MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: NOVEMBER, 2025 by TAI Collaborative

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the second edition of our Monthly Newsletter, our digest of signals and conversations shaping the future of international development.

There is so much to cover, not least the first-ever G20 Summit on African soil that concluded with a Leaders’ Declaration centering inequality, debt sustainability, and reform of global cooperation, even as geopolitical tensions made achieving consensus harder than ever (more on that below). At the same time, COP30 wrapped with a mixed but consequential package of commitments, highlighting both the political constraints and the pockets of real ambition emerging from the Global South.

This month’s content —mapped to our Four Shifts organizing framework— includes fresh analysis on global inequality, evolving multilateralism, a clear thread on moving away from prescriptive models, and reflections on the real limits of aid. As Charles Kenny reminds us, “aid isn’t fairy dust,” underscoring the growing recognition that development finance alone cannot resolve deep structural or political constraints.

Dive into this issue, let us know what we missed, and what else could be helpful to stay informed, aligned, and connected.

Warmly,
Nicole, Mariam & Michael

Roundtable Status Update

We held our first Shift Exploration Call: Shift 1: Building a New Era of International Cooperation. With around 20 of you attending, the session focused on deepening the collective understanding of what a new era of international development cooperation should look like, building on the Four Shifts framework launched at UNGA. Participants reviewed our current draft mapping of initiatives and collaboratively identified gaps and priorities to guide the Roundtable’s next steps.

Look out for calendar invitations to our upcoming December calls on both Shift 2: Remodeling Development Financing Flows and Shift 3 – Advancing Global South Leadership. Please join to review the range of initiatives at play and discuss where you want to dig deeper on investable opportunities.

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

Shift 1: Building a New Era of Development Cooperation

Development practitioners are moving away from traditional siloed system frameworks toward a "3A+" model (Anticipate, Absorb, Adapt with Advance Equity as cross-cutting). Researchers from LSE and RANI (Resilience Action Network International) recognize that resilience cannot simply mean returning to previous states, but must actively advance justice and equity across sectors.

True transformation of development finance is emerging through greater collaboration and shared agency among Global South countries. Hannah Wanjie Ryder makes the case that South-South partnerships are proving to be more equitable and contextually relevant models that align with the lived realities of developing countries.

A new three-part series from the CSIS Global Development Department examines changes to the development landscape, particularly in major donor countries, in terms of priorities, policies, and organizational structures. Authors note the break from traditional donor-recipient models towards more reciprocal and diversified cooperation frameworks.

José Miguel Ahumada and Ha-Joon Chang offer a framework for reimagining industrial development that centers the economic sovereignty and strategic priorities of developing nations rather than prescriptive models from multilateral institutions.

Shift 2: Remodeling Development Finance Flows

What if instead of endlessly rescheduling debt, low-income countries could actually buy back their expensive debt with lower-cost capital? A panel of African experts is championing this refinancing approach, which could fundamentally shift how we think about debt relief.

Countries are increasingly looking outward to their diaspora communities to tap into remittances, skills, and social networks for development finance. The Migration and Policy Institute analyzes the rise of "diaspora engagement policies". The reality check? Harnessing diaspora contributions is more complex than asking people to send money home.

Negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation are progressing with the third round of negotiations held in Nairobi from November 10 to 19, 2025. Why does it matter? Shifting control over global tax governance from a small club of wealthy countries to a more inclusive system could unlock new resources for development (read TAI’s primer for philanthropy on the topic). The negotiations are a crucial test of whether the international system can actually reform itself.

The Baku to Belem Roadmap has put a concrete number on the table: $1.3 trillion per year in climate finance. This isn't just about aid—it's about completely remodeling how capital flows to support climate action, requiring innovation across public finance, private investment, and new funding mechanisms. Can the global financial system actually mobilize at this scale?

Shift 3: Strengthening Global South Leadership

The New Development Bank is facing a crucial test of credibility. Bhima Yudhistira Adhinegara and Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat question whether it will actually deliver on its founding promise to be different. They call for robust safeguards, fossil-fuel-free policies, and genuine civil society participation. If Southern-led institutions replicate the same problems they were meant to solve, what's the point?

Here's the uncomfortable truth: no amount of external aid or investment will drive development without strong national institutions doing the heavy lifting. Liwaaddine Fliss argues that Africa's future depends critically on building robust economic governance systems, digital public infrastructure, and strategic financing frameworks that allow countries to break free from extractive economic models. It's about creating the institutional backbone for self-reliant, sustainable economies.

Abdul Mohammed argues that Pan-Africanism isn't just historical sentiment—it's Africa's best strategic option for survival and dignity in an increasingly fractured world. His call isn't to romanticize the past but to reclaim Pan-Africanism's political and ideological character as a framework for collective action. In a world of rising protectionism and power blocs, fragmented African states negotiating individually have far less leverage than a continent acting in concert.

Spark, a group of organizations working to transform energy systems through a feminist and human rights lens, posts that the right to sustainable energy must be recast not as a peripheral climate ambition but as a foundational human right essential to economic, social, and environmental justice. It emphasises that energy systems shaped by colonial legacies and profit-driven models cannot deliver an equitable transition—and instead calls for frameworks rooted in affordability, reliability, accessibility, and dignity for all communities.

Shift 4: Improving Philanthropic Collaboration

Amid deepening political polarization, social movements remain crucial to advancing progress, but they're chronically under-resourced. Rebecca Root is the latest to outline how philanthropic organizations can fundamentally alter this dynamic by providing the sustained, flexible support that movements require to operate effectively. Will philanthropy step up further to fund the often messy, long-term work of building people-centered power? Humanity United’s Collective Action Assistance Fund is one tool to leverage.

Philanthropy in Asia is positioning itself as a strategic player in global development finance, going well beyond traditional aid models. An emerging narrative argues that Asian philanthropists can deploy not just capital, but also networks and regional innovation to reshape development partnerships—potentially offering alternative models to Western-dominated approaches.

Traditional, aid-driven development models are no longer fit for purpose, according to a new article drawing on Bridgespan survey data from community groups. The evidence points to a stark mismatch between what funders think works and what communities actually need.

Alliance Magazine reports that African philanthropy is undergoing a fundamental reorientation—shifting away from aid dependency toward strategies focused on unlocking the continent's own domestic capital: mobilizing pensions, sovereign wealth funds, and impact finance to drive self-determined, innovation-led growth.

Highlight of the Month

A recent study by the World Inequality Lab shows that public support for international redistribution remains surprisingly strong across high-income countries, even amid rising nationalist sentiment. Take a special look at the accompanying graphic, which underscores how majorities across multiple nations recognise global responsibility and favour cooperative solutions to inequality.

With a Funder's Lens: When Public Will Meets Political Gridlock. The 2025 G20 Summit

South Africa successfully hosted the G20 Leaders' Summit this past weekend, making clear its intention to use this platform to center Global South concerns across all working groups and ministerial meetings. The timing is particularly significant, coming just five years before the UN's 2030 deadline for the Sustainable Development Goals, with only 12% of targets currently on track.

Will other G20 governments feel any public pressure to back the shift? The Rockefeller Foundation's new polling of nearly 20,000 adults across 18 of the G20 countries reveals that despite rising nationalist rhetoric and cuts to development aid budgets, public support for international cooperation remains strong. Sixty percent of respondents in the United States agree that their country should cooperate on global challenges, even if it requires compromising on some national interests.

The Rockefeller survey represents more than just polling data—it's a mandate for action that think tanks, academia, and civil society are working to translate into concrete recommendations. A clear example is the Think 20's comprehensive communiqué delivering solutions-driven policy recommendations, and the Foundations 20's recommendations aimed at guiding influential policymaking for climate action and the SDGs throughout 2025. Philanthropic actors were also called to evolve from invited participants to co-creation partners and to act as a strategic convenor and bridge-builder within G20 processes, helping to strengthen cooperation and elevate Global Majority leadership in shaping global priorities.

Perhaps no issue has captured the urgency of the moment more powerfully than inequality. The G20's Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality, chaired by Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, has declared a global "inequality emergency" and proposed establishing a new International Panel on Inequality modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The committee's research reveals that 83% of all countries, accounting for 90% of the world's population, meet the World Bank's definition of high inequality. They are seven times more likely to experience democratic decline than more equal countries. Again, there might be more public support for action than many assume - see the graphic above for evidence.

The G20's ministerial declaration on debt reflects ongoing efforts to advance solutions for high structural deficits and liquidity challenges that limit developing economies' ability to invest in development needs. The ministerial declaration builds on initiatives such as the Common Framework while exploring new mechanisms, including the proposed Cost of Capital Commission, to address the sky-high interest rates that burden developing countries. More philanthropies are recognizing the need to act -  a discussion with education funders last week revealed both interest and growing awareness of fundable investments.

Big picture, the path forward is far from certain. Meetings have been marked by difficulty reaching consensus, with the first Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting in Cape Town failing to produce an outcome document amid controversial issues around climate finance and international tax cooperation. These tensions ultimately underscore why the Summit and the locus for conversation it provides still matters— the alternatives to cooperation are far more costly than the compromises required to achieve it.

Stat of the Month

ISGlobal details how continued aid cuts could reverse decades of progress in global health and poverty reduction. The research shows development assistance has played a decisive role in reducing preventable mortality over the past two decades, and severe reductions in that assistance would lead to 22.6 million additional deaths.

Events of Interest

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