Who gets to shape development?
This was the big question hanging over a discussion on international development I attended in London last week.
Hosted by the Yale Economic Growth Centre, it brought together key players from across academia, development finance, philanthropy and global health.
There was a lot to think about, but I left with some questions. First: who will drive progress?
The development landscape is changing. Traditional development finance is under pressure, and philanthropy is increasingly stepping into some of the gaps. Private capital and development finance institutions are being asked to do more. China and, in different ways, Russia are pursuing their own forms of international engagement, bringing their own strategic interests into the development space.
And academia has become increasingly influential as academics produce ever more evidence about what works, particularly at the level of individual interventions and programmes.
So what does all of this mean for the role of the UN in international development? This was the question I ended up asking the panel, drawing on my own experience of working across national statistical systems and international development institutions.
The UN's strength, to me, has always been in implementation. It doesn’t need, as some have argued, completely new purpose. The question is whether the UN uses this changing development environment to do implementation differently — and better.
Academia is increasingly able to tell us what works, philanthropy can provide more flexible and risk-taking finance, and development banks and the private sector can mobilise large-scale capital. So the UN can focus on improving its ability to bring these different strands together into something that works on the ground.
There is a huge difference between demonstrating that something works and implementing it withing a single country, let alone rolling it out across a continent. Implementation requires institutions, systems, people, procurement, data and relationships with governments. The UN has spent decades building exactly that kind of operational capacity. So perhaps its role in the future development system should be less about trying to do everything and more about doing what it is uniquely positioned to do: implementation, coordination and building institutional capacity.
But there was another question that kept coming back to me.
Where are the people? A successful development programme isn't just one that delivers its targets.
Its legacy should include stronger communities, stronger institutions and a greater ability for people to shape the decisions that affect them.
We can have charitable foundations deciding what they want to fund, academics evaluating what works, investors assessing what is financially viable, and international organisations determining what they can implement. But how about the people those programmes are supposed to benefit? Where do they fit into the decision-making process?
This isn't a new problem. Development has a long history of programmes designed around what institutions think people need rather than what people themselves prioritise. But as the sources of money and influence become more diverse and detached from governments with their - albeit sometimes limited - level of public accountability, I wonder if this question becomes even more important.
A foundation can fill a financing gap, but it also decides which problems win its support. Academic evidence can tell us whether something works, but it doesn't necessarily tell us what a society should value. Private investment can bring enormous resources, but usually deploy them in ways that maximise financial returns. Perhaps this is where the UN could play an increasingly important role, not just as an implementer, but as a builder of connections between institutions, governments and communities. Its presence across countries gives it the potential to create spaces where local voices can feed into national and international priorities.
And that matters because development isn't ultimately about delivering a project. It's about whether people have greater opportunities, stronger institutions and more say over the future of their own communities.
A new development bargain?
Maybe the future isn't about deciding whether the UN, philanthropy, academia, development banks or the private sector matters most.They bring different things to the table.
Who gets to shape development — and how do we make sure that the people whose lives it is supposed to change have a meaningful voice in the answer?
Perhaps the most important question for the next generation of development policy isn't simply what works?
It is: Who gets to decide what is worth doing in the first place?
That was the biggest question I left the Yale event thinking about.
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