For years, foreign aid donors and the organizations that receive their money existed in a state of uncomfortable suspension — generally aware of the problematic power dynamics at the heart of their work, but wary of inviting full scrutiny lest they call the whole fragile enterprise into question.
The global reckoning with systemic racism that followed George Floyd’s murder by police in Minnesota in 2020 changed that. Suddenly, it became riskier to ignore the lingering tendrils of white supremacy and colonialism than to expose them to the light.
In the global development sector, languishing calls to shift more funding and decision making to local communities — translated into aid-speak as “localization” — took on new urgency and entered the mainstream. So did efforts to address racial discrimination and increase diversity inside development organizations.