When former General Electric boss Jack Welch said: “If the rate of change on the outside is faster than the rate of change on the inside, then the end is near,” the first wave of digital transformation was sweeping the world. This insight enabled him to turn GE into a “learning company” that thrived in the new environment.
The change in the development world has been no less profound, and the United Nations Development Programme has had to match it, lest our end approach too.
In the 1990s, official development assistance to Asia-Pacific nations accounted for more than 10 percent of all financial flows in the region. Today, that figure is less than 1 percent. Countries’ own domestic resources now dwarf foreign aid — and this has had dramatic consequences for the UNDP budget.