The Future of Development Co-operation: Not the end, just the beginning of a new era?

First, development co-operation needs to adapt to the new polarisation within the developing world. More precisely, the old model of supporting ‘stuck’ and ‘ODA-dependent’ developing countries needs to be complemented with a new model of collaborating with ‘moving’ and ‘post-ODA’ developing countries.

Second, development co-operation to support expanding social welfare regimes and social protection systems focused particularly on children is important to disrupt the inter-generational transmission of poverty, especially given that under 18-year olds make up half of global poverty.

Third, development co-operation needs to consider the ‘productive’ side of economic development as a supporting structure to the ‘social’ side. This is because one of the greatest challenges facing many developing countries is the potential for undesirable patterns of structural transformation. Development co-operation needs to view this issue as a global challenge and understand the importance of the massive expansion of economic infrastructure that is required to support economic development. Long-run concessionary development finance is likely to be increasingly important for post-ODA countries to sustain that economic development, as infrastructure is often expensive and economic returns from infrastructure investment take generations to be fully realised.

https://oecd-development-matters.org/2019/03/15/the-future-of-development-co-operation-not-the-end-just-the-beginning-of-a-new-era/