Horizon 2025 – End of the beginning: Development cooperation in the pandemic age

On 11 March 2021, as part of the China and Global Development Seminar Series run by the UK Anchor Institution for the China International Development Research Network at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), speakers from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Brookings, Centre for Global Development (CGD) and China Agricultural University came together to discuss development cooperation in the pandemic age.

Covid-19 and economic responses to it have amplified and changed the nature of development challenges in fundamental ways. Global development cooperation should adapt accordingly. How have changes to global growth, debt, budget deficits and taxes, aid, capital markets, along with poverty and vulnerability changed the development context over the long-term?

We suggest that aid is moving beyond altruism to become an instrument of national self-interest and of better planetary management of the global commons. Metrics of environmental sustainability and social inclusion performance, as well as governance, will become more important determinants of aid’s effectiveness. Prominent among these is far more ambitious use of multilateral and national development banks, and global policies to reduce capital outflows from developing countries.

You can watch the seminar in full via the IDS website, or on YouTube.