For whose benefit? Making development cooperation work for the Global South
At a time when war, the debt crisis and climate change are deepening inequality and pushing more people into poverty, the system designed to respond is facing an unprecedented threat. This article, written for Brennpunkt, explores what is needed to shift the balance so that the needs of the Global South take precedence in development cooperation.
At a time when war, the debt crisis and climate change are deepening inequality and pushing more people into poverty, the system designed to respond is facing an unprecedented threat. Preliminary OECD data confirmed that last year official development assistance (ODA) suffered a 23 per cent cut, the largest single-year drop on record. What’s more, much of what remains is being diverted to serve domestic and geopolitical priorities. The impact of these shifts has been profound, far-reaching, and will be difficult to reverse if current trends continue.
In the midst of these challenges, governments meeting at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Sevilla, Spain, in July 2025 agreed that country ownership and alignment with national priorities must continue to guide international development cooperation. That consensus, captured in the Compromiso de Sevilla, represented a reaffirmation of commitments going back decades. It also laid the foundation for building a more inclusive and democratic international development cooperation architecture. Importantly, it set out a holistic approach to development finance that proposes pathways for countries in the Global South to achieve socio-economic structural transformation towards their own sustainable development.