transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:05] Welcome to Into Africa, a podcast where we explore Africa's geopolitical landscape, its evolving global role, and the challenges and opportunities shaping the continent's future. I'm your host, Oge Onubogo, Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to Into Africa. Today, we are diving into a crucial conversation about the future of international humanitarian and development assistance in Africa. For decades, the model of humanitarian and development aid to Africa followed a predictable path, often top down. But in 2026, this model has reached the critical inflection point, driven by a convergence of severe funding shortages, escalated climate and conflict related crisis, and a necessary but challenging shift from donor-led relief to locally-led long-term development. Traditional aid to African countries from the global north is shrinking, while crises from the ongoing civil war in Sudan, to climate-driven droughts in the Horn of Africa, to insecurity in the Sahel are becoming more complex. This isn't just about a funding crisis, it's a paradigm shift. We're moving from a system of assistance to one of partnership, where local leadership, innovation, and community-led resilience are no longer optional. They are the new foundation. Today, we're joined by two amazing guests to explore how we navigate this period of transition. Tjada McKenna is the Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps, one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations. In her role as CEO, Tjada leads a global team of over 4,000 humanitarians who work to provide life-saving relief and support transformational change in more than 40 countries across the world. My colleague Noam Unger is Vice President of the Global Development Department at CSIS, where he's also the Director of the Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative, and a Senior Fellow with the Project on Prosperity and Development. Prior to joining CSIS, Noam held several leadership positions in the US government and non-profit sector. Tjada, Noam, thank you for joining us here today. We keep hearing that the humanitarian and development landscape are at an inflection point. From your experience, Tjada, leading one of the world's largest humanitarian organizations, and Noam, given the number of years that you've worked on US policy issues, and now as vice president of our global development program here at CSIS, how would you describe the shift that we're seeing in this landscape from 2020 to 2025 to what we are currently facing today in 2026? Tjada, let me start with you.

Speaker 2:
[03:12] Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me and thank you for the question. In 2020 to 2025, I see it was really about the world dealing with multiple large overlapping crises happening at once. And it was about how to scale response to those crises. In that latter period, we were also dealing with the beginning of what I call an era of indifference. And so we were seeing increasing flagrant violations of international humanitarian law and rules of war. So starting from 2023, we started to see closing space for humanitarian actors, a lot of attacks on civilian infrastructure that we hadn't seen before. And it's just an increasingly hostile world with many overlapping crises to the point where we were straining with resources. I think 2026 was just a fundamental break and a disruption in the system. I think up until 2026, there was still a belief in humanitarian aid, still a belief in the fact that it was a good thing, and a belief in the rights of civilians to be able to exist even in the midst of crises. In 2026, beginning with the precipitous change in US policy, the US government was accounting for 40 percent of the humanitarian development funding as well as really holding a lot of pieces of the architecture of the system. The US government was the host of FUSENET, our food security system that gave us early warning signs of famine. We counted on the US as a broker and a convener. And so in 2026, we saw the US step away from that role dramatically. We saw it was a very sudden shift. So a lot of organizations were left in the lurch at once, which also undermined trust in the entire system from everyone. And then soon after that, we started to see other donors, other institutional donors like Europeans, starting to announce their own aid cuts because of their need to invest in their own defense spending. So I see this period in 2026, that the need has arisen now to renew the world's commitment to humanitarian assistance, to really renew our sense that everyone has a right to try to survive, that the civilians should not be victims in conflict, and that the world does owe an obligation to help the rest of us. So it really is a fundamental gathering support again for the entire system and the entire need to do the right thing here, as well as all of the infrastructure really reorienting itself towards a period of great instability, while also meeting ever growing demands.

Speaker 3:
[05:45] I agree with so much of what Tjada just said. I mean, she laid it out well. I think that the dramatic cuts, and she used the word precipitous, a lot has to do with the abruptness of the changes as well this past year have been accompanied by or even prompted by real change in attitudes and approach. And I'm concerned about that shift. The shift, if I were to characterize it, is towards much more sort of short termism, a transactional approach, especially the US government, which isn't the only one that has made cuts, but really came into this administration as it started off, talking about interest only in first order impacts of assistance, which leads to really transactional short term approaches when actually the crises that we face are and increasingly are complex and need longer term coordinated solutions. And so, the current frame for much of sort of aid and development and foreign assistance from an official US perspective, at least, is less system oriented and it's less long term. And it's, as a result, less sustainable, less durable. And that's going to lead to and already has led to a lot of problems. I'm also concerned about the loss of institutional expertise as USAID and other institutions, USIP and others have been dismantled. And as Tjada said, it's not just about the US, but the US certainly has played an outsized role in a lot of the international coordination on these issues and international funding. So it has major ripple effects.

Speaker 1:
[07:19] So if I can pick up from that point, we hear a lot of critics suggest that long term aid can inadvertently create a cycle of dependency. And as we look at this inflection point that we're in, is this an opportunity to finally pivot towards self-reliance and domestic resource mobilization, or are we just going through another phase?

Speaker 2:
[07:43] A few points. I think this really, I know this argument is positive. It really is a binary argument. So the goal isn't really less aimed. It's better aid, I think, that is designed to unlock local markets and strengthen systems enabling self-reliance. But also, we have a tremendous amount of evidence and data of what works and the ability to use that. It is also just an opportunity. In some cases, domestic resource mobilization and locally led solutions are the answers and can be done. I think when we talk about self-reliance, we're overlooking the fact that I just returned from a trip to Sudan. And in Sudan, you have many different international actors involved in what's happening in the conflict and the situation on the ground. You know, the world is very interconnected, you know, a sense that just a nation on its own can do things when the reality is these nations are part of interconnected systems. Perhaps they have debt burdens and others where they can't do things. The economies, especially those who have been racked by protracted crises, may not have the resources domestically to mobilize to help all their concerns. But you know, what happens in one of these countries affects us all, whether we like it or not, whether it's from migration to disease patterns, to just the minerals and resources and other things that are available. This is an interconnected world economy and interconnected situations, and instability doesn't stay local for very long. So I think this idea that everything is like, there's an implication that everything that's happening is the fault of the countries or the people where it's happening to, is it right? And the other thing that we forget is, you know, in almost all societies, those who are most marginalized are left behind. And so sometimes there's a presumption that governments and others will act in the best interest of everybody. And that's just not the case all the time.

Speaker 1:
[09:38] Now, thanks, Tjada. Noam, this point here about these suggestions from critics, is this an opportunity to pivot towards self-reliance, or are we just going through another phase here?

Speaker 3:
[09:49] Well, I mean, it certainly is an opportunity for many or for some, but it's more of a forced pivot, I would say. Because as I was mentioning earlier, it's not just incremental or truly sort of planned change. It's been abrupt and sharp. And we can get into it, but as a result, there's a lot of downsides to the way that the change is actually taking place. And, you know, to Tjada's point, there are limits to some of the perspectives that say this should all just be about sort of local or domestic resource mobilization. Some contexts are more complex and need sort of external support and brokering from neutral actors, and many do not. So I think that we'll see if some countries will successfully adapt in the current environment and are already sort of finding ways to sort of mobilize resources differently in the face of, for example, sharp downturns to global health support. So much of US assistance in some countries, some places, it was like, you know, 90% of US assistance came in the form of supporting global health efforts at the country level. And with sharp changes to that, countries have to actually mobilize resources differently. Some can, many cannot. So many of the countries that we're talking about are highly indebted. And so they face real extra pressures having to shift their budget on such a fast pace.

Speaker 1:
[11:10] So both of you have referenced the significant shrinkage of foreign assistance that we're seeing not only in Africa, but across the globe, with major cuts from the US and EU partners. Tjada, for you specifically, how is Mercy Corps, with its notable presence across several countries on the continent, how is your organization navigating this paradigm shift?

Speaker 2:
[11:33] You know, I think we were already quite efficient. We've had to work to get a lot more efficient to prioritize and really expanding the way that we do partnerships. So in terms of how we deliver impact, we've looked a lot more at partnerships with private sector actors, some co-financing with local governments were available where that's possible. Also looked a lot more at market-based approaches alongside traditional aid, which is something that we have been doing. We've always been an actor that does a lot within market systems and market-based, so working with private sector actors. We've also for years really been doubling down on local leadership and investing more directly in local partners and systems to sustain that impact even as international funding contracts. So that being said, we're finding ways to navigate, to do things a little bit differently to enable us to keep some reach while funding is lower. But we also have to do work to more aggressively tell the story and to push for increased funding. This is all coming at a time where there are more people in need than ever, where we still see the number of conflicts in the world increasing, where communities are still suffering and will continue to suffer the impacts of climate change in more precipitous ways. So that need for resources is there and we will not be able to serve the needs and to meet the demand for the services by just trying to more efficient towards getting it done. There is an absolute baseline need for resources that still is, those needs are unmet right now.

Speaker 1:
[13:12] And as we see, official development assistance is projected to continue to decline throughout this year and possibly beyond. So Noam, let me come to you on this point. How can development and humanitarian organizations build more sustainable income generating models like social enterprises? Are there opportunities here?

Speaker 3:
[13:34] There are opportunities and in fact for years, a number of the more sort of innovative and enterprising non-governmental organizations operating in some of the most, some of the toughest environments around the world have also sort of either acquired or built up some for-profit mechanisms and arms within underneath their non-profit structures. And I think there's some interesting innovation happening on that space. Tjada can speak about from the Mercy Corps perspective, but I want to come back to something which is Tjada started to do this, but to put the cuts into, that we're talking about into real terms a little bit. At the very start of this year, a Rockefeller Foundation-funded study was published in The Lancet. And it was focused on estimated cuts to official international assistance, often known as ODA. And the study projected that across nearly 100 low and middle income countries, more than 9 million people, including 2.5 million children under the age of five, could suffer from preventable deaths in these next few years. So it was like 9.4 million people by 2030. And that was all based on an estimated reduction in 2025 of official development assistance by just under 16 percent. I think it was 15.8 percent. And that was measured about half a year ago. And also halfway through last year, the OECD's own projections were forecasting cuts to ODA in the range of like 9 to 18 percent. Well, just a week ago, just before the spring meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, and before our very own future summit here at CSIS, the OECD released its updated numbers for last year for 2025. And the cuts weren't 16 percent. They were 23 percent. So a fair bit higher. So even if we were to go with the earlier estimates for cuts, rather than the newer, more accurate ones, and even if we were to question the study's methodology or discount those numbers, if we were to say somehow, well, those were maybe off or inflated by a third, by 33 percent or something, we would still be talking about more than 6 million preventable deaths over the next four to five years. So this is the largest reduction in assistance globally. These are global figures, not specific just to Africa. But it's the largest reduction in decades. And it's not just the US, as we said, it's the UK, France, Germany, others. But at the ground level, it affects many communities in emerging markets and developing economies around the world. And there's no real way to paper over that. And it puts sudden new fiscal and social pressures on the governments of the countries where those people live. And as I said, a lot of them, some of them may have capacity to adapt in various ways, but a lot of them won't. And I think that it's really important to underscore the depth that we're talking about. So I think that it's incumbent upon development and humanitarian organizations to build more sustainable to models, to tap different innovative approaches. And we've known that the system of development support and foreign assistance is ripe for lots of different reforms towards greater effectiveness. But I just want to sort of put it into perspective here.

Speaker 1:
[16:52] Thanks, Noam, for laying that out for us. So as we look at the shrinkage of foreign assistance and we just see the changing global dynamics here, there's a growing argument, really, that the center of gravity for international assistance to Africa should shift from crisis response and peacebuilding to more long-term economic growth and private sector-led investment. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Is it wise to pursue one without the other? Can't both work hand-in-hand here?

Speaker 2:
[17:24] Once again, I'll say this really is not an either-or situation. You cannot have long-term growth without stability and you can't stabilize without investing in livelihoods and markets. So we have to do both and the reality is some of these contexts, the key is for them to be resilient and unfortunately, some of these contexts really suffer from recurrent crises or recurrent breaks in this piece. So there's an argument that you need to be doing both and within the same countries, regions can be very different in their needs. Emergency aid, that short term crisis response, should actively lay a foundation for recovery and growth. It should not operate in isolation. And we need to look at the way that we do emergency aid to make sure that it is in ways that are building systems and laying the foundation for that recovery and growth, and not just solving very short term needs. I think when we think about balancing these things out though, it's important to remember that working to prevent conflict and to build resilience ahead of times is seven times cheaper than having to invest once a crisis has already happened. So it's quite important that we are building systems and looking at long term growth while also responding to instability and crises where they arise.

Speaker 1:
[18:41] So Noam, you have thoughts to share on this, especially given our own US policy shift in Africa towards commercial diplomacy.

Speaker 3:
[18:49] Sure, absolutely. I mean, I do agree with the point Tjada is making. Conflicts and crises are a drag on economic growth and opportunity. They're essentially development in reverse, right? It's not the either or. That said, there's a lot to be said for focusing on longer term economic growth, private sector led development. There is some potential for, if we take a fuller approach, I think then the administration is even taking the current administration on US commercial diplomacy on really sort of leveraging private sector investment. In many countries, we just had our future summit here at CSIS, and we had a number of different representatives from different countries in Africa calling for and actively engaged in investing in sort of economic opportunity from a business perspective. And I think that there is quite a desire on this front. And when you think about the creation, even in the first Trump administration of the Development Finance Corporation, the US International Development Finance Corporation, out of a previous organization, OPIC, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and with some parts of USAID brought over into it, I think that that approach to deal making and to enhancing investments that are desirable and wherever possible country led, similar to models like the Millennium Challenge Corporation has, of country led investments to constraints on economic growth. I think these are promising directions for overall sort of development support. And there's a lot of ways in which they can be coordinated better. Congress recently reauthorized the DFC, enhanced some of its capabilities. And I think that there's more that can be done on this front. And so it's, but it's not an either or. It really shouldn't be.

Speaker 1:
[20:42] Well, thank you, Noam. And as we think about, you know, all these promising opportunities, Tjada, I want to come back to you because you spoke about, you know, short term versus long term. So how do we balance the immediate and desperate need for emergency aid? You just returned from from Sudan. In fact, with us recording this, you're less than 24 hours back from from Sudan. So how do we manage or how do we balance the immediate and desperate need for emergency aid with long term goals of local resilience and economic growth?

Speaker 2:
[21:17] My time in Sudan was really a good case study in this question. I said earlier, the emergency aid needs to lay the foundation for recovery and growth. And we absolutely believe that, like within our emergency work, we often try to move towards direct assistance or cash assistance to people to enable, to allow them to support local markets, to buy what they need with dignity. But we also look at supporting businesses and small medium enterprises that can purchase more products from farmers or whatever we can do to keep the supply and demand side of the equation going in these countries to keep markets operating. To allow people to continue to earn a livelihood even through an emergency situation is quite important for long term stability. In Sudan, one thing that surprised me was what I heard the most is I heard for people asking for that longer term investment. We marked a sad anniversary last year, three years since the beginning of the conflict. So as people are entering their fourth year of the conflict, there are areas that have been more stable or that are now post-conflict. Those areas, those people are trying to rebuild, they're trying to rebuild their agriculture, they're trying to rebuild irrigation systems that were destroyed, and they desperately need to do so because there are a lot of people who've been displaced from other regions in their communities and a lot of people who are now working in those communities that are a bit more stable now need the income to send to their families in less stable places. So in fact, people are people, citizens, government officials, others, they're asking for that long-term development and investment. They're saying, look, we are a resilient people, we're strong people, we have survived this, we just need a little bit of help for us to stabilize, and to be on our own, and to thrive, and so it's really flexibility is key. We have to get funding that allows organizations to shift from this response to recovery without it being an artificial silo, because a lot of times there are not, and there are lots of interventions that really address both needs.

Speaker 1:
[23:21] Picking up from that, you know, a more direct question here, and this goes to the both of you, is the current development and humanitarian coordination architecture still fit for purpose, or does it require an overhaul?

Speaker 3:
[23:37] I think that if you're talking about coordination architecture for humanitarian and development assistance, it's required an overhaul for a while now. And I say that at multiple levels, because there are multiple levels to the architecture, right? There's an international level. In the case of US engagement with various countries, there's a bilateral level and there's the country level as well. At the international level, if you think about the UN system, it created a cluster system for coordination that was designed, I think, in the sort of the middle of the first decade of this century, of this millennium, designed out of the Darfur crisis and the Indian Ocean Tsunami. And it was meant to foster better collaboration. But the organization systems within the UN exerted their influence and to entrench their control. And I'm not sure that we made the progress that we really wanted to. You've had the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance that's always been a bit weak relative to various humanitarian and development agencies within the UN system. And even outside of that system, the OECD that I mentioned earlier, it's a club that no longer really reflects the realities of where different types of development support come from, especially the more sort of economic investment types of development support, given emerging actors around the world. And at a bilateral level, the US, we've had fluctuations in the sort of coordination of the main different institutions that engage in development support. And by that, I mean more than just aid across the US government with countries across the global south. And at times, there has actually been significant progress in that coordination and collaboration, but it's really broken down now. I mean, you barely have any kind of functional NSC at the dismantling that I mentioned. And I have real concerns because there's been this general pattern for decades of greater fragmentation of all of the actors that are engaging in humanitarian development assistance. And so you do need better and different coordination, but we're not set up to do so right now. So yes, I think it's quite ripe for an overhaul.

Speaker 2:
[25:50] I agree with what Noam is saying. And the reality is that the current architecture that we have is really built for a different era. It's too slow. It is siloed. It's donor driven. For today's interconnected, fast moving crises, it's not fit for purpose. It's also a system that was built with different power dynamics in mind. And one of the key things we need to do is really rebalance that power and have more decision making and funding, sitting with those closest to the crises and a more equitable distribution of that power and decision making. And Noam was right to point to some UN systems and the UN structure as part of that need for a shift there. And I think this is an architecture and a coordination architecture that needs to be changed across the globe and needs to be more inclusive. And the way that we think about things needs to be more expansive and take into account the wide ecosystem of actors that are involved in all this from local private sector companies to local NGOs to global North donors and to trade flows as well.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] I think for me, just coming back, still building on this question and the points that the both of you have made as we look at things changing globally. So we've established that yes, there is something broken in the coordination architecture here, but how must humanitarian and development organizations, how must their financing and coordination mechanisms evolve to be more effective and transparent?

Speaker 3:
[27:28] I think there needs to be much more emphasis in this next sort of unfolding era of development support and cooperation, much more emphasis on readiness versus reaction. And I say that through work of our global development department over the last couple of years, we've sort of gone down the rabbit hole through our Sustainable Development and Resilience Initiative and looking at pre-arranged finance for disasters and the like. And bottom line, I think we just need a lot more of it. There's been an incredible amount of experimentation, innovation, piloting in this space for the last 15, 20 years. And it's ripe for scale. The reason is because when you look, there was actually a great study that was done, I think it was by ODI, together with the Start Network. And I may not get the numbers exactly right, but effectively, they were looking at crises around the world and they used as a proxy for that United Nations Appeals for support. So not every crisis falls under a UN appeal. But when they looked across the UN appeals, they were judging how many of them are predictable. And it was something like 20 to 25% were very predictable crises, and another 30% were somewhat predictable. So if you've got more than half of crises around the world that are at least somewhat predictable, that means you can employ certain elements of risk transfer, leveraging through insurance, global capital markets, through pre-arranged finance to set up mechanisms that are ready when a crisis hits to release funding quickly. Because so much of recovery is about how quickly resources can come in and you can actually stem the damage. And as sort of Tjada mentioned, climate change as extreme weather risks increase across so many vulnerable countries, there is greater demand for exactly this type of approach. And yet I think it's only like one or 2% of all assistance is actually pre-arranged in this way. And that could change. I mean, that's just a question of actually working on that problem. And it actually meets with a lot of current demands around partnering with the private sector. So I think it has appeal in a sort of cross-partisan, non-partisan way across US politics, and it has an appeal globally as well.

Speaker 1:
[29:56] Thanks Noam. So let me pick up on that. And Tjada, this question comes to you as we look at sort of a shift towards localization. The 2026 global humanitarian overview speaks of a humanitarian reset. So a shift to localization. How can we define local in a way that is authentic, rather than just shifting power to local elites?

Speaker 2:
[30:23] I really fight hard to make sure that we don't look at local and international as a binary as well, because the reality is we all operate within an ecosystem together, and there are different roles that actors have played. You know, we talk about, for us, I think the way to really look at it is really to look beyond geography to power, right? So it's not just about funding local actors or saying, I've sub-granted this percent. It's really about shifting decision-making, the agenda setting, risk ownership, creating a more equitable partnership where people can learn from each other, exchange ideas, and really have the right people or the right groups be in the lead. We also have to think of this broadly, and this is where our staffing and the way that we operate in these countries really matters. Like more than 90 percent of our staff in country is from local communities where we work. We have to really invest broadly in community-based organizations and accountability mechanisms and really proactively work to make sure that we are reaching the most marginalized and disenfranchised members of a community, to make sure that we are not just getting elite capture, reinforcing systems that don't really serve the broadest number of people, and that we are really taking into account all of the actors that are important and that are relevant in that society. So it's really about immersing yourself in thinking about power dynamics and keeping an eye to those who are most disenfranchised.

Speaker 1:
[31:52] I have a very broad question for the both of you here. No right or wrong answer if you had a crystal ball in front of you right now. And so if you were given the opportunity to redesign the international humanitarian and development architecture for Africa in 2026 to be truly sustainable, what is the first thing you would cut? And the first thing that you would invest in? And what is the one thing as we look to the future that must change, say, within the next five to ten years for development and humanitarian work in Africa to be considered successful? What could success look like?

Speaker 3:
[32:35] Yeah, I think that the challenge is thinking about just one thing on either front, whether it's the cuts or the investment. I think, you know, on the one thing that I would cut, in some ways, I would cut out, it's more of an attitudinal shift, but the cut out the idea that like humanitarian assistance can be delivered or best delivered through military resources and means. I take this is not an Africa example, but during the Biden administration, you actually had an approach in Gaza to building what was ultimately a very useless docking system in the Mediterranean to provide assistance in the Gaza when it was really skirting the underlying issues of control and access. And I think that that kind of approach has permeated humanitarian assistance in varying waves over time. And it would be wonderful to cut that out entirely for the sake of more efficient, effective, sustainable approaches. I think that with regard to what to invest in, for me, it's what I was just talking about, right? It's about pre-arranged finance. It's about investing in more robust levels of readiness. And that includes tapping insurance. There's the low rates or low permeation of insurance across Africa. And yet so many investments, private sector investments, public sector investments, really rely or are bolstered by the existence of insurance, that it could actually benefit both in a short-term resilience way to catastrophes and crises, but also in a longer-term way in terms of investment, much-needed investment in infrastructure, and not just sort of hard infrastructure, but digital infrastructure. I think that there's something to that. And if the US., right before the current US administration, the US was contributing, I think it was like 43% of the international humanitarian resources from international public humanitarian resources. And that translated to about $14.5 billion from the US. But if the US now were to take even just 2% of that total, doing other things with the rest, but just 2% of that, and put it towards more pre-arranged disaster risk finance, it would more than double what's happening globally. I mean, we could actually make a big difference by putting even more than that. And as I said, it has sort of immediate implications for much needed, more cost-effective recovery in the face of mounting crises, but it also helps to bolster long-term investments.

Speaker 1:
[35:11] And what could success look like, say, 5 to 10 years from now?

Speaker 3:
[35:15] Well, I mean, 5 to 10 years from now, you could actually have things like the Africa Risk Capacity, which is a regional risk pool operating and providing many more policies with greater support from international donors, including the US. We could leverage. We don't have to recreate the wheel. We could leverage existing systems like regional risk pools. There could be a lot of sort of copycat efforts at a subregional level. You could have much more robust provision of fair risk transfer mechanisms for agriculture, for floods, for droughts. And that would actually save a lot of lives and it would actually save a lot of investments and help to stabilize supply chains.

Speaker 1:
[35:58] Thanks, Noam. Tjada, same question to you.

Speaker 2:
[36:01] Thank you. Noam had a great list. In terms of what I would cut, I think we really need to cut this fragmentation and short-term projectized funding that really prevents scale and sustainability. And also cut things. Noam mentioned the pier that had been deployed in Gaza. I called that humanitarian theater at the time. Really, cut the things that are more for show in this wheel. In terms of investments, I completely agree with Noam when he talked about insurance. And I think there's a lot of different technology and data going in that some investment in understanding how to make it relevant for the context we serve, and also understanding what the unintended consequences of those things could be in the environments where we work would be resources well served and potentially enable us to reach more people than we could have in the old model where you had to have boots on the ground. So we need more flexible capital. We need to be investing in local institutions and market systems that can withstand shocks and investing in building capacity and human capital as well. We've got to change the power and resources have to shift meaningfully closer to communities and we need to be doing it in a way that's much more designed with the communities and co-created and accountable at every level versus top-down sense of we know what's good for you and that's what we're going to find and this is how to do it.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] And your thoughts on what success could look like five to 10 years from now?

Speaker 2:
[37:33] I think success does look like more of that joint accountability, a lot more community response mechanisms and feedback on what is working and what isn't working. And an architecture that is really redrawn or redone to shift power dynamics a bit more equitably than they are today. And I think those would result in kind of some meaningful gains in income and mortality and increases in conflict and a system that is just much more fit for purpose for today's world.

Speaker 1:
[38:10] Thank you both. And we always like to end a conversation on a hopeful note. And as we navigate this inflection point, what are you most hopeful for that could emerge out of this period? And could you recommend to our listeners a book or a song from an African artist or an African or a book by an African writer that exemplifies this hope?

Speaker 3:
[38:41] I think it's a tricky time, but in terms of my hope is for that the challenges that we're facing and in some ways some of the policy frameworks that the US is walking away from will necessitate a real period of reflection and building anew. I mean, in many ways, I think that the US and many countries around the world have been coasting for decades on a far-reaching international system that was in a large part built by the US in the aftermath of World War II. And there are many ways in which that system had faults and cracks, but there were also many ways in which that led to prosperity, not just for the US, but for many partners around the world. And I think that rather than coasting, we actually need to pay attention to that. And that's what's coming as a result of the inflection point that we're in. And I have hope for that, for building a renewed sense of cooperation and interdependence. The interdependence is there whether we like it or not. It's currently being weaponized, for example, in the Straits of Hormuz. So we need to find ways to actually leverage our interdependence in positive ways as well. And with regard to, you said a book or a song. I liked what Tjada just said in terms of co-creation and accountability. And so for me, it's a song. The song is Dignity by Angelique Kidjo and Yemi Allade. It's about resilience. And there's a line that's repeated in the song. That is, respect is reciprocal. And I think that there's a key element to that statement, that respect is reciprocal, and that should be the core of what we're trying to build.

Speaker 1:
[40:25] It's great to know you're a fan of Angelique Kidjo. So let me move on to Tjada.

Speaker 2:
[40:30] Yeah, I know. It's hard to beat that song recommendation. That's a great one, Noam. In terms of what gives me hope, I think innovation is accelerating, right? From local leadership to new financing models, to new products, to new access information. And communities are already driving their own solution. So I feel like that mixture of that innovation coming on and people's propensity to adapt it to their needs is quite encouraging. I'm also encouraged by the resilience that I've seen within African people and communities. That resilience to survive and that resilience to grow and that resilience to dream of bigger and better is there. And so I think that driven by like just the number of young people who are stepping up and demanding that their voice is being heard and leading the change. It's quite important and it's the hope that we build on. I cannot top Noam's song recommendation. So what I'll say is a lot of what gives me hope and in terms of book reading, the book that's in my queue now is a book called The Lumumba Plot. It's by Stuart Reed and it's about, I think we learned from our past and I think there are so many great African figures in history like Patrice Lumumba who dreamt of a better world to inspire people and were leading towards the hope of a better future. And there were a lot of mistakes that were made in terms of the way the rest of the world interacted with that, stopped some of those figures short from reaching their dreams and their potential. And so I've really drawn a lot from reading biographies and getting inspired and knowing that that spirit is still there, and thinking about what the future can bring. Because I know the continent of people and ideas that will never give up and that will continue to shine bright despite all the obstacles. And I'm just looking forward to see what emerges next.

Speaker 1:
[42:27] Thank you so much, Tjada. And thank you, Noam, deeply inspired by the both of you and the work that you all are doing. I know that this conversation will continue as we go through this moment, that this will be a moment of reflection for us and hopeful that something positive and something more sustainable will emerge from this moment. So I thank you all for your time with us here today. Thank you.

Speaker 3:
[42:52] Thank you. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[42:53] And here's to hope.

Speaker 3:
[42:53] Here's to hope.

Speaker 1:
[42:54] Thank you. Thanks for listening to Into Africa. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. You can find more analysis from the Africa program on our website, csis.org, or find some social media search for at CSIS Africa on X, LinkedIn and Instagram.