It feels like summer flew by (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), and we are stepping straight into a critical season for the development sector. With UNGA, New York Climate Week, and a dense calendar of global convenings just around the corner, our team is deep in preparation for a high-stakes slate of discussions. More on this below.
A major underlying theme for these upcoming conversations is the urgent need to tackle inequality, both within and between countries. I recently expanded on this in a new piece for InDepthNews, where I explore what genuine country ownership actually looks like in practice. In it, I make the case that future bilateral agreements must be rooted in true reciprocity, ensuring that country-led frameworks are built on truly inclusive governance structures. Happy to hear your thoughts and comments on this piece.
Finally, this edition features a guest piece from the Segal Family Foundation. Reflecting on their recent annual convening in Nairobi, they break down what it practically takes to put Africa at the center of global development.
Enjoy the reading, and reach out with suggestions/ideas for future issues.
Warmly,
Soheila and the Roundtable Team
Roundtable Latest
UNGA is almost here, and we’ll open the week by bringing foundation leaders together with those shaping Global South-led development frameworks, such as the Accra Reset. Immediately after, our Roundtable Leadership meeting will focus on translating those insights into concrete opportunities for collaboration between funders across the Four Shifts framework.
We’re excited about the multi-stakeholder session we’ll co-host on September 23 with the Center for Exponential Change. We’ll bring together around 70 leaders from philanthropy, government, civil society, multilateral organizations, and the private sector to spotlight innovations from changemakers and proximate actors and explore what it would take to make these approaches the norm. To help you navigate the busy calendar, the Council on Foundations has curated a helpful list of public events: 2026 UN General Assembly Philanthropic Side Events.
We’ll then carry this momentum from UNGA into the WINGSForum 2026 in Montreal, connecting global funders and locally rooted philanthropy networks, seeking ways to align futures thinking and doing.
As part of a growing trend toward shifting global development conversations into the Global South, our own Michael Jarvis joined the U.S.–Africa Futures Summit in Addis Ababa last week, marking the first time the summit was hosted on African soil. Michael joined the panel on development cooperation, where the mood was very much one of moving forward under today’s realities, not looking back. It was good to hear affirmation that philanthropy can play a helpful bridging role in shaping new modes of engagement.
What’s Emerging Across the Field: Insights on the Four Shifts
Shift 1: Building a New Era of Development Cooperation
Jennifer Pahlka applies the Three Horizons framework to global development for Unlock Aid. The author distinguishes between today’s dominant system, emerging alternatives, and a fundamentally different future. The piece calls for moving beyond traditional donor-recipient models towards country ownership, reciprocal learning and new forms of global cooperation.
Speaking to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, President Xi laid out his vision of development cooperation (as translated via Sinocism) where countries “adhere to development as the priority and open up prospects for common prosperity; adhere to security as the essential and create an environment of universal security; adhere to a people-centered approach and deepen the foundation of friendship across generations; adhere to dialogue and consultation and improve fair and orderly governance.”
Private capital is playing a bigger role in development, but transparency is lagging behind. Ella Remande-Guyard of Publish What You Fund finds that while disclosure by development finance institutions is improving, generic explanations still make it difficult to assess who benefits and whether investments deliver genuine additional value.
NPR reports a major change in how U.S. foreign assistance is delivered, with the State Department announcing nearly $2 billion in partnerships with faith-based and community organizations to provide global health and humanitarian services—the largest allocation in more than two decades.
Shift 2: Remodeling Development Finance Flows
Scarce concessional finance may not be reaching the countries that need it most. A new Center for Global Development paper argues that too many better-off countries still receive support from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries. The authors call for a better balance with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which serves middle-income countries, as aid budgets tighten.
More African governments are reassessing the trade-offs of concessional financing from the World Bank and IMF, and turning to alternative resources to finance development. African Business explores how mobilising domestic savings, pension funds and institutional capital could reduce reliance on external finance and put African countries more firmly in the driver’s seat of their development.
What if diaspora communities were treated as investors rather than donors? Writing in Devex, Nii Simmonds makes the case for diaspora bonds as a way for countries to tap into billions in overseas savings and mobilise a largely underused source of development finance.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) finds that while more than $600 billion in private finance has been mobilised for development since 2012, just 8% has reached low-income countries, compared with nearly 70% going to middle-income countries. Its latest report explores which instruments work best and how scarce public resources can unlock private investment more effectively.
Shift 3: Strengthening Locally-Led Development
After more than 50 years in development, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is making the case for agency over aid. In an interview with Alliance Magazine, BRAC Executive Director Asif Saleh reflects on a model that puts people’s ability to shape their own futures at the centre of development, rather than relying on external assistance.
“Africa is not developing, it is recovering,” argues Abir Ibrahim. She challenges the language of “catching up,” pointing instead to Africa’s long history of functioning institutions, trade networks and knowledge systems, and calls for development to be reframed around restoring and building on African capabilities rather than presumed deficits.
Namibia is offering a lesson in how African governments can turn diplomacy into a tool for development. Writing for The Diplomat, Ovigwe Eguegu and Huiyi Chen examine how the country is leveraging its relationship with China to advance industrialisation, local value addition and longer-term national priorities.
Zainab Usman argues that industrialization still matters for development, while Hafte Gebreselassie Gebrihet and Dan Banik urge countries to stand together to increase bargaining power. “African agency depends on bargaining power.”
Shift 4: Improving Philanthropic Collaboration
As the Earth Funding Lab comes to a close, it is sharing a practical guide for funders built from its experience experimenting with new approaches to collaboration. At its heart is a bigger question: what would it take for funders to work as a system, rather than simply alongside one another, to drive bigger and more lasting change?
Collaboration is essential for systems change, but more partners do not always mean more impact. Camilo Andrés Morales and Ana Cubillo of the Center for Effective Philanthropy explore how philanthropy can build more effective partnerships across the public and private sectors, drawing on lessons from locally grounded collaboration in Colombia.
Writing in Daughter of African Sun, Yasmina Benslimane argues that philanthropic funding still concentrates resources and decision-making power in Global North institutions, calling for funders to rethink how they collaborate, who sets priorities and where resources ultimately flow.
Philanthropy doesn’t have to start with wealthy institutions. Associated Press looks at how Thousand Currents CEO Solomé Lemma points to locally led systems that have withstood crises when centralized systems faltered, calling on philanthropy to back grassroots movements with long-term, unrestricted support.
HIGHLIGHT
“Country ownership” is a familiar phrase in development, but what does it mean when money, markets, and rules are still often controlled elsewhere? In the latest Theory of Change podcast, from Devex, former Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo argues that the current aid crunch should prompt a much broader rethink of development cooperation, rather than simply a search for replacement donor dollars. While Jonathan Glennie sits down with former President of Peru Francisco Sagasti in the Future Cooperation Podcast. Sagasti reflects on why challenges from AI to geopolitical fragmentation demand new thinking about multilateralism and cooperation.
Deep Dive: Contagious Collaboration
by Sylvia K. Ilahuka, Segal Family Foundation
This July, Nairobi was the site of a unique gathering: over 700 individuals with diverse roles on the African continent, all brought together by Segal Family Foundation to make sense of the state of the world and design what happens next with Africa at the center. Segal 2026 existed to look back at the foundation’s twenty years of championing local African visionaries and give our community of grantee partners and fellow funders a space to imagine their own work two decades into the future.
We have always been a connector, finding various creative ways to link those in our universe and amplify their work. From large annual gatherings (that have now been spaced out in favour of smaller regional events under the banner Segal Connect), to the UNGA side event Spotlight Africa, to a variety of local mixers, we’re big believers in the transformative power of networks.
There are many ways to convene that aren’t centred around just events, but also ways of working. Through the Social Impact Incubator (SII), we are exploring how to best work in new regions and with other donor entities while bringing together impactful local organizations to grow alongside each other and co-create the world they want to see. As funders, it is a gentle yet bold way to explore parts of the continent where we haven’t previously focused (in this case, the francophone countries of West and East Africa) while bringing along peers who are also interested. SII is powered by collaborative co-funding with Partners for Equity, Livelihood Impact Fund, Dovetail Impact, SAS-P, the King Baudouin Foundation, to name a few – an example of tangible impact born of convening with purpose. We’re also creating avenues for private individuals and entities to support the work of visionary African organizations without the hassle of overhead: through The Multiplier, an atypical donor-advised fund designed to make private grantmaking seamless. Between powering changemaker ecosystems and championing tools for those doing the work, Segal Family Foundation is looking towards a future where homegrown solutions get the support they need in the most effective manner.
There is strength in numbers; this we know and have seen. As the actions of one person can start an entire movement, how much more that of organizations? A fellow funder described to us how one of their grantees realized that “growing up in [this] system caused her to slowly give up on the dream of a brighter future for her own country. But while sitting in the main room at Segal [2026], listening to other African leaders working in contexts so similar to her own, she felt the dream begin to return.” We live in a circular world, one that also has a few cracks in its pavement. Global systems can help or hinder philanthropic collaboration – too often the latter, as we are seeing in visa restrictions (for which unfortunate reason there will be no Spotlight Africa this year). In a world that often and recently feels unstable, this is a time for philanthropy to be bold in building new systems that replace those that no longer serve us. We can bank on the existing and untapped relational infrastructure to do more, do better, and do differently...and, ideally, collaboratively.
Events of Interest
Africa at the Centre: Leading Change, Shifting Power Convening, Accra, Ghana. 1-3 September 2026
World Bank Future of Government Dialogue, Nairobi, Kenya- 9-10 September, 2026
Philanthropy Australia Conference 2026- Brisbane, Australia- 7-11 September 2026
Focusing Global Philanthropy on Human Rights and Media, 15-17 September 2026
UN General Assembly High-Level Week- NYC - 22 - 28 September
WINGS Forum- Montreal- 28-30 September
Funders International Network for Development (FIND) Annual Meeting- Spain, 5-6 October
Africa Philanthropy Forum- Cape Town- 25-27 October
World Business Forum- WOBI- 4–5 November 2026
AVPA Conference - Cape Town - 9-11 November
Paris Peace Forum- Paris - 10-11 November
Global exChange Summit - Johannesburg, 16-18 November
Africa Philanthropy Day 2026 (APD4, OECD/AU) (TBC, 25 November)
27th Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference - DC- 12-13 November. 2026
#ShiftThePower Global Summit - Kathmandu, Nepal - 2-4 December
Redefining Global Trust. Doha Forum 2026. - Doha, 5-6 December