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Development in the Trump Era: What’s Next for Global Development Cooperation?

By Andy Sumner and Stephan Klingebiel / Development and Development Policy in the Trump Era Series

The return of Donald Trump to the White House has reignited deep uncertainty about the trajectory of global development cooperation. Long before 2025, the multilateral system was already under pressure. But Trump’s second term marks a normative rupture: the retreat of the United States not just from global leadership, but from the very principles of internationalism, multilateralism, and development solidarity it once helped to construct.

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Decolonizing Expertise: Reflections on Power, Knowledge, and Governance in International Organizations (IOs)

By Marine Gauthier / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project

A Personal Reckoning with Expertise

My engagement with international development has always been entangled with postcolonial sensitivities—an awareness shaped by my Belgian family’s colonial past, my academic training on North-South relations in environmental governance, and my own professional trajectory which started in Senegal as the only white development worker in a national NGO. Yet, despite this awareness, I found myself deeply embedded in the very structures I sought to critique.

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The End of Development Aid?

By Aram Ziai / Development and Development Policy in the Trump Era Series

In the last few months, our object of research has seen some dramatic changes. I am referring to the de-facto dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) after the inauguration of President trump in January 2025. The USA has been by far the largest donor of Official Development Assistance (ODA) during the past decades (although in relation to its GDP it has been among the less generous). In February 2025, the Trump administration has announced to eliminate more than 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and 60 billion US-$ in assistance.

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What is the Salience of Arthur Lewis’ Ideas for Understanding Global Inequality Today?

By Andy Sumner

Seventy years ago, Arthur Lewis wrote a seminal paper on economic development in the Global South. At a workshop at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, convened by the EADI Working Group on the Politics and Political Economy of Economic Transformation, co-convenor Pritish Behuria and GDI’s Adam Aboobaker, it was clear Lewis’ relevance is as significant today as ever. This blog reflects on Lewis’ contributions to the study of global inequality.

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In Defence of Development Studies: Why “Global Development” Falls Short

By Alfredo Saad-Filho

There is a growing debate in academic circles about the merits of shifting from traditional Development Studies to a broader concept of “Global Development”. While proponents argue that this shift would better reflect the interconnected nature of our world, I believe that such a move would be detrimental to our field, our understanding of global differences and inequalities, and our ability to understand the dynamics of development.

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