{"id":1910,"date":"2025-05-07T14:53:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T21:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/?p=1910"},"modified":"2025-05-10T18:35:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T01:35:59","slug":"shifting-power-to-transform-the-development-paradigm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/shifting-power-to-transform-the-development-paradigm\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting power to transform the development paradigm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;it is not the recipients who express the greatest anxiety, but the dominant institutions and donor actors.&#8221; Given that the conventional narrative continues to be framed through the lens of a &#8220;savior complex&#8221; in which &#8220;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.&#8221; He adds that &#8220;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.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Onyekwena is Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases Advocacy at the Gates Foundation in Seattle &#8211; but wrote the opinion piece in his personal capacity. He is also a traditional leader in Ufuma, Anambra State, Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>Check out his article\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.development-today.com\/archive\/2025\/dt-3--2025\/rethinking-aid-a-call-for-genuine-transformation-in-the-development-paradigm\">Rethinking aid: A call for genuine transformation in the development paradigm | Development Today<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Image: WordPress<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &#8220;it is not the recipients who express the greatest anxiety, but the dominant institutions and donor actors.&#8221; Given that the conventional narrative continues to be framed through the lens of a &#8220;savior complex&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"media_type_reference":[],"class_list":["post-1910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reimagining-aid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1910"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1917,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1910\/revisions\/1917"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1910"},{"taxonomy":"media_type_reference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/depts.washington.edu\/globalhealthjustice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type_reference?post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}