What 2026 demands of global development leaders

By the end of 2025, many of us working in global development had quietly crossed a line. Not because we wanted to, but because circumstances left us no choice.

The dismantling of long-standing aid architectures forced an uncomfortable reckoning, not just with how international assistance has been funded, but with how it has been designed, governed, and sustained. For some, the instinct was to fight for restoration, to return to familiar models that once worked. For others, it was to declare the old system irreparably broken and call for reinvention from scratch.

“As funding models shift, so too must organisational models. NGOs, multilaterals, and implementing partners cannot simply shrink budgets and hope for stability.”

As we step into 2026, I believe neither extreme is sufficient.

What this moment calls for is not nostalgia, nor demolition, but disciplined evolution.

For decades, bilateral aid served as the backbone of global health and development delivery. It enabled scale, predictability, and coordination. But it also created structural dependencies on single funding sources, on rigid compliance systems, and on delivery models that often struggled to adapt to local realities or shifting political winds.

The events of 2025 did not merely expose fragility; they accelerated trends that had been building quietly for years. Declining political appetite for aid across donor nations, competing domestic priorities, and rising defence expenditures were already reshaping incentives long before any single administration made its mark. The lesson here is not about personalities or politics. It is about structural misalignment.

The uncomfortable truth is that the old aid model was never designed for permanence. It was designed for a different era, one with different geopolitical dynamics, fewer actors, and less complex systems. Expecting it to rebound unchanged is neither realistic nor responsible.

Yet the alternative is not a vacuum.

If anything, 2025 clarified where momentum is already moving. Private capital, development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, and large-scale philanthropy are no longer peripheral players. They are becoming central to how development is financed and executed. This shift is often framed as a pivot from “aid” to “investment”, but that framing can be misleading.

The more important transition is from projects to platforms.

Projects solve discrete problems. Platforms enable systems to function across time, sectors, and political cycles. Infrastructure, digital public goods, energy systems, supply chains, and data architecture are not interventions that succeed through short funding windows or narrow metrics. They require blended capital, shared risk, and long-term governance.

In this sense, the rise of development finance and private investment is not a threat to impact, provided it is designed with intention. The real risk is not that investment replaces aid, but that it does so without equity, without accountability, and without local ownership.

This is where leadership matters.

As funding models shift, so too must organisational models. NGOs, multilaterals, and implementing partners cannot simply shrink budgets and hope for stability. The organisations that will endure are those willing to confront hard questions about their value proposition: what capabilities do we uniquely bring? Where do we genuinely add systems-level value? And where are we holding onto structures that no longer serve the mission?

This is not about becoming “more commercial” for its own sake. It is about becoming more credible with governments, with investors, with communities, and with ourselves.

At the same time, we must be clear-eyed about what to avoid. A purely transactional approach to development, one driven by geostrategic leverage or donor self-interest, risks sidelining fragile contexts and deepening inequities. Investment logic alone cannot substitute for moral responsibility. But moral force without financial realism is equally insufficient.

The task before us is to build a middle ground that is principled and pragmatic.

That middle ground requires a different kind of collaboration. One where public, private, and philanthropic actors are not competing for relevance but aligning around shared outcomes. One where governments are not passive recipients but co-architects. One where data, technology, and infrastructure are treated as public goods, not proprietary assets.

It also requires a shift in leadership posture. This is not a moment for performative urgency or sweeping declarations. It is a moment for steadiness, for leaders who can sit with complexity, make disciplined choices, and resist the temptation to chase every new funding signal.

In my experience, the most effective decisions often come not from acceleration, but from stillness; from pausing long enough to distinguish what is essential from what is simply familiar. From choosing fewer priorities, pursued with greater depth and integrity.

The development community has been here before, though perhaps not at this scale. What is different now is the pace of change and the diversity of actors shaping the future. That makes coordination harder, but it also makes innovation possible in ways we have not fully explored.

So the question for 2026 is not whether the old aid model returns. It is whether we have the courage to design what comes next with honesty, humility, and shared responsibility.

If we do, this period will be remembered not as the end of international assistance, but as the moment it finally grew up.

Ota Akhigbe is the Director of Partnerships and Programs at eHealth Africa and a member of its Executive Leadership Team. She works at the intersection of global health, systems transformation, and cross-sector partnerships, with a focus on building sustainable, locally grounded solutions across Africa.

Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date