Re:Development: Redefining the Core of Global Development
In the first edition of our series, African think tank founder Rashid Abubakar calls for a transformative shift in how we understand and practice development.
International development is entering a new and uncertain era. This past year, the U.S. Agency for International Development was shut down after more than 60 years. Other countries have cut their foreign aid budgets. And yet global poverty remains one of humanity’s most urgent challenges.
At this moment of crossroads, TechnoServe is exploring what the future of international development should look like—and how we get there.
Our new series, “Re:Development | Conversations for Change,” interviews leading thinkers and doers with a variety of bold perspectives on how to build a world where everyone has an equal chance to succeed.
Re:Development | Episode One
In our first episode of Re:Development, TechnoServe CEO Will Warshauer speaks with Rashid Abubakar, the founder and team lead of the Policy Centre for Afrocentric Development (PCAD).
Rashid grew up and attended school in Kenya, where he gained a law degree and a master’s degree from the University of Nairobi. He then worked as a development specialist with the United Nations in Kenya and Germany, where he became frustrated with what he terms “a repeated pattern: superficial solutions, disconnected from local realities and blind to structural causes.”
In early 2025, Rashid founded PCAD as a think tank devoted to the principle that “development must emerge from Africa’s own historical experiences, resources, and aspirations of its people.”
Rethinking Development and Causes of Poverty
Will Warshauer: We both have seen development done badly. Your critique, though, goes a lot farther, I think. Your center is about an Afrocentric approach to development. Tell us more about what you mean by that.
Rashid Abubakar: The Policy Centre for Afrocentric Development (PCAD) is informed by the fact that throughout my experience, I could see how the question of development, we assume that we know what development is and that development looks the same in every context…But in a different setting, it perhaps looks very, very, different. And so the Policy Centre for Afrocentric Development does primarily three things.
The first thing that we do is that we actually ask: What is development from an African perspective?
In the last 20 years, some of the fastest growing countries in the world have been within the African continent. And so you see headlines saying that African countries are developing. We see a lot of growth in GDP, but people’s lives are not necessarily getting better.
So what is development? Is development a growth of GDP? Is development the realization of human rights? Is development meeting the Sustainable Development Goals? What actually is development? So that’s the first thing.
The second thing that we do is that we connect the dots. When you look at the international development space at the moment, we see there are a lot of people trying to put out fires that have been started by the same people within the same system.
So let me give you an example. When you look at the role of the international financial institutions, one of the things that they usually ask countries to do, especially countries that are in debt distress, is to cut spending. So mostly education, health, social security. And of course, the consequence of this is that people’s ability to meet their basic needs is hindered. And then we have the other side of the system. So these are NGOs or human rights NGOs or even local NGOs working to cushion populations from the impacts of austerity measures, right?
So it’s all part of the same system, but we have one side introducing austerity measures and then the other side trying to counter the effects. So we try to connect the dots at PCAD, which is showing what are the possible consequences of actions, so that there is a sort of harmonious and integrated approach to development.
We also take a structural approach. Structural means that we look at not just the manifestation of challenges within the African continent, but what are its root causes?
For example, a lot of countries are in debt. And of course, I mean, outwardly, you could say that perhaps countries need to manage their finances much better. Perhaps we need to reduce corruption. We need to strengthen our institutions, and all this is true.
But actually, below the surface, the structural cause of debt is that Africa is at the bottom of the global economic hierarchy in that it primarily exports raw commodities and then it imports finished goods. And because of this imbalance, Africa will always need more money than it actually has because the goods that it is importing are of a higher value, rather more expensive than the ones that it is exporting. So that is a root cause.
Better Roles for Foreign Aid and Policy
Will: Within that sort of overarching framework, what is the right role for rich countries in the West to play, if any, in the development process?
Rashid: I see several roles. The first one is dismantling systems that drain the global south of its resources. So the African Development Bank has recently released a report that shows that $580 billion is lost annually from the African continent in three main ways.
So the first one is illicit financial flows. The second one is profit shifting primarily by multinational corporations. And then the third one is corruption.
Think about it: $580 billion is what is lost. USAID used to provide around $12 billion annually. $580 billion is close to 50 times what we used to get. If we can stem the leakage of resources from the African continent, we actually wouldn’t even need the existence of the international development system, because countries will be able to use the resources that they have for their own development.
The second thing that rich countries can do is to acknowledge and address the historical injustices. And the most prominent one, for example, is the issue of climate change. As we know, historical emissions, Africa has contributed very little. But as scientific reports show, it’s one of the continents that stands to be most disproportionately affected. So one of the things that rich countries can do, for example, is help countries adapt to climate change.
So there is recently a report that came out, it was primarily assessing climate finance in South Africa. And it showed that 65% of climate finance that goes to South Africa actually goes through Western consulting companies. So even as I say that we need to address historical injustices, for example, by providing more climate finance to poorer countries, we also need to think about how it’s going to be channelled because it’s just going through the same Western institutions, we are just sort of replicating the system.
The third thing that rich countries can do is citizen solidarity. And so the citizens of rich countries can actually pressure their governments to stand in solidarity with poorer countries. And of course, there is a rich history of this happening, for example, in the U.S. during the Vietnam War, right? Where the citizens of the U.S. were asking their governments to stop fighting a foreign war. So that is one thing. They can also stand in solidarity with Global South countries by urging their corporations to stop doing some of their harmful practices abroad.
And then lastly, at the individual level, I would say is to shift mindsets. Because within the international development space, from my experience, there is a lingering sentiment of white saviors: “We are coming to save you, and we know what’s good for you because our country has developed,” even though actually in real terms there is no country in the world that is developed. When you consider that development is economic, social, and environmental, some countries are only economically developed because they are not meeting some of their social and environmental goals.
Promoting Local Value Addition and Ownership
Will: We at TechnoServe work with a lot of businesses and businesses that are sourcing things in Africa, including coffee, a commodity that we do a lot of work with smallholders on. We can connect them with companies that are willing to pay an above-market price for high quality, and we can help coach them about how to get that quality in a way that can be commercially sustainable for everybody involved and give them a better deal than they’re getting. It’s not perfect, but it has measurable gains for lots of people this month and this harvest season and the next one. And so while I support this idea that we need to change the global terms of trade, it’s a very long-term project, I fear.
How do you think about that sort of timeframe question?
Rashid: So, good question. And it actually takes me back to what I started with. And that is the question of development. What is development?
The way that development has been conceptualized up until now is, and this is primarily due to the West’s own conception of development, which is mostly in the economic sense. So the way we view development at PCAD is development of the person, of the whole person, in all his or her dimensions.
So, for example, let’s contrast food security versus food sovereignty. So one of the things that a lot of NGOs, both local and international, are working on within the African continent is helping the countries to be food secure, basically to have enough food to feed their populations. But one of the things that is also happening under the surface is that it is entrenching international corporations that sell seeds and fertilizer within the system. So countries are able to be food secure in the short term, but they cannot attain food sovereignty because they need to buy their seeds again in the next planting season. They need to buy the fertilizers again in the next planting season.
So, at PCAD, when we say that we take a structural approach, we understand that it needs to be sequential, that if at this time you don’t have food, then indeed, all the help that you can get from the international private sector, you take it.
But let’s not forget that the goal should be food sovereignty. And we know that food sovereignty is attainable because I have listened to one of the French ministers talking about the issue of food. And when he was speaking about Africa, he said “food security.” But when he spoke about France, he spoke about “food sovereignty.”
When I think about, for example, local value addition in tea or in coffee, one of the things that the private or the business sector can do is actually build value locally. It’s doing this in some ways. I’ve seen that TechnoServe has been working, for example, in Kenya with some of the cooperative societies in terms of milling. And this is definitely a step in the right direction.
But of course, there is so much more that can be done. There is so much value that can be added locally. And it can also start next month. It’s about asking: What is it that we are actually attempting to do, and being open to exploring the limits of what we can do. Because it’s not impossible.
Redefining Development Beyond Economic Growth
Will: Let me put in a plug before I forget for people to follow Rashid on LinkedIn. He is, as you can tell from this conversation, thinking about a lot of important things in very interesting ways. And Rashid, in one of your recent posts, you mentioned, you linked to an article which we will link here, called “The Seven Myths That Do More Harm Than Good About Development.”
And as I listened to you today, I can’t help but go back in my mind to that article multiple times. And one of the myths in the article you linked to is that “development means becoming like the West.” Now you’ve spoken a little bit about that already, but I wanted to ask you, I wanted to push you to go farther on and say more about why that’s a myth, how that’s harmful, and just take that a little bit farther if you don’t mind.
Rashid: Yes, in simple terms, it’s about the emphasis that we’ve placed on economic growth as a metric of our society’s success.
Because if you make economic growth the metric of success, one of the things that happens is that we don’t account for what it takes to actually have economic growth. Because economic growth can come at the expense, for example, of environmental destruction. Economic growth without sufficient government intervention might mean that a lot of the wealth goes to a very small proportion of the population.
What we are seeing, for example, now in the West, is that there is a lot of job precarity, people don’t feel like they are safe in their jobs. And now, of course, with AI, this is going to make things even potentially even worse. So people—especially the poor—they have to work two, three jobs just to make ends meet. In some of the wealthiest countries. So the wealth is there. It’s just not getting to everyone. And it’s not because they are not smart, it’s not because they’re not hardworking, because as you know, some of them work two, three jobs just to make ends meet.
And there is a lot of social isolation, burnout, mental health issues…
Will: I mean, just the simple fact that here we are in the richest country in the world in the United States—the last time I looked, we had 20 million children living in poverty. So as you say, the money is there, but 20 million kids living in poverty is absurd in the richest country in the world. It’s unconscionable.
Rashid: Yes, yes. So saying that we don’t need to be like the West, that really was just underscoring the point that there are the positive aspects that we can take, but we also have to know that it comes with certain consequences, and we need to be wary before just jumping and following that path. We need to be aware of what are some of the possible consequences of that action.
And of course, this does not mean that we need to be like the East, because this can also be sort of misinterpreted in saying that now we need to move towards the model, for example, that has been followed by countries like China, which is basically the state, the state taking a leading role, the construction of elaborate infrastructure and the establishment of special economic zones. This might have worked for China for a variety of reasons, and it could work for African countries as well. But let’s just also not follow blindly what it is that they followed. We need to pick and choose both from the West and from the East what will work in our context.
Signs of Progress
Will: Well, in the spirit of that, I’m really interested to ask you about where you see encouraging progress or even where you see some sort of green shoots that may still be small, but may be going in the right direction.
I was, for many years, excited and looking forward to a next generation of African leaders who were going to be better leaders than some of the early leaders had been. And I’ve been disappointed time and time and time again by people who I thought were that, and who turned out to be as bad or worse than many of the people who came before them.
Are there places, are there countries, where you’re being encouraged by progress, whether it’s just early green shoots or whether it’s more than that?
Rashid: Yes, Will. So on the leadership side, I think we also need to understand that in the development journey, there is no sort of single savior. You might be the smartest, the most charismatic, the most knowledgeable leader. But if you’re operating within a system that is structured in particular ways, you’re going to do very little.
And of course, within the African setting, we’ve had very, very visionary leaders. One of them that I really like is Julius Nyerere. So he used to be the former first president of Tanzania. And he had a very good philosophy on self-reliance and on developing a sense of national consciousness. It didn’t succeed as it had been hoped. And that was primarily because of the way that it was implemented.
But in sort of contemporary times, we see some countries that have managed. For example, Botswana, Botswana has managed to use its resources. It has a lot of diamonds to help its population, and it has invested the proceeds from natural resources in actually building the social capital of the population. So investing in education, investing in health, investing in agriculture, and that’s one thing.
So the other thing, and also because we’re about the international development system, one country that I could actually also pinpoint is Rwanda. Because Rwanda is a very small country, it doesn’t have as many natural resources as Botswana, actually, it has very limited natural resources, but it has managed to leverage the assistance that it gets from outside the country to actually move forward.
This is where perhaps the issue of leadership comes in, because they have a capable leader, and they have utilized the instruments of the state in such a way that it actually furthers a goal. So one of the things that really encourages me about the Rwandan experience is that they have a national vision of development. They have national structures for development. And then whichever aid that comes in from outside is actually aligned with what the country had already intended to do for itself, but it was just looking for the means. So rather than it being donor priorities, sort of the prevailing characteristic of the current system, it’s about the country shaping its own future and then looking for partners that can help it from wherever it can get.
How to Better Measure Development Impact
Will: We’re coming near the end; I’ve got to ask you one question about a favorite topic of mine, which is measuring impact and measuring success. What should we be measuring to see progress on your rather broad and very inspirational definition of development?
Rashid: So at the broader level, and again, I keep coming back to the question of development and what is development, right? So if we want to measure development, there is a report that came out, I think it was in 2022, it’s a UN report, “Valuing What Counts.” And it identifies three things that we should ideally be measuring in the new international development system.
The first one is wellbeing. The second one is inclusivity. And the third one is sustainability.
So on the issue of wellbeing, it’s both the material aspects of wellbeing. So food, could be education, it could be health, but it’s also some of the other aspects of wellbeing. So, sense of community, how much control people feel they have over their own destinies, how even mental health can be something that can be measured under well-being.
So inclusion, of course, is how the various segments of the population feel like they are part of the journey. In the African setting, for example, we see that a lot of rural areas tend to be left behind; even within the rural areas, we might find that particular population groups, maybe persons with disabilities, are left even farther behind.
And of course, sustainability is whether we are within planetary boundaries. And this will vary in various contexts. In some contexts, it will actually mean exploiting more resources, and in some contexts it will mean exploiting fewer resources. So that is just on the sort of level. On a more practical level, I will say it’s focusing more on sort of the structural indicators. So let’s not just measure how many [products] were distributed. Let’s also think about whether we develop the agency of the people who actually received this product.
Will: Outcomes, not inputs, right?
Rashid: Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.
The Meaning of True “Localization”
Will: Terrific, terrific. What did I not ask you about that you would like to talk about? Is there any final point that you’d like to cover that I didn’t get us to?
Rashid: One of the things that is happening again now in the new sort of the new dispensation of international development is that we see a lot of international organizations, the big ones, they are trying to localize some of their operations, and they do this in various ways.
So they might increase the funding that gets to the country level, they might hire national staff. And all of these are, of course, positive improvements. But also, when we measure the extent to which the international development system is actually localizing, we need to focus on several things. So I was recently reading a report that highlighted three main things.
So the first issue, of course, is resources: how many resources are going directly to the local actors, not through intermediaries.
The second one is agency. So if you’re hiring more local staff as an international organization, and that’s a positive thing, are these local actors able to make decisions on their own, or are they restricted with certain parameters that have been defined at the global level? Do they have the ability to define their own problem and to come up with their own solutions? Or does it have to go through the headquarters to be approved?
And then the third one, of course, that’s what they call ways of being. So to what extent can local actors be respected for the way they are, the way they do things, maybe they are used to organizing informally. So, in order to be considered to be a part of the international development system and perhaps access funding or submit proposals, do they have to take reform that would be accepted or considered amenable to the current system?
It’s quite important, and that’s why I highlighted it.
Will: Thank you so much, Rashid. It’s been a fascinating time. And just a very impressive way that you put together, I think, some very big thinking, very long-term thinking, with some very practical things that can happen, as we said, tomorrow or next week as well.
I really appreciated that, and your encouragement to all of us to think about what we mean when we say development and to think hard about that and let our actions follow those kinds of thoughts is, I think, helpful for all of us. So a big thank you for the work that you’re doing and the way that you’re stretching all of us to think a little harder and a little differently. And I hope to continue the conversation with you.