The Future of Development Cooperation Coalition Newsletter #5

One of the experts who attended a recent Coalition consultation meeting described the opportunity for all of us who care about charting a new course for development cooperation as “etching a new nervous system for a development capital coalition that can potentially address the needs of the twenty-first century. In many ways, this is the twenty-first century's Bretton Woods moment.”

And one of the great advantages of working to create a new nervous system at this particular moment is the incredible diversity of voices and expertise at the table, a stark contrast to the discussions in Washington, D.C. that helped create the current global financial architecture in the waning days of World War II.

Here at the Coalition, our collective work continues to move forward briskly.

We released our first report (see below) The Development Balance Sheet, which approaches development cooperation by looking at low- and middle-income countries’ assets and liabilities in the broadest sense, and how that should shape how countries set their agenda and approach to cooperation.

We have connected with and joined the discussion of other actors also looking to the future of development cooperation including the UK Global Partnerships Conference, the OECD, and we were thrilled to hear the focus on delivery and execution at the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali.

We have also continued to hold an intensive series of consultations and dialogues with a broad cross-section of regional stakeholders from policy, finance, research, civil society, and the private sector to gather insights about how best to improve development cooperation. Our most recent sessions have been in Rabat, Kigali, New Delhi, and Beijing. It is difficult to do full justice to the richness of these conversations, which are enormously influential in shaping our approach. We will be sharing full write-ups from these sessions on our website, and the summary note from Rabat can be found here.

It promises to be a productive summer ahead!

Warm regards,

Alexia

The Coalition was delighted to release its first report: The Development Balance Sheet: Rethinking Development Cooperation from the Ground Up. The paper argues that low- and middle-income countries can best achieve their goals by leveraging their assets and managing their liabilities. It strongly posits that long-term development, while influenced by external regional and global currents and shocks, is first and foremost the result of domestic policy choices, productive investment, trade integration, innovation, institutional strength, and political economy. Ultimately, the balance sheet approach is not only a lens for understanding individual country trajectories, but for better understanding how best to shape cooperation in support of those trajectories. In addition to the link to the report above, you can also read the press release that accompanied the report and quickly peruse some of the key facts shared in the report.

Coalition Co-Chair Yemi Osinbajo appeared at the 2026 AfricaXchange to discuss the future of development cooperation and, as he argued, “with shifting global funding landscapes, Africa must move from being a recipient to a co-author of development cooperation. Partnerships will need to be more intentional, more accountable, and grounded in shared priorities and measurable outcomes.”

Alexia Latortue, Head of the Coalition Secretariat, spoke at the Africa CEO Forum, on a session focused on global trade. She discussed promising opportunities and trends in Africa trade, including the rise in trade intermediate goods, while noting areas where African countries can continue to push for reform including moving away from exporting goods at the lowest end of the value chain, increasing the integration of production chains across the continent, and increasing productivity. Even as African countries contend with an increasingly fragmented global trading system that sometimes feels tilted against them, they can make progress by investing in digital infrastructure and logistics, skills development, hard infrastructure, standardization, overcoming administrative hurdles, and political stability.

To better inform its work and the deliberations of its co-chairs and commissioners, the Coalition continued an intensive, enriching series of consultations with key stakeholders on development cooperation, with sessions held in Rabat, Kigali, New Delhi, and Beijing. Coalition Commissioner Rania Al-Mashat shared a lovely video of her key takeaways from Rabat, which is worth a watch.

We were also thrilled that Commisioner Abigail Kujumba attended the Kigali consulation. Commissioner Shenglin Ben went above and beyond and led the organization of the Beijing consultation which included two roundtables – one with think tanks and researchers, focused on green industralization, and one with representatives of the private sector focused on digital and financial innovation. Dr. Ben also joined a panel discussion at a closed door event organized for the Coalition at AIIB.

While the sessions were all very different in their feel and substance, several themes came through consistently. There is a great desire for improved development cooperation and more modern approaches to this vital work; many low- and middle-income countries have a certain natural wariness given global political and economic tensions and want to make sure their sovereign interests are respected and protected; a sense that countries ultimately control their own trajectories through the decisions and investments they make; and a recognition that the ecosystem of development cooperation is much broader than it has been traditionally approached.

Congratulations to all those involved in the recent UK Partnerships conference. Ruth Lyons of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office shared a nice writeup of the gathering and some of its key messages.

At the Conference, the Coalition – alongside the conference co-hosts, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, British International Investment, the Children's Investment Fund Foundation, and the Government of South Africa – convened a closed-door high-level breakfast on the sidelines that brought together senior leaders from government, development finance, philanthropy, and civil society for a candid discussion on partnerships, political feasibility, and implementation.

We also co-hosted an interesting private sector event with BII for a candid discussion on what determines whether capital actually moves, how risk influences investment decisions, and what it will take to build systems that channel private capital at scale toward country-led economic transformation.

And Alexia Latortue moderated a fantastic plenary on partnerships. Well worth watching.

Also, many thanks to Kate Garvey and the team at Project Everyone for hosting a terrific gathering on the eve of the conference.

Coalition Co-Chair Arancha González Laya and Alexia Latortue both spoke at the recent OECD conference exploring The Future of Development Cooperation: Charting Strategic Directions.  Arancha spoke as part of the OECD discussions on how its upcoming report on development cooperation can complement and help give traction to complementary efforts on development cooperation. You can watch here. Alexia discussed potential proposals for resetting partnerships and the needed strategic and foundational shifts to ensure development co-operation delivers for the world's poorest people. You can see her remarks here. Our ACET colleague Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi spoke in the opening session, watch her intervention beginning at 1:04 of this video. 

 Coming up in June, we have a consultation session in Brussels and the second meeting of the Coalition Commissioners. Stay tuned for our next edition with a debrief on those events.