MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: MAY, 2026 by TAI Collaborative

Dear Colleagues,

This past month continued the wave of “future of development” conversations taking place across philanthropy, civil society, multilateral institutions, and academia. From London to Nairobi, Paris to Washington, a growing number of actors are grappling with fundamental questions about what comes after an aid-centered model, how to strengthen local leadership and state capacity, and what new forms of financing and collaboration will be needed to address global challenges.

On the Secretariat side, we covered as many of these events as we could and are pleased to share a series of readouts and reflections in this edition. Alongside our usual curated selection of op-eds, essays, and reports mapped across the Roundtable’s Four Shifts, we highlight some of the emerging themes that appear to be gaining traction across the field: greater emphasis on domestic resource mobilization, renewed attention to implementation and state capability, stronger calls for locally led approaches, and growing recognition that philanthropy must play a more collaborative and catalytic role in shaping what comes next.

As always, we hope these resources help you navigate a rapidly evolving landscape, identify opportunities for learning and collaboration, and connect the dots across the many conversations shaping the future of development. 

Please let us know what we missed and share your ideas.

Warmly, 

Soheila and the Roundtable Secretariat team

Highlight of the Month 

The Roundtable on The Future of Development is one channel to track and make sense of all the “future of” conversations. The Secretariat has been covering as many of the recent events as we can, and we are pleased to share a series of readouts that capture not only headlines of what was discussed, but some initial reflections on the implications for philanthropy. The cover note is a first attempt at a synthesis of trends/messages. All resources are intentionally brief, visual, and, hopefully, easy to navigate. Please let us know what could make them more useful.

The readouts start with those of Roundtable hosted events:

  • The Multistakeholder Dialogue at the Skoll World Forum, where more than 120 leaders from civil society, philanthropy, academia, and the private sector explored how power, resources, and decision-making can shift closer to communities. A recurring message was that aid and philanthropy should be enablers—not the center—of a more locally driven development system. 

     

  • The Roundtable session at AfricaXChange in Nairobi, where participants argued that Africa’s challenge is increasingly not access to capital, but the ability to translate financing into implementation, institutional capacity, and long-term delivery. Discussions also highlighted roles that regional and global philanthropies should play as catalysts, connectors, and systems enablers.

Turning to other conferences, at Johns Hopkins University and the OECD’s Future of Development Cooperation events, conversations focused on the growing disruption of the traditional aid architecture. Speakers debated what comes after an aid-centered model, emphasizing country ownership, Global South leadership, and the need for new narratives.

Along with many of you, we were at the Global Partnerships Conference in London, where leaders from governments, philanthropy, development banks, civil society, and the private sector advanced a vision of cooperation built around equitable partnerships, domestic resource mobilization, and country-led solutions.

If you have takeaways from other relevant events, please share!

What’s Emerging Across the Field: 4 Insights on the 4 Shifts

Shift 1: Building a New Era of Development Cooperation

Al Kags argues that declining aid signals not the end of development, but the end of long-standing assumptions about development cooperation. The piece challenges donor-driven models, calls for greater African agency, and highlights emerging efforts to strengthen fiscal sovereignty, regional integration, and domestic financing across the continent.

What if the international development system were designed from scratch today? At Sciences Po Paris, students were challenged to imagine what comes after aid, proposing alternatives that move beyond traditional donor–recipient relationships. Professor Frederik Matthys shares the ideas that emerged.

The Future of Development Cooperation Coalition has released its first report: “The Development Balance Sheet: Rethinking Development Cooperation from the Ground Up”. Drawing on evidence from low- and middle-income countries, it argues that development cooperation should move beyond aid metrics and focus on domestic priorities, institutional capacity, and long-term transformation.

Oliver Stuenkel pushes back against predictions that a new world order will be organized around rigid spheres of influence controlled by major powers. Drawing on Latin America, he argues that countries have more room to manoeuvre than such narratives suggest, and highlights Brazil’s strategy of multi-alignment as a way to maintain autonomy and avoid dependence on any single power.

Shift 2: Remodeling Development Finance Flows

The African Development Bank’s Annual Meetings highlighted growing support for the New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD), which aims to close Africa’s $400 billion annual financing gap. Participants emphasized the need to unlock domestic capital, deepen local financial markets, and use innovative risk-sharing tools to crowd in private investment.

Read how philanthropy, working through OECD netFWD and the Pact for Prosperity, People and the Planet (4P), commits to supporting G7 efforts on financing for development at a time of mounting pressure on the global development finance system.

Adama Coulibaly argues that debates on development finance focus too heavily on aid flows while overlooking the much larger amounts of wealth leaving the Global South through debt, tax abuse, illicit financial flows, and unequal economic rules. The piece calls for a shift from aid-centred narratives towards greater fiscal justice, fairer global systems, and stronger local ownership of development.

U.K. Minister for International Development Jenny Chapman argues that closing the estimated $1.3 trillion development financing gap will require far more than aid. She calls for stronger partnerships across governments, philanthropy, business, investors, multilateral institutions, and civil society to deliver sustainable development outcomes.

Shift 3: Strengthening Locally-Led Development

The OECD has launched its new Practical Guidelines for Supporting Locally Led Development aimed at helping development actors turn commitments into practice, overcoming institutional and political barriers that often prevent meaningful power-sharing. Alongside, Peace Direct helped launch the Call to Action for Locally Led Development, a hub for resources, commitments, and updates, now with new government signatories.

A new policy brief from NEAR sheds light on the growing landscape of locally led pooled funds, identifying 64 such mechanisms operating across Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East and North Africa. The report argues that these funds challenge traditional assumptions about aid delivery by placing governance and decision-making closer to local actors. Good to pair with TAI’s mapping on the role of Global South intermediaries to advance localization goals. 

As debates about the future of development cooperation gather pace, Anuradha Joshi argues that achieving more equitable partnerships requires more than new language. She outlines practical recommendations for development actors, including giving greater decision-making power to partner countries and addressing the structural incentives that continue to reinforce unequal relationships.

Halima Begum questions the role of large international NGOs at a time of shrinking aid budgets and growing calls for locally led development. The piece challenges the logic of maintaining costly headquarters and extensive international operations when a greater share of resources could be channelled directly to local organisations without intermediary structures.

Shift 4: Improving Philanthropic Collaboration

According to Tim Hanstad, Vice-Chair of the Chandler Foundation, the localization agenda must go beyond funding local organizations. He argues that funders should better understand community realities and treat governments as key partners in efforts to strengthen local leadership, build state capacity, and achieve lasting impact.

The Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman argues that the ultimate goal of development cooperation should be to make aid unnecessary. Writing in Foreign Affairs, he calls on donors and philanthropic actors to move beyond sustaining programmes and focus instead on strengthening local systems, institutions, and capacities that allow countries to drive their own development.

Rather than waiting for the aid system to recover, Nathaniel Heller and Kristin Lord argue that philanthropists and impact investors should help shape what comes next. The authors outline five priorities, including backing proven solutions, strengthening locally led organisations, investing in people and institutions, embracing technology to improve philanthropic decision-making, and partnering more directly with governments to achieve impact at scale.

A recent Inside Philanthropy article highlights the rapid growth of AI data centers and their impacts on energy, water, communities, and local governance. As AI becomes a defining force shaping the future of development, these challenges underscore the importance of funders working together to ensure technological progress supports equitable and sustainable development. This piece focuses on collaboration in the US, but there needs to be a global equivalent.

Events of Interest