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What Should Tomorrow's Aid Agencies Look Like?

Image: Kaveh Sardari/CGD

GDN and the Centre for Global Development (CGD) organized a public panel discussion on the future of aid agencies at CGD in Washington DC in June, 2016, gathering key stakeholders in development and winners of GDN's Next Horizons Essay Contest to discuss new -- and ageing -- ideas on the sustainability of development assistance. Winning essayists, Yuen Yuen Ang and Dan Honig presented ideas from their essays on aid agency reform for context-driven practices, and management and organizational behaviour in development agencies.

The panel also featured representatives from leading multilateral development agencies, governments, foundations and think tanks: the World Bank (Jos Verbeek), USAID (Wade Warren), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Rodrigo Salvado), and CGD (Bill Savedoff). GDN President, Pierre Jacquet moderated the panel, facilitating discussions around a range of topical questions, including:

  • How should development actors work to sustain development in the next fifteen years?
  • What specific skills do these actors need to advance the development finance agenda?
  • Should aid agencies remain pivotal to global aid?

A complete recording of the panel discussion can be viewed here.

Read Yuen Yuen Ang and Dan Honig's winning essays from GDN's Next Horizons Essay Contest, a global competition for ideas on the future of development assistance, run by the Global Development Network in 2014 and 2015 with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.