What role should donors play in a post-aid world?

Our new Donors in a Post-Aid World (DPAW) dialogue series provides an informal space for reimagining the functions of Northern bilateral donors in an evolving global landscape. Last month, our first dialogue focused on creating a new narrative for Northern ‘donorship,’ identifying opportunities for a refreshed approach to development cooperation.

This episode discusses key takeaways from the first dialogue. Guests examine the challenges Northern donor institutions face in a post-aid world, and how they might redefine their roles for the future.

Why does this matter? Today, Official Development Assistance (ODA) is expected to address a growing array of complex agendas: countering China, managing migration, tackling the climate crisis, and more.

As demands grow for concessional public finance, donors lack the scaffolding of a single 'story' that they once had. What’s more, as the lines between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries blur, and the donor-recipient model of aid as charity is increasingly rejected, the traditional rationale for aid has reached its limits.

In this episode, guests discuss how to navigate these challenges and build momentum for reforms that could influence key global policy processes.

Guests

• Sara Pantuliano (host), Chief Executive, ODI Global
• Nilima Gulrajani, Principal Research Fellow, ODI Global
• Heba Aly, former CEO of The New Humanitarian
• Fadhel Kaboub, Senior Advisor, Power Shift Africa
• Omar Bargawi, Deputy Director and Head of the Development Policy & Partnerships Department, FCDO

Engage with us

We want to hear from voices that do not get heard yet have deep insights and knowledge to reimagine donorship for the 21st century. Please do reach out to
Nilima Gulrajani if you have any ideas or would like to write for us.

The second dialogue will take place early in 2025, with four to take place over the next 18 months. Sign up to our Donors in a Post-Aid World newsletter to get updates about the dialogue series. 

Related resources

• Donors in a Post-Aid World (Project, ODI Global)
  
  
• Dialogue #1: Crafting a new rationale for northern donorship (Summary note, ODI Global)
  
  
• Should a Northern donor exist in the 21st century? Introducing a new dialogue series (Insight, ODI Global)
  
  
• Donors In A Post-Aid World – January 2024 update (Insight, ODI Global)
  
  
• Crafting development power: evolving European approaches in an age of polycrisis (Report, ODI Global)
  
  
• Boosting gender equality with finance and fiscal policy (Project, ODI Global)
  
  

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Transcript

00:11 - Sara Pantuliano   

Welcome to Think Change. I'm Sara Pantuliano. Today, we want to explore the challenges that Northern donor institutions face in what has been called a post-state world and how they might redefine their roles for the future. Let me give you just a brief context. Been called a post-state world and how they might redefine their roles for the future. Let me give you just a brief context. At ODI Global, we have launched the Donors in a Post-State World, or DPAW dialogue. It's a series that provides an informal space for reimagining the functions of northern bilateral donors given the evolving global landscape. Why does this matter? Well, today, official development assistance, or ODA as it is called, is expected to address a growing array of complex agendas. It goes from managing migration to tackling the climate crisis, even to countering China, and more. So as demands grow for concession of public finance, donors actually lack the scaffolding of a single story that they once had, and, what's more, the lines between so-called developed and developing countries have blurred. The donor-recipient model of aid as a charity is increasingly rejected, and so the traditional rationale for aid has really reached its limits. And so the traditional rationale for aid has really reached its limits. So, to navigate through these challenges, our multi-part dialogue series brings together officials, researchers, which focused on creating a new narrative for Northern Donorship and to really try and identify opportunities for a refreshed approach to development cooperation.  

01:53 

To talk more about this, joining me today we have Nilima Gujrajanii. Nilima is a Principal Research Fellow in the Development and Public Finance team at ODI and is the one the brain behind all of this. She conceived this whole initiative. Joining Nilima Heba Aly, the former CEO of the New Humanitarian, who now works on UN reform. Heba facilitated the two-day dialogue. Joining Nilima and Hiba, we have Fadhel Kaboub, senior advisor at PowerShift Africa, and Omar Bargawi, deputy director and head of Development Policy and Partnerships Department at the FCDO. Both Fadhel and Omar participated in the first dialogue, so together they can give us a flavour of what was discussed in the dialogue and what the key issues, you know, the key takeaways are, on which we can further reflect. Nilima I'll start with you Very briefly. What prompted the launch of this dialogue series? Do you think Northern donors are at an existential crossroads and, if so, why?  

02:54 - Nilima Gulrajani 

Thanks, Sara, and thanks for the invite to join you today to tell you a little bit about this dialogue. Yes, in a nutshell, I think we heard over and over again that donors are searching for answers and for pathways to move forward. I think there's a sense, there's criticisms from all sides of the political spectrum. On the right, we hear that charity has to begin at home and that there are very much needs that need to be addressed domestically. On the left, we hear about Western hypocrisy and real needs to decolonise the aid effort.  

03:33 

The backdrop of this is also, you know, very sharp, severe budget cuts at a time when needs are growing, a desire to invest more in crises, a growing number of multilateral replenishments using concessional finance to leverage in private money.  

03:51 

Yet at the same time, we actually had in 2023, official development assistance reach an all time high. So I think what we're trying to say here in this dialogue is that a post aid world doesn't mean that they're not acute needs, nor that donors are completely shrinking their efforts, but it's a reference to this crisis of legitimacy, you know. So I think this dialogue series, comes at an opportune moment. It comes with the idea I had to bring in Southern voices, activists whose voices have for too long been sidelined in these sorts of conversations in terms of what comes next, but who really need to be at the table given the changing balance of power and a real sense that there are colonial and ecological debts that need to be repaid. So we brought in voices who we thought could be willing to kind of engage with that criticism but also get past it and rebuild for the future.   

04:51 - Sara Pantuliano   

That's interesting, you mentioned the crisis of legitimacy. That's something that gets brought up over and over again and perhaps we can touch on that later in the conversation. But, Omar, I want to hear from you you work for a donor organisation, you work for the FCDO what keeps you up at night when you're thinking about the future of official developmental assistance?  

05:14 - Omar Bargawi  

Thanks, Sara, and thank you for the invite.  

05:16 

I should say at the outset that I'm offering my personal reflections rather than the kind of official position of the FCDO. So what keeps me awake at night? Looking at ODA, I think? Are we, given all of these demands on ODA these days, are we focusing it on where it will have the biggest development impact? And, alongside that, how are we balancing what Global South I don't like that term, but let's use it, Global South partners want with what our publics are willing to accept? And are we striking that balance? And I think what was reassuring from the dialogue was that pretty much everyone else is grappling with the same issues. And we don't have the answers yet, and I think this is why such conversations are so important.  

06:19 - Sara Pantuliano   

Yes, that struck me as well. There was a lot of appetite in the room for that discussion, because everyone is trying to navigate the same complexity. Heba, you moderated the dialogue. What were your main takeaways?  

06:29 - Heba Aly   

Well, to pick up on what Omar just said, that all donors are soul-searching. That was a very clear takeaway from the discussions. We had two days of very broad-ranging conversation, so it was hard at first to try to pull something out of all of that, but I'd say several rationales emerged as floating to the top in terms of viability for the future. One was around back to basics and actually Omar was one of those advocating for that which is really bringing official development assistance back to what it was originally intended to be focused on the most marginalised in the least developed and most fragile countries. But I think many in the room recognised that, as it stands today, a lot of the money that used to go to that purpose is now being used or, as some called it, cannibalised by climate action. And so a second rationale that was probably, I'd say, the most dominant was around this idea that aid is now about global public goods and, in particular, climate, but also addressing pandemics, migration, etc. Issues that affect everyone and that, if addressed properly, would be of mutual benefit to all countries. And then, interestingly, I think many of us were surprised that a third rationale around what began as reparations and kind of ended as transforming structures of injustice did actually have broad support, including among donors, and that is really addressing the historical and structural causes of inequality, and I'm sure Fadhel will talk a bit more about that.  

08:18 

What I think was clear, though, was that nobody felt comfortable talking about the purpose of ODA without understanding how it fits into a broader picture, and so if ODA is the only money that's available, donors will act differently than if it's part of a larger pot of money, and so, in kind of thinking through the discussions, we have come to think of it, as you know, rationales whose emphasis and application would evolve over time and in the short term, while ODA is all we have, or primarily most of what we have, there have to be tough decisions on prioritisation and likely a higher emphasis on climate over the traditional purpose of poverty reduction. In the medium term if that pot of money can grow and that doesn't look likely, as Nilima said, due to budget cuts in the short term, but if we can bring in more money for international public finance and concessional finance, then you could return ODA to its original purpose and have a more narrowly focused rationale around ODA, while positioning that in a broader kind of capital stack that could focus on things like global public goods.  

09:23 

If then, long term, we see and here I think I'm speaking more on behalf of Nilima and I rather than the whole group, but that's part of the discussion we're trying to have, a phasing out of ODA and replacing that with a different kind of paradigm, something like global public investment, this idea that all countries would contribute to and benefit from a pot of money that's used for global challenges, and a paradigm that's more focused on structural transformation, ie addressing what countries need, what makes them in need of aid in the first place, and that's linked to broader issues like trade policy, et cetera.  

09:59 - Sara Pantuliano   

Thanks. Fadhel, did you have similar takeaways?  

10:07 - Fadhel Kaboub  

Absolutely. I think this workshop really highlighted how much this discussion about structural transformation is really needed across the board, whether it's in the climate space or the development space or official development assistance, in the sense that if you really want to deliver results on poverty reduction, on climate, on all of these things, we're operating within structures that are very persistent in the global South. And these are economic structures that were imposed during colonial times and persist to this day. A lot of people say, well, come on, colonialism is over, we're done with this discussion, but these structures persist. And I can summarise the core structures in three points. Number one, we're supposed to be the place for cheaper materials for the industrialised world- we still play that function today. Number two, we're supposed to be the consumers of technologies and industrial output from the global north in our large consumer markets- we still play that role to this day. And number three, and most importantly, the global south, we're supposed to be the place where obsolete technologies, assembly line manufacturing that is no longer needed in the industrialised world is outsourced to us under the label of development cooperation, job creation, technical assistance, but effectively what it does is that it locks us permanently at the bottom of the global value chain, at the bottom of the hierarchy, and that's the role we still play to this day. 

11:35 

So these colonial structures were not designed for development, we're not designed for a just transition, we're not designed for the SDGs, they were not even designed for democracy. These are colonial, hierarchical, non-democratic, extractive, violent structures- we know that. So why do we today expect the same economic structures to deliver justice or development, or democracy, or SDGs, or climate action for that matter? So what we need to focus the conversation on is how do we undo these colonial structures, instead of keeping the colonial structures and then sprinkling aid left and right and expecting good results to emerge. So that's really the beginning of the conversation.  

 12:20 

I think there was a broad consensus across the board that we can't be siloed in narrow conversations about how do we make aid more effective in a broader context, where, structurally, aid cannot be transformative. Aid can be helpful of course, when someone is hungry you feed them when someone is in pain, you help them, but you're not removing the root causes, the structural root causes that are producing socioeconomic exclusion and all the bad results that we see. And that's where I think to go back to a point that Heba made earlier, which is recognising, especially in the global South, that there is no such thing as a competition between development and climate action. As a matter of fact, these things are very closely aligned and that's why the conversation moves towards global public goods.  

13:15 

Because when you think of the structural root causes of external debt, for example, external debt, which is the thing that eliminates any fiscal policy space for the global South governments to actually do climate action or invest in health or invest in education, because Africa this year, this year alone, 2024, we're paying $163 billion in debt service this year alone. When you put that side by side with the numbers that we see in climate finance, it doesn't make any sense. So the root cause of external debt are food deficits. Africa today imports 85% of its food, for example. Energy deficits even our largest oil exporters, Nigeria, Angola they import most of their fuel from international markets and they're energy poor.  

14:03 

And number three, most importantly, manufacturing value added deficits, which is, if you look at the manufacturing base that we have in the global south, it's a base that relies on importing machines, importing the fuel to power those machines, importing the intermediate components to be assembled with low cost labor and even importing the packaging. 

14:23 

So we end up exporting low value added content, and we import high value added content, so you can double, triple, quadruple your exports, with free trade agreements, you're always locked at the bottom of the hierarchy. So to address the root causes of external debt and on the economic front, you have to invest in food sovereignty and agroecology, which coincidentally happens to be climate action. You have to invest in renewable energy sovereignty, which is the biggest potential we have in the global south. Coincidentally, it's climate action too. And you have to invest in transformative, high-value-added industrial policies that produce the building blocks of development and prosperity, which, in the global south, must be renewable energy infrastructure, clean cooking infrastructure and clean transportation infrastructure, all of which, coincidentally, happens to be climate action. So we're aligning the development agenda with the climate agenda in a transformative, coherent, comprehensive way, and then we can start having a conversation about what is the role of ODA official development assistance in this larger ecosystem that the global community must address. 

15:34 - Sara Pantuliano   

Thanks, Fadhel, very clear. Omar how do we overcome these structural colonial underpinnings of aid that Fadhel describes?  

15:45 - Omar Bargawi  

Yeah, I mean we had a very lively discussion around this, at the dialogue, and I think what I thought was really helpful was that we focused on those areas where we could kind of work together and that, from what I remember, was around kind of supporting countries' structural economic transformation, without getting into some of the thornier kind of global issues which, frankly, I mean we're not,  I mean, in 2005, when we had the big kind of debt cancellation agreements. I mean we're not in that same geopolitical space anymore, particularly with China, and it's very different now and I think we can't, we can't see that that like we saw it back in the 2000s. So I think it was helpful to focus this down on the country level and talking about supporting countries in the global south, move up value chains and what needs to happen to allow that to happen. I mean I would agree strongly with Fadhel on the link between poverty and climate. 

16:51 

Again, we can't really disentangle those and when Heba said I was a proponent of the kind of going back to basics, it wasn't going back to basics from the good old days when it was all about poverty eradication and that doesn't really work anymore.  You can't look at poverty reduction, without looking at the impacts of climate change and other kind of global challenges. That doesn't mean then, for me at least, that we move away from ODA to some kind of new paradigm that is around global public goods, because I don't think that will work. For starters, no one can agree on what a global public good is that would need to be financed and how it will be financed, so it will be a very protracted discussion, I think, and wouldn't really help us. 

17:42 - Sara Pantuliano  

Yeah, so, as Heba said, there was this idea that the group came up with of a new rationale around protecting global public goods, and particularly climate, to frame development cooperation. But you're clearly saying there are downsides to that. Nilima, what do you think the main downside would be?   

18:01 - Nilima Gulrajani  

Well, I think there are a couple, Sara. First to say, the use of ODA to support global public goods isn't really new. It is something that has been thrown out there but has been opposed by many theorists, because there is a sense that the official development assistance definition was very much needed to focus on the poorest country, on the economic welfare of poor countries. And what Heba suggested was essentially you know is happening that you know, increasingly we do have official development assistance that is directed towards global public goods. A recent OECD report suggested 60% of the ODA spend is on global public goods. Notwithstanding Omar's point that it's hard to define even what they actually are.  

18:49 

There have been attempts to kind of draw a definition, but you know the downside is that, you know, as a result of this spend, the poorest countries aren't always receiving the most funding and we see a certain amount of policy evaporation, with a focus shifting to other countries and other priorities.  

19:11 

And you know what's driving this is that the reality of these global challenges are really touching the providers of this assistance, whether it be the warming climate, covid-19, or the reality of the migration crisis.  

19:24 

And so you know, the challenge here is that, you know, the global south does see ODA as an obligation that has been left unfulfilled for the last 60 years, and the truth is that I don't think we can get past ODA if we don't actually address this very live political challenge.  

19:44 

I think there was a sense that we want to get to that vision that you know Fadhel laid out for us of structural transformation, but the truth is that there, I think there there's a sense in which there is a pathway to that, and the first step to that potentially has to be how does the global North meet that sense of obligation that the South has for it? And a couple of just ideas here for how we, how, for how we might get past ODA to kind of a narrative focused on global public goods. One is perhaps kind of making clearer the analytical distinction between measuring ODA and measuring global public goods. I think there was generally a consensus that the definitions are muddy, and so making sure we can demonstrate an obligation that's fulfilled towards ODA and measuring these global public good investments was a kind of critical way forward, and this would then allow us to assess the additionality of the investment beyond ODA, recognising, however, that we need much more money than just ODA to address these global public good challenges.  

20:50 - Sara Pantuliano   

I heard something a bit different from Fadhel. I think this sense of obligation is not necessarily about, you know, higher volumes of ODA transfer, but it is much more around fairer terms of trade. You know sort of better modes of production, you know technology transfer that is really the top technology that really enables a better transition. But we still talk about volumes of ODA which I think increasingly the South is not particularly interested in. What do you think, Heba?  

21:23 - Nilima Gulrajani 

Can I come in Sara on that, just because I think it is relevant- it's a very fair point. I do think we have a bit of cognitive dissonance in the discussion. So if you look at the sub pact to the summit of the future that was released, there was a reiteration of that 0.7 target within it. So I think it is a target that certainly governments and intergovernmental negotiations are not willing to let go. And you know, if you hear about the preliminary dialogues around FFD4, which will be happening in June as well, right, there's a very clear sense.  

 21:55 - Sara Pantuliano   

Explain for the audience.  

21:57 - Nilima Gulrajani 

Yeah, sorry- so there is a conference being held next year, hosted by Spain, that is really meant to be a statement of where financing for development cooperation aid and beyond aid flows should be headed over the next decade or so, and so in that conference, in the preliminary conversations leading up to that, we know that challenging that quantum category is not really politically possible. So I think, while we can dismiss ODA and say it's irrelevant in the broader policy framework and I think there's a lot of truth to that for better or for worse that target sort of sits within the international space and is something that I think Northern providers are increasingly put under the gun for not having met that target. But I think it's a target we do need to get past to be able to get to that vision of structural transformation of global economic relations between North and South. 

22:59 - Heba Aly  

I think the issue is that you know to say more money is not the problem- yes, in some ways, but it is driving a huge lack of trust between northern donors and southern recipient countries and I don't know that you can build any alternative vision until that trust is addressed. And that does depend to some extent, as Nilima was saying, on a sense that promises have been fulfilled, and actually we had donors in the room saying they you know it's very obvious that politicians are making commitments now at the summit of the future, potentially at COP, that they know they can't fill and that they're actually looking to get out of even fulfilling the SDGs, let alone these new promises, so that that is a huge issue that has, I think, repercussions. 

23:44 

But I think there's a distinction between more money for ODA and what Omar said before, which is how do we finance global public goods? And that is a massive question and that does require more money, unquestionably. So there were some ideas at the dialogue around where that money could come from, and that could be mobilising the private sector that could be imposing maritime levies, that could be taxing corporations more effectively, it could be tapping into defence budgets or tackling illicit flows, reforming tax policy, et cetera, et cetera.  

24:16 - Sara Pantuliano   

Fadhel, Hiba talked about and you talked about reparations. When the idea of reparations as a new rationale for development cooperation first emerged in the discussion, it was not deemed viable by many of the donors in the room. What changed throughout the discussion?  

24:33 - Fadhel Kaboub  

Well, I think it's the framing of what reparation is and what is it supposed to do, and also, you know, providing sort of especially on the climate front, which is what I focus on quite a bit, is the idea that we do have a carbon budget that the world agrees on and that's been allocated to countries based on their size and so on.  And it's very clear that the industrialised countries have exceeded their carbon budget by far. And when you exceed your budget, you have a deficit, and when you accumulate the deficit year after year after year, it's called a debt, just like the national debt. The national debt is the summation of all the previous deficits. So then, when you have a climate debt, the concept of debt is very straightforward in economics and law and finance. If I owe you $100, I have to pay you $100. And you're not supposed to pay me anything in return- you're not supposed to give me anything in return, and we can sit down and negotiate a payment plan. But at the end of the day, I pay you a hundred dollars. But in the climate finance space in particular, that's not how it works. In the climate finance space, instead of me giving you a hundred dollars, I give you three dollars and I tell you exactly what to do with it and I demand KPIs and deliverables. And then I lend you seven dollars, sometimes with concessional loans, sometimes with non-concessional rates, and I again tell you exactly what to do with those seven dollars. And then I go beyond that and bring in the market to provide quote unquote climate finance. So we're trying to reset the conversation about what climate finance should be. It's about repairing the damage that's been done, because when you over consume your carbon budget, you're technically appropriating the atmospheric space that's been allocated to other countries.  

26:23 

So what is the quality of that climate finance? It can't be more loans for economic entrapment, it can't be pollution permits, it can't be these investments that have to be de-risked by the global South. It has to be in the form of three things: number one grants, not loans. Number two, it needs to come in the form of canceling all climate-related debts that many countries in the global south had accumulated over the years. And number three, and most importantly, is the transformative part- it has to come in the form of transfer of life-saving technologies to allow the global south to manufacture and deploy the building blocks of resilience and adaptation, and that's the renewable energy infrastructure which is within reach. We have all the critical minerals, the labor force, the potential. We're just lacking the manufacturing technology, the clean cooking infrastructure and the clean transportation infrastructure. So framing climate finance in this transformative way aligns with, you know, the principles of reparations. 

27:32 - Heba Aly   

But I would say you know it was very clear from some of the donors in the room any discussion about obligation crossed a line, and so even framing it as a debt that the North owes to the South was not comfortable for many, but framing it as we are addressing the root causes of inequality was somehow vague enough even if it actually does mean exactly what Fadhel is talking about for it to fly. So that was just, I think, a little lesson in how important the language we use is in being able to achieve what we're trying to do here. 

28:04 - Sara Pantuliano   

Omar, is the problem the language or the  what we're trying to do here, Omar? 

28:14 - Omar Bargawi  

 language and if we want to be genuine partners then we have to listen to what our partners want and then help them achieve that. So I think there is a link there that is worth exploring. I think the broader kind of systemic change and reframing of global development is a much more difficult avenue to go down. 

28:37 - Sara Pantuliano   

Very good. Well to all of you as we conclude, where does this leave us in terms of a rationale for the future? How do we help donors and others move forward? 

28:48 - Heba Aly   

We will eventually need to move to a world in which ODA doesn't exist in its current form, so we will have to sunset ODA at some point, and now it's about a roadmap to getting there that, in the short term, can address the current political environment, the move to the right, the shrinking budgets, etc. So what are some steps we can take within this current environment that helps us move towards a long-term vision of replacing ODA? Which I think is archaic with something that is better suited for today's world. 

29:22 - Omar Bargawi  

I'm not convinced about the kind of talking about an exit from ODA just because ODA, I think, is really important for some of the reasons that we've discussed here. It's important because it is a precious resource and I think we've lost our way a bit more recently in terms of diluting what it gets used on and I do think that we won't notice how important it is until it's gone, and I think we need to be very careful if we're talking about transitioning to something that is very undefined and vague at the moment. I just I mean to build on this. 

30:03 - Nilima Gulrajani  

I just, I mean to build on this, I think I sit somewhere in between Heba and Omar and I think we need to think about short, medium and long run and these periods of time that can kind of shape that transition. I think, in the short term, absolutely I agree with Omar that reopening ODA would be disastrous, given where we are geopolitically. But I do think we need a definition that allows us to very much target the agendas that Fadhel is suggesting we target, and I think we need to have a flow that is not anchored on a donor recipient logic that ODA was conceived of in 1969 under the Pearson Commissions so I am very much thinking of possibilities of building a political process on top of this technical dialogue to really outline these pathways, potentially short, medium and long-term, because I think otherwise the new Savoda risks strangling us and actually getting us to a really more wide-ranging, ambitious form of development cooperation that gets well past the strict definition of what we have currently. So I'm hopeful for a political process in the medium to long term that doesn't sacrifice the poorest, because, I agree with Omar, it is a very special flow. 

31:26 – Heba Aly 

The noose of ODA risks strangling us- I'm not going to forget that one. 

31:32 - Sara Pantuliano   

Fadhel, what's your take?  

31:34 – Fadhel Kaboub 

Oh, I'm the more impatient person in this process because at the end of the day, this is really about power, this is about disrupting an existing hierarchy that was not designed to be disrupted. A new international economic order, and geopolitical order, cannot be born without Africa and the rest of the global south being at the centre of this economic order. And that's where creating that geopolitical leverage for repositioning is really in the hands of the global south countries, not the US, not China, not Europe. And what I call the geopolitical bargain of the century has to do with setting up that structural transformation that we discussed and using this small window of opportunity that we have in this transition, energy transition and just transition debate to co-design a joint industrial policy in the global south. And I say co-design joint industrial policy because no country can industrialise alone. We, the global south, are the global majority, we offer you the largest market on the planet, potentially, except we don't have purchasing power yet. But if we truly industrialise and develop, we'll have the purchasing power for everybody's exports. I guarantee you China will take the bargain. 

33:05 

So as soon as you trigger the process of this bargain, you then immediately have the second bargaining chip to reset the conversation with Northern donors and partners and say look, we give you the same deal we just gave to China. If you transfer technology to manufacture and deploy high-speed rail technology on our terms, wind turbine technology, pharmaceutical technology whatever building blocks of technology we need, we offer them to the global north too, because the idea here is not to position China at the top of the hierarchy, but rather reposition the south at the center of a new international economic order. Under the current setting, everybody's geopolitical and economic plans are dependent on Africa and the global South remaining at the bottom of the hierarchy and therefore reproducing the same inequalities. And if we do this reposition, we have real development in the global South, real industrialisation then you start seeing the benefits in the global north too, because when our workers are busy producing high value added content and manufacturing the building blocks of development, they're getting highly paid jobs, which means they are no longer available for the outsourceable jobs from the global north. So then the ODA discussion becomes much more focused in participating in the real development process and climate action process that this bargain sets up and you start channelling resources in a much more impactful and transformative way.  

34:31 - Sara Pantuliano  (None) 

This is to be continued. This was only the first part of the dialogue and, as you can see, the premise is really strong and I think it will help us rethink and reset the conversation for the donors role of the future. Nilima, what's next for the dialogue series and how can people outside the room engaged in these critical conversations? 

34:57 - Nilima Gulrajani  

Yes. So I mean, what's next? So we are going to be having a second dialogue early in the new year and the idea is to have four of them over the next 18 months. The next one we'll try, and you know, build off the first one, focused on the why of development cooperation, the narrative, to try and think through some of the pathways to get us there, and so you've had a flavour of some of the possible ways that will be taken forward in the second dialogue. 

35:27 

But a bit more on the specific- we do have a newsletter, so to stay in touch with what happens, I'd encourage you to sign up on the ODI website. I'm sure we'll be able to put that link in the show notes. We are wanting to hear from voices that often don't get heard, who aren't around the board tables, but where there are real deep insights and knowledge that we think can be really valuable to nudging this effort forward to reimagine Donorship for the 21st Century. So really encourage you to reach out to us if you have any ideas, you'd like to write for us or you want to contribute in some other way. 

36:12 - Sara Pantuliano   

Well, thank you all for this stimulating discussion.

36:17 

This is clearly a complex and nuanced dialogue and it must continue, and the focus really needs to be on financing global public goods and on addressing structural inequalities between the so-called global north and global south. 

36:32 

To me, it's obvious that the traditional model of official development assistance no longer aligns with the global realities of today. 

36:40 

But, of course, before we move on from the current model, we need to be clear on what an effective replacement would be. I think we need a new framework that should prioritise safeguarding common goods, like the climate, while recognizing and addressing climate debt. But this requires that the global north shifts away from loans and conditionalities and really moves to debt cancellation, grants, appropriate top-of-the-range technology transfer that can enable transformative change. And it's also essential to heed global south leadership and to focus on economic rebalancing through further terms of trade, as we discussed today, and joint industrial policies. And that means moving beyond the hierarchical dependencies for the global south and building partnerships that are rooted in mutual respect and truly shared goals. But thank you everyone for listening. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our podcast. We'd really love to hear your thoughts. So do take a moment to fill out our survey that is linked in the show notes, so we can incorporate your feedback into future episodes. Until next time, goodbye.