agree with the initial theory here, is that, you know, ultimately a government should be responsible, should, you know, stand on its own two feet and so forth. But the, the practical how that will play out, I agree with Raj. It could be very messy.
- [34:04]
A
Just two quick thoughts about that. One is, I don't think the Trump administration wants to directly fund governments. I think they're actively looking for ways to avoid that. They might be forced to in some cases, but, you know, they're actively thinking about are there other ways we can pool our funding at the country level, not go through the government directly because we know we have to watch for corruption, we need more control, but yet not fund big, you know, for profit contractors or big international NGOs because they don't want to see that old model continue. So I think it's to be continued to be, you know, we're going to have to watch that story very carefully. But they have ideas about how they might get around directly funding government. The other thing to keep in mind about locally led is when we talk about private capital. In the end, private investment requires you to be locally led. That's kind of one of the benefits of social enterprise, you know, of investing in communities, is that you really have to understand the customer. And so you've got to be local to succeed. And if you look at the most successful global brands, you know, big global corporations that sell their products all over the world, they're run by local people in all the countries where they operate and they know the market. You know, McDonald's has a slightly different menu everywhere you go in the world because they know the local market. And that's the kind of thing the development sector didn't always get right. You know, it was very top down. And I think as you move more to a investment model, you will find that the best investments, the highest return, the best impact are going to be investments that are much more locally led. And so that's naturally where we're going to go. It might have been a mistake to have this big focus on localization with the old aid model. Right. To kind of mandate localization with an old model. Whereas I think with the investment model you will naturally get there if people really are caring about results and focused on that return on investment that they need to see.
- [35:49]
B
And coming back to 2026, what are some of the tensions you see playing out this year and what should we be on the lookout for? You described this as the year where we actually see this taking shape and people sort of debating what should come out of this.
- [36:03]
A
Yeah, to me, one of the biggest things I'm looking out for is a real fight, a battle in our sector over what does global development even mean? Because it's been stripped back so much. The political polarization in the US and in Europe and elsewhere has been so extreme around these issues that you're forced to ask existential questions like why do we give money to other countries and other people? And you're forced to have those real debates. And it's really easy to land at a purely my country first argument, a purely transactional argument. You know, we're giving this money because we're getting that. You know, you can see the arguments about Venezuela that President Trump is making. You know, in some ways they're shocking to people to hear. Like he's saying the quiet part out loud that we're getting oil. But it's really, it's really, you know, consistent, I think, with his arguments around. Everything he's doing is for the American people. And he's saying, look, we're doing this in Venezuela. We're getting oil for the American people. There's a benefit for my country. So the challenge with that mindset and approach when it comes to global development is essentially it negates the whole idea of long term development because you're probably not going to be able to attribute some short term personal benefit to a lot of the investments that happen in global development. Kids live past their fifth birthday somewhere across the world. How does that directly benefit my country? Right now it may not. But if you have a vision of a world that is freer and more open, where more people live longer and healthier lives, and you think that's going to kind of lift all boats and that's a good thing to do, that long term solidarity, that idea is pretty essential, I think, to this whole project of global development. And I think the reason there's going to be a fight this year and a battle is because we could lose that. You could easily end up in a place where this becomes a purely transactional space. Nobody cares anymore about doing good for other people in other countries because they say, what do I get out of it? And I think you're going to have a battle over that. I don't think everyone agrees that that ought to be the future, including people in sort of the coalitions on the right. There's plenty of Christian and other faith groups that were in a really important part of the old coalition around global development. I think they have a voice here and they're going to want to say, no, sorry, it's not just about a deal. It is about a broader conception of, you know, where we want the world to be in the future for our kids and their kids. So I think there's a big battle coming around. How does this model evolve and what does it even mean to be doing global development work?
- [38:26]
C
I think it's also like Raj, to your point, how much of it will be transactional in nature and how much will be helping people for the sake of helping people? And I think, you know, there are Pendulum swings. And we've definitely swung toward the my country first side of it. But I think eventually maybe we'll move to a middle ground where it's a combination of, yes, there's, you know, self interest involved. You know, we go into Venezuela, we want to get the oil. It's not a secret. We're saying it out loud. Just like you pointed out, Rumby. You know, these are things that people have talked about behind closed doors but have never said out in public. But that doesn't mean it's not occurring and that doesn't mean development has not always been transactional to some degree. But I wonder about the pendulum swinging and if there is still space for just that purely altruistic kind of, you know, we want to eradicate poverty, not necessarily to, you know, have an ROI on it, but because we want to lift all boats. I don't know what will happen. It'll. But I think that's one of the, for me, one of the more interesting kind of unknowns of 2026.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah. Or we want to promote democracies because we think that's a positive thing. In the long run, there might not be an immediate benefit, but in the long run, that's a positive thing. We want to be on the side of that. That's an area that you're going to see particular cuts in this new era of ODA dropping. It's things that are seen as sort of soft governance and democracy, human rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights, preventive health care. All these things that sound sort of a little bit abstract, a little bit long term. No, what do we get right now means if you follow that prescription, you don't invest in those other areas. And I think that's going to be a huge challenge. And that's why there'll be a big debate this year.
- [40:10]
B
And I think it's impossible to ignore the Trump effect. And we'll probably be talking about it for decades later. Is there anything in particular we should be on the lookout for in the U.S. ana? And are the midterms important? We talk about this not being like a one term thing or one presidency thing. Is there anything we should be on the lookout for this year?
- [40:29]
C
I would say the midterms are very important. You know, the U.S. i always describe it as in perpetual election mode. I mean, we're talking about 2028 and the presidential hopefuls for that. You know, certainly politically, if you have Democrats take over the House, you could be looking at impeachment. You could, you know, there's a Lot of dynamics at play. I wonder, though, how big on the priority list development will be. You know, we certainly are having going to have more tussles over the budget, and that includes the international affairs portion of it. You could see more rescissions from the White House specifically targeting foreign assistance. But I think there will be major changes. I think the question is, will those changes trickle down necessarily in a big way to global development? But I think for us at Devex, you know, we're really paying attention to the State Department, and I think for the sector, that's important. You know, where is the State Department going under Marco Rubio, who wears many hats, of course. Will we see a lot of hiring? Will we see, you know, an overworked staff trying to maintain what, what USAID is doing? I think there's some fascinating developments taking place at the State Department. You know, some of it is being implemented that advocates and reformers have talked about for years, but there are limitations and some negative aspects to it. So I'm keeping an eye out more on the State Department for us as a community than necessarily the midterms as a whole.
- [41:55]
B
Andraj, what are you on the lookout for on the US Front?
- [41:58]
A
Well, I'm looking at DFC in particular. I think, you know, with their new authorities, it'll be interesting to watch how they're able to actually expand rapidly, change their culture, their business model, and do much more than they did before. I think they could play a much bigger role. They now have a mandate that's a lot wider than it was before. You know, we talked a little bit about Venezuela. I think, you know, I could easily see the DFC playing some role there. It's very uncertain how Venezuela will evolve, but it's the kind of place in this new transactional world of development where I'm sure the World bank, the idb, DFC and other institutions are starting to look carefully at. If you have a government you can more closely work with in a country that desperately needs investment for development, are there going to be opportunities there to do that? So that's one of the places I think that's going to require a lot of attention this year, and those are some of the institutions that, that we ought to pay attention to. I hear good things from some people who've worked with people at the State Department who know some of the people in these key roles that they're legitimately trying to figure out a way to make this work. They want to see much more bang for the buck. They want to see real impact, and they're trying to be innovative, it's really hard to do. And I think that's one of the things we'll have to watch is can they get the money out the door quickly enough? Can they do that in a way that doesn't go backwards as they don't want it to go back to the old model, but, but that actually can happen and achieve some real results. It's not an easy thing to pull off. Definitely something to watch.
- [43:22]
B
We are unfortunately running out of time. I feel like I could talk to you guys for this for another maybe 30 minutes. But one fun, final fun question. If you could give The Developing Community 1 resolution for this year, what would it be? Not sure. Once to start.
- [43:37]
C
I don't want to start because that's a tough one.
- [43:39]
A
I'm happy to start. My resolution is stay in the game. You know, I know so many people who've just felt beaten up, beaten back by the rapid changes. Last year a lot of people lost their jobs, A lot of organizations had to lay off people. Some are closing down, merging, et cetera. It's not an easy time. Of course, you know, we ought to pay a lot more attention to the people on the ground, the people facing, you know, nutrition challenges, health challenges, the people you're meant to serve. Right? And I know everyone does. It's not an easy time, but it's not over. Just because we're talking about, and I'm writing about this idea that we've reached peak official development assistance doesn't mean the project of global development itself is shrinking. It doesn't mean impact has to be less. It means that source of funding is going down. But there are many others and there are many other ways to make an impact. And I think particularly in a time when we're facing a massive new technology revolution with AI, there is the chance to really leapfrog. We have a lot of the tools today where we shouldn't be living in a world where, you know, space tourism is becoming popular at the same time that you got 43 million kids still wasting from malnutrition. That shouldn't happen and it doesn't have to happen. So I would say stay in the game. That should be your resolution this year.
- [44:48]
C
I would say in addition to staying in the game, stay open minded. This is a different world for development. I mean, it's fundamentally going to be different. And I think it's easy to see the negatives, but not always recognize the silver linings and the opportunities for change. You know, we've talked about billions to trillions for it seems like ages now. Maybe this is the time some of that can materialize. Same thing. You know, the US Is undergoing seismic changes. Europe politically will continue to go through seismic changes. So I think staying open minded about those changes and not instantly reflexively going to the negative I think will be very important in the year ahead.
- [45:28]
B
Mine is actually quite similar. It's don't be reactive only because I think a lot of people have been forced to change to make changes. But this like you mentioned Anna, this is actually an opportunity to do things a little bit better, a bit more efficiently. So I think really thinking through those changes and like using this moment as an opportunity to really think through what the next system should look like and seeing how you can actually get there, I think that would be a great opportunity for this. And an additional one is sign up for Devix Newswire because if you actually want to get Raj's predictions, they will be delivered directly to your mailbox if you sign up for devX usual. Thanks guys so much for joining me. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.
- [46:06]
A
Great to Talk you. Happy 2026.
- [46:08]
C
Thank. You.