Downsizing Development

In 2026, the G7 countries are projected to reduce their collective development assistance by 28 percent compared to 2024 levels. These seven nations, which together provide nearly 75 percent of all official development assistance (ODA), are not merely trimming budgets. They are stepping back from a decades-long commitment to global development. Oxfam warns that this retreat, already in motion since 2020, has diverted more than 44 billion dollars from poverty alleviation, education, healthcare, and climate adaptation in just the past two years. This shift carries life-and-death consequences for millions of people around the world.

A Lancet study published in 2025 found that USAID-funded global health programs saved 5.8 million lives between 1998 and 2021. These investments supported the fight against HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, as well as maternal and child mortality. Where funding remained consistent and well-targeted, mortality declined sharply. Where aid was reduced, withdrawn, or politically interrupted, progress stalled and, in some cases, reversed. The data reveals that development, when sustained, saves lives.

The retreat from development isn’t limited to government policy; corporate downsizing has mirrored the trend with stark consequences. After Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter (now X), the company eliminated what he considered non-essential functions such as trust and safety, policy engagement, regional teams, and partnerships. While costs dropped, so did resilience. U.S. daily users fell 18 percent, ad revenue plunged 28 percent, over half of top advertisers exited, and 75 percent of users reported a decline in quality. With 80 percent of staff cut and systems failing, X’s valuation fell by 71 percent to just $13 billion, revealing how dismantling the engagement and credibility ecosystem leads to rapid, measurable collapse.

The non-profit sector, often seen as a counterbalance to short-term thinking, has not been immune to the pressures of downsizing. In 2019, Amnesty International initiated a major restructuring in response to internal reviews of workplace culture and financial sustainability. Several regional offices were closed, and long-serving staff with deep local knowledge were dismissed. Although the changes were presented as a step toward greater consistency and efficiency, internal critics argued that they weakened the organisation’s grassroots capacity and eroded its legitimacy in the communities it aimed to support. Amnesty’s ability to stay connected to, and responsive within, local contexts was significantly diminished, an outcome that central coordination alone could not repair.

Short-Term Thinking, Long-Term Loss

These cases are not isolated. In recent years, a growing number of political and business decisions, whether in governments or private organisations, have shifted away from development-oriented strategies. This trend, which might be described as “downsizing development,” includes reducing funding for capacity-building programs, retreating from international development aid, and favoring transactional control over long-term interdependence and value creation. While often justified by short-term political, budgetary, or strategic imperatives, the long-term consequences of such shifts are significant and deserve closer attention.

From an economic standpoint, development is fundamentally about increasing capacity. Both neo-classical and endogenous growth theories emphasise the foundational role of development in driving long-term economic performance. Neo-classical theory highlights capital accumulation, particularly physical and human capital, as central to growth, while assuming diminishing returns. It suggests that investments in infrastructure, education, and technology can elevate economies to higher steady states of income, although sustained growth ultimately depends on external factors like technological progress. Endogenous growth theory, by contrast, brings these drivers into the model itself, arguing that investments in human capital, innovation, and institutional governance are not only growth-enhancing but also self-reinforcing. In both frameworks, development efforts remain critical levers for sustainable economic growth.

Downsizing development investments, such as in skills training, infrastructure support or institutional partnerships, risk undermining the very foundations that growth theories identify as essential for sustained performance: human capital, physical capital, and institutional strength. While organisations may achieve short-term savings or operational efficiencies by scaling back these initiatives, the long-term consequences can be severe. Such cuts often erode the conditions necessary for innovation, resilience, and trust, particularly in regions where development efforts help bridge systemic gaps. Over time, this can result in fragile operations, diminished responsiveness to evolving community needs, and greater exposure to socio-political instability; costs that ultimately outweigh any immediate financial gains.

Organisational and complexity theories further reinforce this logic. Both highlight how long-term success emerges from adaptive capacity, interconnectedness, and trust-based relationships and not from isolation or control. These perspectives, alongside management frameworks such as cooperative advantage, systems thinking, and strategic alignment, underscore the risks of reducing interdependence in favor of short-term control. While streamlining operations or centralising decision-making may appear efficient, it can lead to brittle organisations, unable to respond to systemic disruptions. Organisations that underinvest in people, partnerships, and innovation infrastructure may enjoy temporary gains but erode their capacity for resilience, legitimacy, and long-term value creation. Transactional approaches narrow the field of vision to immediate outputs, overlooking the compounding returns of mutual development, shared learning, and stakeholder trust.

Development and the Architecture of Peace

This dynamic echoes a central argument I made in Authority is Overrated: that durable strength — whether in leadership or institutions — comes not from control, but from the capacity to invest in others and create space for shared agency. In that post, I explored how transformational leadership is less about asserting dominance and more about enabling interdependence, trust, and contribution. The same logic applies here. These examples of “downsizing development” illustrate what happens when organisations prioritise authority, efficiency, or control over the slow, often invisible work of cultivating capability and connection.

As discussed in my review of Framers by Kenneth Cukier et al., our ability to respond to uncertainty and shape the future depends on the frames we adopt. When organisations adopt narrow frames they lose the imaginative bandwidth to engage with complex, adaptive systems.

Matthew Barzun’s The Power of Giving Away Power reinforces this idea. He contrasts pyramid-style leadership with constellation leadership, which relies on distributed trust, shared goals, and interdependence. Development-oriented leadership invests in others, expands the base of agency, and accepts that meaningful progress is complex and co-created.

Importantly, development is also the bedrock of resilience. True resilience requires redundancy, distributed knowledge, and internal depth. These traits cannot be conjured in crisis; they are built slowly through deliberate, often invisible investment. When development is downsized, resilience is eroded. Systems may appear stable, until they are tested.

And this is not just about institutions. It is about peace itself. In a previous reflection on a model for peace, I argued that durable peace depends on four quadrants: strong governance, modernised diplomacy, economic resilience, and adaptive technology governance. Development supports all four. It closes gaps, fosters cooperation, and expands the agency of individuals and communities. To shrink development is not only to risk inefficiency or fragility, it is to undermine the conditions for shared peace and prosperity.

Conclusion

Downsising development is a reflection of a deeper shift in how we understand responsibility, leadership, and the future. When short-term wins are prized over long-term capacity, we move from stewardship to mere management, from co-evolution to control. This may align with political moods or financial pressures, but it erodes the very foundations of resilience: trust, adaptability, and shared purpose.

Development is not a cost-centre. It is the quiet architecture behind robust institutions, inclusive societies, and innovative systems. To dismantle it is to gamble with the future. Leaders who truly care about the future must resist the gravitational pull of short-term control. They must see development not as charity or overhead, but as the groundwork for peace, legitimacy, and resilience. To commit to development is to believe in the future.