CGD Europe Brown Bag Seminar with Lant Pritchett

Featuring
Lant Pritchett
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

Hosted by
Lee Crawfurd
Research Associate, Center for Global Development

In recent years, rich country development agencies have become increasingly irrelevant to the developing world – the creation of a BRICs Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure investment bank (AIIB) led by China are recent indicators of this divergence. Why is this happening?

In his paper, Lant Pritchett argued that this is the result of two large shifts. Firstly, developing countries’ reduced reliance on official development assistance (ODA). As a result, these countries are less keen to accept the imposed conditions and practices under which these organisations lend or grant their funds. Secondly, the political coalition in the west supporting aid has retreated from the core objective of providing material gains, diverging from the priorities of the developing world. According to Pritchett, the only solution to tackle these dramatic shifts requires a complete remaking of mainstream development organizations.