Is global development decolonizing or recolonizing?

In a recent Brookings piece, George Ingram and Anthony Pipa stated, “The cumulative result of these recent development policy shifts is a sense that the post-World War II era of international development cooperation has, for the most part, ended, and that the world is entering a new era.” This sentiment is echoed on social media, with many lamenting the United States retreat from international development as the end of an era. But which era is ending, and what is emerging in its place?

The rapid decrease in development finance, the United Nations’ downsizing, and declining faith in postwar development principles may mark the end of what Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, called the neocolonial era. Yet even Nkrumah could not have imagined the scale of the global development ecosystem, anchored in U.N. doctrines on human rights and sustainable development, that has evolved into a comprehensive worldview over the last 60 years.

International institutions — U.N. agencies, Bretton Woods organizations, bilateral donors, NGOs, and civil society organizations, or CSOs — shape policy and control development finance that low-income countries rely on to fund infrastructure, public services, and consumption.