Unlearning the “Master’s Tools”: Can International Development Be Decolonized?
This article explores whether international development can truly be decolonized, challenging the persistence of colonial legacies in aid and development practices. Highlighting movements like #RhodesMustFall and #WhyIsMyCurriculumWhite?, it calls for dismantling hegemonic power structures and centering indigenous frameworks, local leadership, and community-led conversations. It argues that decolonization requires more than rhetoric—it demands structural change, historical reckoning, and a shift in power and knowledge production. #DecolonisingDevelopment #GlobalJustice #DevelopmentReimagined
"The “white gaze of development,” defined as “...the political, socio-economic and cultural processes of [measuring] Southern Black, brown and other people of color against a standard of Northern Whiteness [that] finds them incomplete, wanting, inferior or regressive.”[11] This continues to be a common criticism of development projects that historically valorized aid workers as saviors and portrayed the recipients of aid as helpless, incapable victims."
Justice-based ideas: a provocation for constituents of the international development sector
This provocation challenges the UK international development sector to shift from a charity-based model rooted in colonial legacies toward a justice-led approach that actively confronts systemic inequality and historical exploitation. It calls for a transformative rethinking of the sector’s purpose and practices, urging solidarity with Global South communities, reparative action for colonial harms, and a rebalancing of power and funding. It critiques the current limitations of UK charity law and aid policy while advocating for structural changes that prioritize equity, local leadership, and historical accountability. #JusticeNotCharity #DecoloniseAid #GlobalEquity
“Justice is achieved, as history demonstrates, through people and their movements fighting for change and resisting structures that serve the interests of powerful and elite groups. This means it is not necessarily achieved through more rule-based structures.”
The Silent Voices of the Global South: How USAID’s
Kibirango argues that the USAID funding freeze exposes the deep flaws in traditional aid models, which leave communities in the Global South vulnerable and disillusioned. He highlights how the reliance on external funding perpetuates dependency in the Global South, while the region is often excluded from discussions on its own development and funding future. Calling for new, sustainable partnerships that prioritize local leadership and direct impact, Kibirango suggests that the Global South must take charge of its development rather than continue to rely on external aid. #globalsouth
"This is about breaking free from a system that has failed too many, for too long. We in the Global South cannot afford to wait for aid to resume. We must take charge of our own development. We must shape our own future."
Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange
This report explores the ongoing economic drain from the Global South, where rich countries rely on the appropriation of resources, labor, and wealth. The loss experienced by the South significantly outpaces the aid it receives, highlighting the imbalance in global economic relations. This unequal exchange perpetuates underdevelopment and deepens global inequality, with the impacts of the North’s overconsumption being offshored to the South. The findings underscore the need for a fundamental shift in global trade practices to address these systemic issues. #globalinequality #unequalexchange
“Ecology is the basis of life itself and money cannot compensate for its loss. True repair requires permanently ending the unequal distribution of environmental goods and burdens between the global North and global South, restoring damaged ecosystems, and shifting to a regenerative economic system.”
Empowering communities: a blueprint for locally led development and systemic change
This report advocates for locally led development, emphasizing community empowerment to drive systemic change. Key strategies include inclusive leadership, grassroots research, digital innovation, and policy reform. The authors call for international donors and NGOs to prioritize local control, ensuring that marginalized voices lead development efforts for sustainable, equitable change. #locallyleddevelopment #communityempowerment
“Imagine a world where communities lead the charge in shaping their own destinies, where innovation thrives at the local level, and where true progress is measured by the empowerment of the most marginalised voices.”
“A is for Africa”: Towards the Decolonisation of Knowledge Production
In her lecture, Sylvia Tamale, a Ugandan academic and human rights activist, critiques colonial structures in knowledge production that marginalize indigenous, non-western knowledge. Tamale explores how Eurocentric systems in education, the notion of time, development theory, gender, and museums perpetuate epistemic apartheid. She challenges these structures and calls for democratizing and decolonizing the epistemic space. #decolonization #epistemicjustice
“Until knowledge is dislodged from its colonial roots and rerouted into African communities, excavating the wealth of African histories and experiences, the continent will never step out of the grim trap of neocolonialism.”
This article critiques international research collaborations for perpetuating colonial power dynamics. At a 2024 event, Gebremariam observed that while UK institutions aim to support African partners, they often maintain an unequal advantage. He calls for a shift beyond superficial agreements, advocating for genuine decolonization of research practices. #decolonization #researchpower
“In a system where the coloniality of being is normalised, non-Whites/non-Europeans have less value as humans and less credibility as knowers. They are often portrayed as faceless or nameless enslaved beings, captives, colonial subjects, drowning migrants, influx or wave of illegal aliens, collateral damages of imperial wars or terrorists, especially if they dare to resist colonisation and colonialism."
De-centering the 'White Gaze' of Development
Originally delivered as a keynote address at the 2019 Development Studies Association conference, this article argues that it is not possible to 'open up' development without openly addressing the fact that it suffers from a 'white gaze' problem. One way of doing so is to mainstream race into development analyses in the same way that gender and class have been mainstreamed. #shareholderagendas
You can also listen to a podcast interview with Robtel Neajai Pailey on racism in development here.
"In its crudest form, development has traditionally been about dissecting the political, socio‐economic and cultural processes of black, brown and other subjects of colour in the so‐called global South and finding them regressive, particularly in comparison to the so‐called progressive global North."
Can reparations help us to re-envision international development?
An alternative vision for what international development could be if racial and ethnic deprivation were recognised, this blog post makes the case for writing off developing country debt without caveats, reinstating ancestral ownership rights over land from land-grabbing, and for an apology for the psychological and physical impacts of exploitation. #reparations
“It is naive to think that placing a person of colour at the top of organisations can reverse decades of systemised oppression, though it is an important step.”
Who Speaks for the Global South Recipients of Aid?
Khan argues that despite the recent rhetoric and calls for change on 'decolonising' development and anti-racism in aid, two problems remain. First, these calls centre voices from or settled in the Global North and second, aid 'recipients' in the Global South are entirely excluded from the discussion. Nor do they address the question of whether aid should even continue. Initiatives such as The Equity Index itself demonstrate that Northern aid institutions are 'not planning on going anywhere.' #globalsouth
"It is time for us ‘recipients’ in the Global South to not only take control of the conversation about racism in aid, but also of the objectives, utility, and control of aid objectives itself. Unless we do so, racism in aid will continue, as will the collateral damage it causes."
Aid in Reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries
The Guardian commentator Jason Hickel proposes that the usual development narrative is backwards. Finding that the flow of money from poor to rich countries far exceeds the inverse, the comprehensive assessment of resource transfers cited indicates that for every $1 of aid received, $24 is purportedly lost when comparing capital inflows and outflows, through mechanisms of trade misinvoicing, tax havens, fake prices, huge interest payments on debt and repatriated foreign income. #capitalflows #taxjustice
“Poor countries don’t need charity. They need justice.”
#ShiftThePower: the rise of community philanthropy
Insight from the team at the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF) into ‘durable development’, a new paradigm to replace the old norms of the project-centric mindset. Using data on 20 indicators measuring bonding, bridging and linking social capital to GFCF partners, they advocate attributing agency to community philanthropy organisations to mobilise local resources. #mutualaccountability #ShiftThePower
“Power matters because efforts to solve a problem only last while people with the problem take responsibility for it.”
Understanding epistemic diversity: decoloniality as research strategy
Outlining a decolonial research strategy in international development, Rutazibwa discusses the hegemonic global Northern canon of knowledge production in development. This piece invites a review of the purpose and contents of syllabi, disciplines and international development curricula. #academicresearch #knowledgeproduction
“The empiricist, linearly incremental, competitive, zero-sum, logic of colonial knowledge production continues to dominate the field.”
Contemporary research must stop relying on racial inequalities
A London School of Economics (LSE) blog discusses the increasing tendency for academic international development research to be funded by short-term competitive grants, then incorporated into aid funding. By requiring outputs at a high pace, such funding can reinforce racial inequalities by perpetuating colonial origins and framings, silencing non-white voices in the process of publication. Rather, equity and transparency in the allocation of funding and collective deliberation are needed. #academicresearch
“The very fact that I, as a white European researcher, can carry out research in regions like Tanganyika rests on a complex racial infrastructure that allows me to access these areas while guaranteeing that the brunt of the risk is borne by other (non-white) researchers.”
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