As aid budgets shrink and multilateralism weakens, Dan Banik speaks with Nilima Gulrajani about what’s worth saving, what must change, and how global cooperation can still deliver in an uncertain world.
Foreign aid is under pressure. Budgets are shrinking, politics are hardening, and trust between donors and recipients is wearing thin. In this episode of In Pursuit of Development, Dan Banik speaks with Nilima Gulrajani, Principal Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, about what aid has achieved, where it’s faltering, and how it must evolve in a fractured world.
Drawing on more than twenty years of research on aid architecture, bilateral reform, and the rise of Southern providers, Nilima unpacks the deep tension between altruism and national interest and what happens when generosity becomes geopolitics. Together, Nilima and Dan explore how development aid can stay credible and effective amid a “broken social contract,” why smarter debt policy may matter more than bigger budgets, and what smart development power might look like for mid-sized donors such as Norway or Sweden.
As multilateralism weakens and the UN system faces acute financial strain, the conversation turns to who will step up (e.g., Gulf funds, Southern providers, or new hybrid coalitions) and how reform, not reinvention, could restore both trust and purpose to global cooperation.
[Dan Banik]
Nilima, I've been following your work for many, many years, and we've been friends on social media for many years, but finally we get to chat.
Welcome on the show.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Thank you so much for having me, Dan.
I'm really pleased to be here, and I too have been following your work over the years as well.
So great to have this virtual meeting.
[Dan Banik]
There's one thing that a lot of my students and colleagues, particularly in Asia and Africa, often question, and that is how effective has aid been in promoting development?
And there's a whole body of literature on this.
So I'm going to put you a bit on the spot because I haven't really sent you any questions.
I don't have any.
But having worked on aid for all of these years, how would you characterize
characterize the contribution of development aid in promoting development around the world.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
So I guess I would start by saying we have to recognize that aid is but a small financial flow of overall total resource flows or financial flows to the Global South.
So it is still nonetheless a significant amount.
In 2023, we had $223 billion provided as official development assistance, which is the concessional or grant-based finance that flows from the Global North to the Global South.
In terms of the contributions of aid per se, I think one can measure that quite succinctly if one looks particularly at sectors like health, infectious diseases in particular, river blindness, the tremendous success we've had on polio.
I mean, there are a variety of health outcomes that I think can be directly attributed to the investments that have been provided in global public health.
But I actually think even beyond that, there is something about aid that it has allowed a diplomatic relationship to form in places where sometimes that may have been difficult to have had.
It's allowed for relationships to be built, for soft power to be exercised in a way that has been helpful in many cases.
Not always.
And we can talk about some of the harms.
But I do think that it is an important form of global cooperation.
It lubricates relationships.
And I think the question I have is how it can lubricate those relationships better, particularly at this moment of geopolitical anxiety and fragmentation.
[Dan Banik]
I think some of the questions that people who are skeptical of aid ask these days is who is actually benefiting from aid?
And this alludes to what you just said about foreign policy.
You know, sometimes one gets the impression that aid is more important for us in the global north than
It is an important part of cultivating soft power.
It is an important way of getting a seat at the table where the big powers are, at least for a country like Norway.
It is important to show that we are humanitarian superpowers.
We punch above our weight.
Then the question really is the extent to which aid is more for us and not so much for recipient countries.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Yeah, I think you have to acknowledge that the creation of official development assistance would only have ever happened if it served the countries that were providing that assistance.
Otherwise, there would be no rational sense for a state to provide assistance.
So I think the starting point for aid has to come from somewhere where at least there's a mutual interest.
There's a sense that by providing this, I even get, you know, the kind of the fuzzy feelings of being generous, even if it's that, right?
That is a form of benefit, if you will.
And, you know, you can read texts like the gift going back to kind of show how giving, you know, has always involved the return to the giver as well as a gift to the receiver.
So I think in terms of who benefits from aid, there will always be a return to the gifter, to the provider.
That being said, I don't think we can completely disregard the fact that, particularly in a world where our interdependencies are so great,
that there can be, for sure, a collective benefit from that provision.
And I definitely feel we're in a moment where we are talking about those collective benefits and how we can maximize them in terms of their quantum, but also their scope and their reach globally.
[Dan Banik]
So the world looks pretty different today.
Ten years ago, it was much more optimistic, Neelima.
We had the Paris Agreement.
We had the Addis Ababa Financing Agreement.
We had the 2030 Agenda.
And today, as we speak, the UN General Assembly is meeting.
It is a different world.
How would you characterize the aid landscape?
Is it all bad?
Are there some promising things in the horizon?
How would you put it?
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Yeah, I mean, I talk about it as there's a broken social contract around aid at the minute.
I think there is really a sense in which governments feel that the aid budget is vulnerable due to, let's say, waning public opinion amongst taxpayers.
And we can talk a bit about the reasons for that.
And I think in the global south, you see a tremendous amount of critique and questioning about the value of the flow, the hypocrisy of the flow in terms of policies that are non-aid policies that seem to contradict the aid mission.
So the way I would characterize this moment is it is vulnerable, I would say.
At the same token, I think this moment can also provide an opportunity for a rethink and a reset, let's say.
I'm not so naive to think that we can completely destroy the institutions and modalities that we have today and get something better at this particular moment.
I think that's wishful thinking.
But I do think within the context of the institutions and financing modalities we have, we do have the possibility of engaging in reform to build something better.
And so I think it's vulnerable, but I think they're promising opportunities at this moment as well.
[Dan Banik]
In some of my recent interactions with aid agencies and officials, I've been making a three-point argument, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.
One is I'm interested in knowing who's going to really step up.
With the Americans, you know, reducing their flows, and there's still a lot of uncertainty as to whatever they have going on, how it'll be used, and who will it be directed towards.
I'm talking about USAID, if it'll live on in any way.
So who's going to step up?
And
And, you know, I keep wondering, is the EU up to it?
Is it, you know, some of our countries here, the Scandinavians, we're not, we're generous, but we're not big economies like the US.
So obviously we need a huge, you know, new contribution.
Somebody has to step up.
So that's the first one.
The second has to do with maybe we shouldn't think about all the bad stuff that, you know, we can prioritize differently.
There are lots of opportunities that could arise from prioritization within aid recipient countries, but also among donors.
And so the second point is twofold in the sense that, you know, my favorite country, Malawi, which is heavily aid reliant, and they're just going to have an election in two days.
I'm really worried as to how a country like Malawi is going to finance its budget without the U.S.,
But there are lots of opportunities, and one can't just give up.
At the same time, we've had an election in Norway, and there's going to be another coalition government.
We don't know what these priorities are going to be.
So that's the second bit.
The third one is, I think, Neelima, and I'd like to hear your thoughts too on this, is that we really, in the West and the global North,
may need to adopt a new strategy to collaborate with the Global South.
I'm talking about the major Global South actors.
Maybe it's not just India and China and Brazil.
It has to also be the UAE, maybe Indonesia.
You know, there are lots and lots of other players on the African continent, in Asia, Latin America, that we may well have to, you know, institutionalize new ties with rather than just,
you know, rely on what we were doing and business as usual is just not going to do it.
So, so those were my sort of two cents worth on, on how I see it at the moment.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
I mean, those are all interrelated and I might try and tie them, the answer together.
I think in terms of the answer to the question, who will step up?
I think, you know, I think what we're seeing is there's no one who really wants to fill the shoes, the UK that the U S has left.
Um,
vacant and i think what you're seeing though is a different kind of prioritization to kind of answer your second question i think you're seeing um a real desire to think more seriously about how we bring new actors into the system and they're hardly new these days but you know thinking about what's gone wrong with private capital immobilization and how we can do a better job and remove the barriers to that is one area where i think the northern uh
donor ecosystem is thinking.
I think there are new strategies that they're adopting as well.
So to answer your third point, a lot of interest in thinking about how to work better with Gulf donors, donors in Southeast Asia, looking beyond the bricks to your point.
So, you know, for those who are who lament the fact that no one has stepped up, as I have been over the last few months, to be honest, expecting maybe some sort of coalition to come together around, certainly around the short term effects, because I think the short term collateral damage of the withdrawal, the way it was done, particularly in global health and humanitarian issues.
is so significant that I would have expected a stronger coalition to have emerged quite soon, at least until such time as alternative policy or financial could have been put in place in many countries extremely dependent on USAID funding.
I think the different prioritization that we're seeing is a very live debate, not only in terms of different sources of capital, but what do we do in a world where we have less money?
How do we think about that?
And it's very live in the context of UN80, because the truth is the financial hit that the UN is taking as a result of both arrears and late payments, but on top of the
the cessation of payments and the withdrawal of many donors, not just the U.S., of voluntary contributions is really kind of
There's a lot of soul searching happening in the UN system.
So I think how we prioritize is very critical.
And then also how we think about resources that may come from the domestic treasuries of countries like Malawi, like Nigeria, like Tanzania and Ethiopia, where there's a re-examination of the kinds of dependencies that aid created and whether taxation, tackling illicit financial flow leakage,
A variety of alternative mechanisms that may exist to try and substitute for the loss of funds triggered by the U.S.
and other donors, I should say, withdrawal.
Yeah, so I think all three of your points kind of blend into this question of what's happening at this particular moment and the options that many in the ecosystem are now considering.
[Dan Banik]
But, you know, if I were to answer my own points or be critical, as much as I am hopeful that there will be somebody or some group of countries that will step up in the short term, I don't see that happening because budgets are constrained.
There are lots of political parties that are very hostile to foreign aid.
So I don't see that happening.
On the last point, you know, in terms of new partnerships with China or other Global South actors, there's also political challenges at home in terms of China bashing, being suspicious of China's motives.
So on the first and third points, I'm not very optimistic in the short term.
Where I do see a ray of hope, Neelima, is within countries where governments were relying on aid.
They almost took it for granted.
Health and education were going to be funded by donors.
We can focus on other stuff.
We can borrow for expensive infrastructure projects, and these so-called soft areas would be funded by foreign donors.
I hope
that within these countries, there will be a new kind of priority, new realization that we have to use taxpayer money to fund these things.
And maybe that will lead to greater awareness, accountability, efficiency, I don't know.
And in terms of the donors changing there,
you know, motives of operation.
I hope, I don't expect it, but I hope there will be much more of a focus on what really works, effectiveness, et cetera, which brings me to something I read.
I've read a lot of your work.
I think there was a piece you and Dan Hennig, one of my favorite guests on the show,
You wrote in 2017, if I remember correctly, a paper on how can we expect these donors to follow up on what they had promised in terms of aligning their policies and harmonizing policies.
aid policies.
We see that in the field, at least I see it in Africa, there's often a replication.
Every donor wants credit for whatever they are doing.
There has to be clear attribution.
You have to write these fancy reports.
So talking about prioritization within the
donor agencies, Neelima.
How do you see that happening?
Do you think there will be greater focus on aid effectiveness, making sure there are good evaluations, cutting things out?
By the way, politicians don't like to often cut.
They want to just pile on.
You know, how do you think that's going to play out?
[Nilima Gulrajani]
So I think we are going to definitely see a desire to get more bang for every dollar, every buck.
So that there is there is no question.
I do hope, though, that we won't get into bean counting because that.
That sort of seems to defeat the purpose, particularly if you think about the problems of underdevelopment as having deeper structural roots than just a financial gap.
I do think that donors themselves need to be thinking about how they can marshal their wider policy toolkit beyond their aid budget to really think about how they tackle those sources of underdevelopment.
And for example, you can think about debt.
and how we desperately need some sort of way to manage debt, which is not about a spend.
It's about a policy shift in terms of how we treat creditors.
In some countries, creditors that are based at home who will take a hit, which will affect their market position.
And there is a cost to that.
And it may be that that cost is far greater than even the small amounts of aid circulating in the system.
So, you know, a large part of the dialogues that we're convening at ODI.
So I sit at ODI as a global think tank based in the UK and convening this series that is really thinking about a new role for Northern bilateral donors in this world that we sort of tongue in cheek called a post-aid world early in 2024.
Not really expecting that the post-aid world would actually materialize so soon after we launched the series.
But essentially, in that series, we've been convening bilateral donors with a rotating cast of think tankers and researchers and activists.
And we've come up with a few ways in which we think the evolution of the northern bilateral donor landscape will move.
And one of them is in the context of really engaging with the drivers of structural transformation.
And, you know, I will say that when we started having that conversation in October 2024, there was a lot more optimism about the ability to move in that direction.
I think since the cuts, the U.S.
and the election of Donald Trump in the U.S., there's perhaps less a less sense of ambition of what's possible, given the fragmentation we see in terms of the global powers there.
And the ability to generate consensus amongst, let's say, member states and particularly more powerful member states.
And so but I do think we need to think about get beyond this bean counting point and really think about, you know, aid in conjunction with a much wider policy toolkit for really tackling those structural drivers of inequality in the world today.
[Dan Banik]
I absolutely agree with you on the debt issue.
Thanks for mentioning that.
I think that could be something really important for policymakers to focus on going forward.
But, you know, I'm really worried about UN financing and somebody we know, Ronnie Patz, who's been doing great work on it.
I was chatting with him and it is just mind boggling how little money some of these agencies have now.
I'm told that key UN officials don't have travel money.
things are really changing very fast.
When the US pulls out of the 2030 agenda, no support for the SDGs, I just don't know how this is going to play out.
And so one criticism that I've been hearing over the years is against the sort of the Northern donors is that we have been allocating more and more resources towards the multilateral system and we have not been prioritizing bilateral projects.
which also means that we are losing ownership.
We can't enforce our values.
We can't follow up.
We don't have the expertise, et cetera, et cetera.
And a lot of the money is just disappearing into this UN system or through the bank.
How do you think that's going to work out going forward?
Do you think that may change, that in terms of prioritization, the donors would go back to bilateral projects more because the UN funds are being cut out?
Would they maintain current levels?
And what would be the potential implications of that change?
Because multilateralism,
Well, it has been in crisis for decades, but it seems to be more of a crisis now than ever before.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
So, yes, I think multilateralism is in a very dire, dire situation.
I mean, I do think we have to distinguish between the global vertical funds, the World Bank and the UN, because I think each of those are in very different financial positions.
And I think in particular, the segment of that system that is really in crisis is the UN system.
And so, again, just last week, we were hosting a dialogue on UN reform and what its value proposition might be and what the role of the largest funders should be in terms of resuscitating that system.
So I think where I see this going, I think a lot of people have talked about how we will see a resurgence of bilateral aid, just because geopolitical context at the minute is one that seems to desire more control over funding, to allocate much more in light of national interests, and really a sense that the multilateral system has very little visibility for donors, very little accountability for them.
And it's not been delivering.
And so I think that's the direction to trajectory potentially.
I think it's problematic.
And I actually think we need to be thinking the reverse.
I think thinking about the potential end of bilateralism and a rejuvenation of a multilateral system, particularly on the UN side, is something that we should be, we target, that we ambitiously target.
And the reason for that are a couple.
The first is we are tackling global challenges more than we have ever before, whether it be climate, whether it be conflict, infectious diseases.
Those are challenges that need more than one state's cooperation with one other state, which essentially is what bilateral channels is.
We do need at least regional cooperation if we can't have true mega multilateralism.
And I think we would be ignoring one of the more salient development challenges and one of the development challenges that require institutions to be able to deliver on outcome.
They require norms and standards to be agreed in order to deliver on.
And that is only a role that I think multilateral slash regional institutions can play.
Conversely, I think taxpayers will soon realize that if we allocate all of our funds through bilateral channels at this moment, or the most, and I should say about 60% currently goes to bilateral, 40% to multilateral.
And within that multilateral pool, also to say that many of those funds are earmarked for certain regions and sectors.
And so that actually is considered a form of bilateral assistance or multi-buy aid as well.
These donors do actually have a lot of control over their multilateral financing, if you think about how much is tightly earmarked in particular.
So I think going back to this point about the end of bilateral aid is something that I think we should be ambitiously shooting for.
because I don't think we're going to be able to deliver on the challenges the world faces at the minute.
That being said, I do think we have to recognize that we do need financing for diplomatic relationship building.
And I think, you know, what I'm trying to say there is the end of bilateral aid is more the end of calling that bilateral aid because it's not aid.
Let's just be frank.
It is financing that is meant to lubricate relationship building, trade deals, various policy demands that we might have of other countries.
And that is important function that diplomacy and diplomats play.
And that needs to be funded.
But I think if we're truly thinking about aid as we define it in official development as official development assistance,
The risk is that what we're calling bilateral aid is no longer meeting that definition.
And we only have to look at how much aid was spent in the last few years on refugee costs, on Ukraine, and has spent at home in countries, in northern giving countries themselves, as opposed to country programmable aid in the global south, to say this flow may not be fit for purpose as we've currently designed it when we put it in the hands of bilateral governments.
So I think we need to start thinking radically about new modalities.
And I think we need to invest, and I mean by invest, political capital more than I mean more financial capital in really rethinking the multilateral architecture and the multilateral system, and in particular, the UN development system.
[Dan Banik]
You know, I'm not so sure that we are going to return to sort of pre-2025 levels in terms of UN financing.
And more so because in many parts of our world, there's a lot of suspicion on how effective UN agencies have been in delivering development, replication, overlap, inefficiencies.
This feeling that the UN really needs to be reformed, but the UN reform process has been talked about for, I don't know, ever since it was, I suppose, established.
And, you know, you can say a lot about UN reform, but I don't think it seems to be satisfying our appetites.
I mean, there's a need for maybe major structural change, not just putting five agencies or merging everything into five.
So that's why I think maybe as much as you may wish for bilaterally to end, maybe it's going to continue.
But on that note, Neelima, I wonder what you think about the Chinese approach, because much of what China does is often couched as solidarity and talking to entire continents.
But the essence is still a focus on bilateralism.
And over the years, I've seen the Chinese people
providing increased support to UN institutions, including UN DESA.
More Chinese high-level officials are now in the UN.
But it's still bilateralism that trumps most of its projects, whether it's aid or investments, however.
I mean, obviously, you can't talk about Chinese aid as in ODA.
But nonetheless, Chinese aid and investment, say, on the African continent, seems to be still very bilateral in nature.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Yeah, I mean, I think so.
The Chinese model definitely has delivered.
It's delivered the goods for China, first and foremost, and has provided an exemplar for many other states in the global south to really challenge northern aid provision, its normative framework, its effectiveness, its politicization.
So I think, what do I think about it?
So I think
It is more bilateral than multilateral, no doubt.
And I think there are good reasons for that.
You know, we started with the point that all aid has to be provided in at some level, a national benefit or a national interest.
Right.
So I think what I was going with the end of the bilateral aid argument is that can also be in the national interest.
that there is the possibility for multilateralism to be in the national interest.
And you only have to think about how China has set up the AIIB as an alternative multilateral institution to the traditional MDBs to see how it also thinks of multilateralism as lying in its national interest.
Yes, its financing to the UN is strategic.
It is actually more core than voluntary.
China does very little voluntary financing to the UN.
So it is mainly providing earmarked voluntary.
It provides a lot of...
good quality UN financing, let's say, compared to many of the other donors.
But it is also strategically using that financing to think about how it staffs particular institutions at the highest level.
That alone should have the U.S.
wondering what it's doing in terms of the pullout and really give it pause.
So, you know, recognizing that, you know, this financing sits within the geopolitical context and
A complete withdrawal of the U.S.
from the U.N.
system seems to be giving a kind of carte blanche to China to step in.
So I think, you know, the Chinese approach is valuable.
It has been multilateral and it has delivered for Chinese national interests is, I think, for me, an example of why we need to think about the multilateral system as a channel for the national interest, but also a channel for delivering those important global public goods that we need.
[Dan Banik]
So a few years ago, I think you wrote a piece on emergent strategies of development power.
As donors, what is it that they really seek?
I mean, are they reluctant, as I think you portrayed Germany to be, or omnipresent as France is, or realist as the UK is, or virtuous as Sweden or the Nordics perhaps are?
I think you were recommending several strategies for donors to achieve smart development power.
If you can please tell my listeners, what is it that these strategies, these donors should strive for, for that kind of smart, effective development power?
I suppose one thing would be aid effectiveness, evidence-based, listening to the voices rather than just preaching.
But there may be other things.
And related to these recommendations, Neelima, I wonder how you see South-South cooperation going forward, particularly whether we could see emergent strategies where the Global North and the Global South are actually entering into strategic partnerships.
One example would be Norway financing an infrastructure project that a Chinese company would build on the African continent.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Yeah.
So let me start with the smart development power.
So here, the idea is that smart development power would be the intelligent use of the instruments, the entire toolkit available to the bilateral donor community beyond just aid.
So that includes the use of their financing to the multilateral system, which goes beyond aid in many cases.
the use of trade policy and other forms of official financial flows and thinking about their economic footprint, thinking about their economic cooperation, global public goods and how they invest in global public goods.
And so I think for me, it's recognizing that at this moment to copy a Chinese model, given the quantum that northern donors have, is unrealistic.
And so and also given the kind of some of the normative aims and ambitions of many of the countries is also, you know, not likely to be, you know, akin to the Chinese model.
And so how do we think about what a potential northern strategy might be?
And here the idea of smart development power comes to play.
And here the argument is that if you can show consistency and reliability with Global South partners, you can grow your influence so that solidarity can become a form of national interest.
It's also recognizing that the quantum of aid may be insufficient for cultivating that power and that maybe the quality of that aid may be more significant in doing that.
Really thinking about your offer as a bilateral in terms of your technical competency, the kinds of long-term investments that you can make, the clarity of what you're trying to achieve, all those, the quality of what you do are also sources of influence and credibility.
Not to underestimate what we talked a bit about this, the multilateral engagement that you have, that membership and collaboration and investment in the multilateral system are also key levers for influence.
And really that thinking about how impact first or delivering on impact first may actually be a source of your influence.
So impact first, influence second.
So for me, that is what smart development power is.
And that is something that I think the bilateral donor community may want to think about in this era.
acknowledging that that power comes from much more than just the aid lever.
But aid is one part of it.
It's not the only part of it.
But thinking about how these tools work together.
You had a second question about South-South cooperation.
[Dan Banik]
Let me just add in a bit here.
I think everything you said about smart development power is what I think China has in part achieved already.
This is my take.
You may disagree.
I think China is far better at disseminating, communicating with a recipient or partner countries that it is acting to promote solidarity, that it is not just giving, but also wants something back.
So there's a reciprocity that creates respect.
I think some of these things, I'm not saying that China is perfect in every way, but I don't think we've been very good at communicating that.
We often have said, oh, here's some money.
We don't want anything from you.
Your goods are not good enough to be imported to our countries.
And China, even though China may agree with us, it never says it publicly.
So it just makes recipient partner countries.
It creates better goodwill, I would say.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
I think that's right.
I completely agree with you on China, that China has been able to use the language of solidarity, in some case real, in some case maybe less real, to its advantage.
That it has based that cooperation in norms like sovereign equality and reciprocity and mutual benefit.
I think the question I have is whether...
whether that remains.
So I think there are common values that all states want.
And I think respect, you know, mutual benefits and a sense of equality between states is definitely the common framework that the northern donor communities need to do better at articulating.
And I think I think we haven't done a good job of that.
And so but I guess the question I have is whether the Chinese model is, first of all, really the Chinese model in the way that those values are, are they substantiated or not?
But secondly, if you can't achieve that in quantum, given the kind of the size of Chinese investment and the economy,
I think we need to think about alternative levers for cultivating or showing up with the values of solidarity, reciprocity and sovereignty.
So I think, you know, things like structural transformation, because if you think about has China really transformed the economy of Malawi in a good way, in a way that has advanced, you know, equity, has advanced, you know,
democratic norms advance the cause for women, right?
I think you may question that.
And I think there may be ways in which Northern donor institutions can anchor their cooperation, the full policy toolkit of their development cooperation in these countries, and truly demonstrate the achievement of the values of equity, solidarity, respect, and mutual benefit.
And I think that's where they need to be aiming at this point.
[Dan Banik]
So, you know, China and Malawi never had anything on democracy, on gender, on all of these aspects that we were concerned with.
China was building infrastructure.
And so to answer your question, yes, China has transformed the urban landscape in terms of roads and bridges and hotels and football stadiums and presidential villas, parliament building.
So you have that which the West wasn't doing.
So in many countries like Malawi, Neelima, I see a
A clear distinction, a division of labor.
Northern donors are doing certain things.
China is doing infrastructure.
Yeah.
China says, you know, this was never our goal.
So, you know, that's not something we've been doing.
But this is what we're doing.
And we're doing it well.
And we finish things on time.
And we're giving you money and the expertise to build roads that the West is not providing you with.
And infrastructure is what a lot of these countries are looking for.
Since we're running out of time, I just wanted to ask you, do you think the global salt, this...
grouping of BRICS and the new BRICS and the G20, where many of these Global South actors have been very influential this last four years.
Do you think the Global South increasingly will articulate a different model of development of aid and the South-South cooperation will be scaled up that could potentially match or exceed what is coming from the Global North?
[Nilima Gulrajani]
I truly hope so.
My expectation is that there will be some sort of scaling up of South-South cooperation.
And certainly in the context of infrastructure development we were talking about earlier, I can expect that.
I think the kind of the northern donor ecosystem is going to be thinking quite carefully about how to partner with southern providers.
I think I expect triangular cooperation in particular to grow as a modality.
And I think the hope I have is that that can lead to a bit more rebalancing in the ecosystem, both in terms of the quantums of financial flows that come from various states.
I think we hopefully will get to a point where all countries recognize their obligation and their interest in investing in a fairer global development system.
So I'm hopeful, actually, that this crisis can be used in such a way that builds that equity and that equitable development system, yeah, for the next generation.
[Dan Banik]
Well, on that optimistic note, thank you very much for coming on my show.
It was a great pleasure to see you and to speak with you.
[Nilima Gulrajani]
Thank you so much for having me.
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