May 7, 2025

Shifting power to transform the development paradigm

Obinna Onyekwena reminds us, in his recent opinion piece in Development today, that aid to the Global South has functioned as a mechanism of control, influence, and outsourced profit, entrenching asymmetries of power under the guise of assistance. He also notes, that following the recent aid cuts “it is not the recipients who express the greatest anxiety, but the dominant institutions and donor actors.” Given that the conventional narrative continues to be framed through the lens of a “savior complex” in which “those in power see themselves as essential to progress, even as they perpetuate a system that sidelines local agency. The voices of affected communities have been gradually displaced, absorbed, or reinterpreted by those whose institutional survival depends on the maintenance of the current order.” He adds that “When the same actors who have long benefitted from imbalance lead the calls for equity without changing the underlying incentives, the result is stasis in the name of progress.”

Dr. Onyekwena is Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases Advocacy at the Gates Foundation in Seattle – but wrote the opinion piece in his personal capacity. He is also a traditional leader in Ufuma, Anambra State, Nigeria.

Check out his article Rethinking aid: A call for genuine transformation in the development paradigm | Development Today

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