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Author: Alexia Latortue
This post was also published on the blog of the Center for Global Development.
We’re excited to announce the formation of the independent Future of Development Cooperation Coalition, a broad partnership co-hosted by the African Center for Economic Transformation and the Center for Global Development, supported by 17 countries and backed by five major philanthropic institutions to shape a bold, pragmatic vision for the future of development cooperation at a moment of enormous challenges—and genuine opportunity.
“Who does your father think he is?”
“Your father spoke like he had eaten a lion.”
Those were two very different reactions from people listening to my father speak at an international donor conference many years ago. My father is from Haiti—a country long disparaged, dismissed with slurs seldom printed in a professional forum, and all too often treated as a hopeless case.
The first reaction came from a veteran development professional—intelligent, serious, creative. He did not disagree with my father’s sharp questions about development cooperation, but he thought it unwise, bordering on foolhardy, to speak so boldly. After all, my father represented a country with minuscule fiscal resources and vast unmet needs. There was no guarantee that donors would open their pocketbooks. By that view, some respect, if not deference, was owed to donors. Better, he thought, to go along to get along.
The second comment came from a Belgian entrepreneur who, after success in Europe, moved to Haiti and helped found what has become a thriving Haitian microfinance institution. That institution survived Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, is now led by a Haitian banker and continues to provide vital financial services to underserved communities despite widespread lawlessness and fragile public infrastructure. He believed my father had been courageous—calling out the incoherence, risk-aversion, and systemic dysfunction of donor-country approaches and shining light on why transformational, large-scale change has remained so episodic on the development landscape.
It would be naïve—even destructive—to divorce development from politics. Political questions are at the core of any nation’s arc: which industries are encouraged, which regions are prioritized, who gets access to opportunity, the degree to which economies are open or closed, and whether a government is more concerned with growth or simply holding onto power.
And of course, when external partners engage, they apply their own political lenses: assumptions about growth models, governance, risk, and what “good” development could and should look like. That is inevitable. What is counterproductive is pretending that politics doesn’t play a significant role in development.
Development aid that ignores the realities of political economy—who gains, who loses, who speaks, who remains silent—may succeed on the margins and even do important, lifesaving work, but it will not put a country on a stable, sustainable path of growth and transformation.
What’s needed instead is honest, evidence-based debate. A partnership in which donor countries and recipient countries listen to each other, give space for challenge, and build together. Both donors and recipients can get it right, and both can get it wrong. A real exchange based on mutual respect and trust is bound to yield better outcomes.
Too many commentators are quick to conflate the term “aid” with “development.” And yes, for the most fragile and poorest countries, where governance is weak and private investment limited, aid is often a crucial lifeline. But even then, it’s rarely enough on its own.
Real, lasting development depends on peace, some important measure of domestic political consensus on key economic directions, and increasingly effective public institutions—not just grants or loans.
For many countries—including lower- and middle-income economies — aid is a piece of a larger and more complex puzzle and hardly “macro-critical.” The question then becomes: how can aid best complement the broader effort to transform a society and an economy? How can it:
And beyond national borders: how can aid contribute to regional or global public goods—from disease control to climate resilience—or mitigate public bads like pandemics, climate disasters, and instability?
Because development is political, cooperation on development is intertwined with the broader questions of how nations cooperate (or don’t) on trade, security, immigration, and a range of other issues. The voting patterns and financial decisions at multilateral development banks have long made clear that questions about poverty reduction and need are often embedded within these more sweeping considerations of foreign policy and geopolitics.
So, it is no surprise that at a time when multilateralism is fraying, alliances have become more transactional, and multipolarity is rising, that some argue that “development cooperation” should no longer be a distinct category—that it should be folded under the broader, general rubric of “international cooperation,” or that its time has simply passed.
That would be a grave mistake. Yes—development cooperation will never be the spearhead of global cooperation. But it matters. Profoundly. Especially now, when global problems like pandemics, climate change, forced migration, inequality, and a rolling series of economic shocks demand international responses. In our interconnected world—linked by fiber-optic cables, trade, travel, and shared crisis—no country can succeed in a vacuum.
In this moment of crisis—and retrenchment—there is also opportunity. An opportunity to confront hypocrisies, correct structural biases, and rethink how development cooperation works.
Countries’ own development aspirations and trajectories—not the bureaucracy of the aid industry—need to be at the center of the development equation. While the development community has talked about the importance of “country ownership” for years, now is the moment to translate that rhetoric into reality with the considerable responsibility and accountability it places on governments to truly serve their people. Real progress will come from countries aligning all their flows of capital—public, private, philanthropic—and from knowledge, technology, and effective policy reform guided locally and grounded in trust, partnership, dignity, and aspiration.
We must build a new form of development cooperation—one that is bold, equitable, flexible, and co-created by countries at all stages of development.
That is why I am proud to lead the secretariat of the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition—an independent, roughly year-long initiative to reimagine how the world invests in people, societies, and shared futures. We aim to facilitate a process through which countries at all stages of development—and leaders from across public, private, and civil society sectors—can co-create a bold vision, principles, and implementation strategies for a reimagined development cooperation system.
Two renowned think tanks—the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), based in Accra, and the Center for Global Development (CGD), based in Washington, DC and London—are co-hosting the Coalition. And an early champion group of 17 countries has joined a diverse “coalition of the willing,” expressing support for the Coalition’s mission. Our work will be guided by a group of expert co-chairs and commissioners drawn from around the globe for their specific expertise and lived experience and insight, supported by a small secretariat.
Importantly, we view our collective work as pragmatic, and we want to put real, implementable recommendations for change on the table.
To succeed, we need to hear the voices of the lions—youth, business leaders, policymakers, and those of you who have been in the trenches of development. We hope that you will join us in this important work.
Alexia Latortue is the Head of Secretariat for the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition and a Distinguished Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development. She previously served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary for International Trade and Development at the Treasury Department, leading policy on climate, development finance, and multilateral reform, including efforts to modernize the MDBs and mobilize private capital for emerging markets.
Alexia has held senior roles at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the World Bank, where she focused on financial inclusion and private sector development.