Perry World House Hosts “Reimagining the Future of Development” Conference
On January 20 and 21, 2026 Perry World House hosted a conference, bringing together scholars and practitioners to discuss the future of global development assistance. Given the shuttering of USAID and the decline of official development assistance, we convened experts to reflect on the successes and challenges of nearly a century of Official Development Assistance. The conversation explored new frameworks for development to address the needs and realities of today’s world, including the challenges presented by a changing climate and the opportunities associated with new technologies.
Leveraging the University of Pennsylvania’s expertise and network, the conference focused on key development topics – health and livelihood. Participants discussed how to counter backsliding in the context of health, where drastic improvements in disease prevention and control have saved countless lives. In an era of competing priorities, diminished assistance, and US pullback, our conversations emphasized the necessity to reduce poverty and prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable, drawing lessons from previous successes and shortcomings.
Key insights and recommendations from the conversation included:
1. Move away from a donor driven approach to development and towards country ownership, necessitating local capacity-building as a priority.
Development priorities set by recipient countries would inform goals and localize implementation strategies. This would allow for greater contextualization and perhaps extend the impact of assistance. It would also help safeguard inclusion because development approaches would be tailored not only to country context but also subnational circumstances and community needs.
This strategy would require donors to be more flexible with their timelines and priorities. It would also necessitate recipient countries to invest in good governance, as well as the local human and institutional capacity building needed to implement strategies and secure more durable outcomes. Enabling this shift would mean transitioning from project specific work toward longer-term and more coordinated support for systems and institutions.
2. End the projectization of assistance and align it instead with national strategies and institutional capabilities.Transition aid away from funding many discrete projects with separate timelines, rules, and reporting requirements. The goal would be to reduce fragmentation and build sustainable capacity that could snowball gains.
3. Utilize analytics and anticipatory action to allocate resources effectively and efficiently as we move into a new era of more focused, leaner development. This is a strategy that has been successfully employed by the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs to mitigate humanitarian disasters and maximize the use of limited resources. The model could be extended to development more broadly.
The conference featured a public keynote with Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, the former UN Deputy Secretary-General, former administrator for the UN Development Programme, and Perry World House Distinguished Visiting Fellow. Lord Malloch-Brown discussed the shifting roles of both the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions in facilitating development assistance for the 21st century.