There’s considerable upheaval in global development — but could 2024 be the year the sector seriously transitions to a new way of doing business?
Also in today’s edition: We look at Canada’s development drive, and the U.K.’s not-so-fulfilled pledge to help Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers trapped in Pakistan.
2024 better or worse
There’s no shortage of big ideas for transforming the global development model, says Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar in his look ahead to 2024. There are cash transfers, localization, trust-based philanthropy, pay-for-results, market-shaping, and upping billions to trillions, just to name a few.
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But while these have become the vogue in recent years — as traditional aid and charity wanes — 2024 may require a more rapid shake-up of the usual model and an accelerated transition to a new way of doing business. Raj highlights how such reforms could come about and what’s at stake.
• Keep an eye on elections, he says. Around 60% of the world’s population live in countries with national elections this year. More people will vote in 2024 than at any time in history. There are elections in the U.S. and U.K., both with hefty implications for foreign aid.
• Oh, and there’s a worsening global humanitarian crisis. Today a quarter of the world lives in fragile contexts — many of them the lowest-income countries in the world. These fragile places, where poverty is increasingly concentrated, are also the hardest to work in and require the most urgent attention.
• The rush for reforms is nowhere more urgent than at the multilateral development banks. As bilateral foreign aid retreats and becomes more focused on emergencies, multilaterals are called upon to drive long-term development and the climate transition at the same time.
• That in turn puts pressure on philanthropies. But can private philanthropy grow quickly enough to fill the gap in long-term development aid left by bilateral aid agencies?
Get the full analysis: A global development wake-up call in 2024
+ Happening soon: Join us at 12 p.m. ET (6 p.m. CET) for a discussion on the trends that will shape global development in the year ahead, led by Raj and followed by an “ask me anything” session. Sign up now. Can’t attend live? Register anyway and we’ll send you a recording.
Canada brings home the bacon
Canada’s upping its game in development and pushing into new areas of the world. Its development finance institution, FinDev Canada, has tapped new government money, nearly quadrupling investments.
The youngest bilateral DFI was given about 300 million Canadian dollars ($224.7 million today) when it was founded in 2018 to invest in private sector development projects in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, with a new five-year plan and two new budget allocations, FinDev is spreading to countries such as Vietnam, the Philippines, and the Pacific island states — and hiring as it grows and makes more investments.
“We are super excited about this capitalization” and “the opportunity to more firmly plant Canada in the development finance ecosystem,” Lori Kerr, CEO of FinDev Canada, tells Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger. The new funding and expansion is a recognition by the government “that the development challenges around the emerging markets are huge and so we need to be better positioned, better capitalized to be able to respond more deeply to those development challenges.”
FinDev Canada has about $1 billion on its balance sheet and 100 staff members, up from about $230 million and 35 employees two years ago. “We’re in that hockey stick kind of growth phase,” Kerr says, referencing the rapid exponential expansion.
Read more: FinDev Canada's rapid expansion amid Indo-Pacific policy push (Pro)
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Just don’t do ‘Cats’
About 250,000 people live in Bidi Bidi, Africa’s largest refugee camp in Uganda — mostly South Sudanese people fleeing war. It’s as you would expect any refugee camp to be, but among the tents and temporary shelters is a spectacular-looking new building with an elliptical roof that also collects rainwater. It will be the home of singing and dancing.
It has created considerable excitement, writes Amy Fallon for Devex. The Bidi Bidi Performing Arts Centre, to be unveiled this year, is unusual for such a settlement. In fact, it’s the first state-of-the-art performance center in a refugee camp. The project is a collaboration between TO.org and SINA Loketa, a Uganda-based charity co-founded by Mawa Erezenio — a South Sudanese refugee who fled his country and now lives in Bidi Bidi. The idea germinated when TO.org leaders visited in 2018 and heard from refugees that what people really wanted in their long-term but makeshift home was a hub for singing and dancing.
“Refugees’ involvement in artistic activity — music, theater, poetry, painting, etc. — plays a powerful positive role in their ability to survive physically and even emotionally and spiritually,” Erezenio tells Amy. “Art is very important and it gives us freedom of expression of the culture and traditions of the communities. And we have ownership of the art center.”
Read: Why a performing arts center was built in Africa’s largest refugee camp
Wishy-washy Rishi
In November, we reported how U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak halted flights resettling Afghan refugees and asylum-seekers who had fled to Pakistan in the United Kingdom to save money on hotel bills. Thousands were trapped despite his government having accepted the Afghans had the right to sanctuary, given that they worked for the U.K. after the 2001 invasion that ousted the Taliban.
In the embarrassment that followed, ministers pledged to fly in “approximately 2,800” people “by the end of December 2023” — reporting on Dec. 13 that “around 1,826” were still in Pakistan.
Devex U.K. Correspondent Rob Merrick asked the government if the promise had been met by the year’s end, but it declined to answer on the grounds that the information would be provided to Parliament imminently.
However, even if those 2,800 Afghans were flown to the U.K. before the dawn of 2024, it would still leave unclear the fate of another 450 also stuck in Pakistan and eligible for resettlement under a separate scheme for “vulnerable people at risk.”
David Cameron, former PM and now foreign secretary, has answered questions about this scheme — the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, or ACRS — telling Parliament that “plans are in place to bring the remainder of those now in third countries to the U.K. early in the new year.”
Alicia Kearns, a Conservative member of Parliament who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, welcomed progress, but warned: “There are still serious concerns over the danger that eligible Afghans — including those who put their lives at risk for the U.K. — will be deported back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. This would be a betrayal of the promises we made to them.”
From our archives: ‘Unacceptable’ UK refugee rules tear apart Afghan families
In other news
Nearly half a million people who fled from West Darfur to eastern Chad in 2023 to escape Sudan’s civil war are now confronting a severe humanitarian crisis with limited access to food, water, and health care, according to Médecins Sans Frontières. [Bloomberg]
The Palestinian envoy to the United Nations said that the Palestinian Authority is planning to seek full U.N. membership this year. [VOA]
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged support for Egypt’s economy and reforms, focusing on the potential expansion of the country’s $3 billion International Monetary Fund loan program. [Reuters]
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About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
