You are listening to In Pursuit of Development with Dan Banick. We are living through a period in which the development discourse is being reshaped by several competing pressures at once. Global development assistance is being cut substantially, not only in the United States where the dismantling of USAID has had repercussions across the sector, but also across Europe, where these developments increasingly resemble a wider pattern of retreat rather than a series of discrete national decisions. What is happening may perhaps be understood as the end of a long-standing consensus around solidarity and global responsibility. Germany's humanitarian budget for 2026 will be less than half of what it was last year. The UK recently announced major cuts to fund defence spending. France is looking at a 60% reduction in food aid. And in December 2025, Sweden cut development assistance to five countries as part of a reprioritisation toward Ukraine, presenting the move as a responsible adjustment of priorities. Norway, often held up alongside Sweden as a humanitarian superpower, has redirected a quarter of its entire aid budget to Ukraine. It turns out African countries are absorbing a disproportionate share of the recent contraction in aid, while European donors have not filled the gap created by the retreat of the United States. They are following the cuts. But the need has not gone away. Countries to 800 million people still live in extreme poverty by a measure that is already considered too conservative by many. Hundreds of millions of people also experience overlapping forms of deprivation that are not adequately captured by any single indicator, including limited access to healthcare, education, decent work and adequate nutrition. In many countries, such as Mozambique, that are dealing with cyclones, drought and violent insurgencies, only a fraction of the humanitarian financing required this year has actually arrived. HIV programs across sub-Saharan Africa are being cut in countries where years of hard-won progress could now be reversed. The job is not done, not even close. What is particularly striking is not just the scale of the cuts, but the logic driving them. The need that used to go towards schools, clinics and agricultural development is being reclassified as a geopolitical instrument, directed toward conflict zones tied to migration deterrents objectives and linked to trade strategies and defense priorities. But it would also be too simplistic to explain the current situation solely through the actions of one leader, one policy decision or one political rupture. Indeed, it is also very hard to square these deep cuts to the world's least developed countries with any credible commitment to eradicating poverty. So what exactly is happening and how do we make sense of it? My guest is Elina Scheer, chief economist at the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency, CEDA. She also heads the OACD DAC community of practice on poverty and inequalities, bringing together donor countries to think through exactly how development aid can be made more effective in a world that looks nothing like the one in which many of today's frameworks were designed. In our conversation, Elina and I discuss what happens to development cooperation when geopolitics becomes more dominant, why poverty reduction still needs to remain central, how aid agencies should think about evidence and learning, and why jobs, dignity and institutional realism need to be a part of any serious agenda for the future. While this is a conversation about aid, it is also about a wider intellectual and policy challenge, how to think about development at a time when inherited assumptions are eroding and new paradigms are still in formation. I've been very grateful for the growing amount of positive feedback I've been receiving about the show of late, and it is especially satisfying to hear how listeners are not only engaging with the conversations themselves, but also connecting with one another and with my guests after listening. If you've been enjoying the show, please follow and subscribe and do help spread the word by sharing episodes on social media and within your own networks. I'm Dan Banik and you are listening to In Pursuit of Development. Wonderful to see you. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It's a great pleasure to be here. We're living in this day and age with a lot of geopolitical tension, fragmentation, a lot of concern about aid cuts in many, many countries, in our countries. There is concern about the role of aid agencies. What are we doing for poverty reduction? Are we losing that focus on poverty reduction? So based on this turmoil that is happening around the world, what is your assessment? What is your diagnosis? Where are we? How are you actually operating? What is your take on what we are seeing in this field of development cooperation? Just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of this podcast. I mean, it's a great way to keep updated on what the colleagues in the field are talking about because there is a lot of things happening. The piece of change has just accelerated. And I've been giving talks to my colleagues about where we stand vis-à-vis where we were a year ago, and it's just a totally different world. So I think one thing is to realize that we are in a different place where we want to situate our efforts on development cooperation. There's a lot happening at a daily basis, but I think it's also good to kind of take a step back and look at the broader trends that are driving these changes in order to understand where these are coming from. So a lot of people are seeking for easy solutions and saying, well, it is that leader doing that or it is that decision that brought us there. But I think there are some geopolitical underpinnings and economic underpinnings that underlie this situation. So some of these bigger shifts that we have been experiencing for a longer time, but possibly haven't been taking a note of to the extent that we should have, is the relative change in the economic power and political power of the great nations or regional priorities in that. We are coming from an era where the US economy has been dominant and a lot of countries have been relying on kind of peaceful development, relatively low levels of conflicts. There are more opportunities for trade, rapid growth in many of the developing countries in the low and middle countries, rapid reduction in poverty. Those were the heydays where we talked a lot about poverty reduction, formed our policies for a development corporation and succeeded in first half thing and then rapidly reducing poverty over long periods of time. That is not where we are living today. And we see more of a our struggle between the US, the Asian emerging economies. No, not really emerging anymore. I mean, they are they are leading the pack. Absolutely. A lot of middle sized countries coming into play. I'm saying, hey, we want to rewrite the rules and they don't only want to rewrite the rules when it comes to the economic interplay, but they also want the political influence and that causes some some friction in the global economy. So what we are seeing now is both economic power struggle that then translate into political power struggle. So we see changes in trade policies. We change the changes in environmental policies that try to take the upper hand of the of the other other region and the party. That also spills them over to the development cooperation side of things. I think it's an illusion to say that we were operating in a policy free environment before development data has always been political. But I guess now it's being even more politicized when the countries try to situate themselves in this geopolitical frame more prominently and then binding the development aid with their trade, with their transition policies and all those react at the same time. So I guess what we see the turmoil of today is, yes, it is catalyzed by recent events, by certain leaders, by political events, but it is driven by a more long term trends that we've seen. What you're pointing to is how the development landscape has changed because we've seen the rise of the global south in unprecedented ways. It's not just the big economies, India, China, etc. You know, I've been making this point on the show for many, for many weeks that I thought bricks was dead and now we see many of these institutions that that I thought was dead and buried there being resurrected again. You see the G20 being an important part. So the power is perhaps shifting. I just had Homi Karras from Brookings today, actually today's episode. The middle class is moving from Europe and Latin America and from America to Asia. So we're seeing a big change in economics, where the big markets are. So obviously the question is, and I keep grappling with it, is do we still need aid and for whom? So obviously there are low income countries. We have many, many countries that are struggling, that are not part of this emerging power trend. There are lots of countries in the global south that don't agree with the big actors in the global south that are not perhaps benefiting. So obviously there is still a strong rationale we can make for aid. The question is, how do you think aid is changing? Is it is it the prioritization that is coming more clearly because we have less money? I know that your country has, I think in January, you slashed aid in some parts, like over 50% to some countries or regions. You have to, obviously it's not even a question. You have to prioritize differently because there's less money. So how do you see that role changing of aid? Is it going to be fewer sectors? Is it fewer topics, fewer countries? I know that the Germans are now focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and not many other regions. Do you think that is the way forward for Sweden, for many other countries like Norway? I think it's fascinating how you framed the question, do we need aid anymore? Aren't we done already? Because I hear quite a lot of arguments saying that, well, aid has failed, so thus we should do something else. I think in the aid community, one of the big worries is that we forget that the job is not done. We still need to focus. Almost 10% of the world population are living in extreme poverty. We're talking about not having food on the table. The level of measuring extreme poverty is already criticized for its very, very low level. And yet we have 800 million people under that barrier. We have people in other types of deprivations, being able to get the education, the healthcare that they need, a decent living standard. So no, we're not done yet. And even if you would raise that bar to be more applicable to lower and upper middle-income countries, the size of the target group or people who are still living in poverty and under oppression is a sizable amount of population. So there are people who are being left behind. There are countries, there are regions that are being left behind. So yes, we still have job to do. Then how are we going to do that? That's the million dollar question that everybody is discussing at the moment. There are a lot of soul searching being done in the development community and in the traditional donor countries. They're kind of looking at the overall picture. I'm currently heading the OECD community of practice and poverty and inequalities, where a lot of donor countries come together to discuss what would be the best ways of using development aid to reduce poverty. And there are a lot of countries do their own personal journeys one after the other. But there are some striking similarities with everybody seemed to be coming up with. So there seemed to be more move towards emphasizing enlightened self-interest, national interest and framing the development cooperation in the light of overall foreign policy. As we were just discussing that foreign policy landscape is changing and thus the role of aid is changing within it. We've seen also in the global figures that there's been a shift in the development flows forcefully towards Ukraine for a lot of good reasons. But in many cases, that happens at the expense of spending in other regions and countries. A lot of countries are making more clear priorities on what to do in different regions. But quite a lot of them are ending up in the same conclusions. So we should be working with green transition in Asia or we should be focusing on EU accession in Europe or we should be refocusing on countries that are growing, which means that these cuts that we've seen worldwide and also in Sweden recently are not just cuts in the overall level, but they are hitting disproportionately some regions and countries that are not in this hitting the current priority. So there's a more nuanced picture and a story to be told. Indeed. I just saw a press release, I think from January of this year with the CEDA cuts. And I think if this is correct, 57% reduction in Africa, 63% in Asia, 41% in Latin America. And apparently one of the reasons articulated is precisely Ukraine, that one needs to support Ukraine, which is also something that is concerning us in Norway. You know, I've been interacting with many actors in the aid business here. And over the last few months, there have been concerns that it's not the concern with increasing support for Ukraine, but it is how it affects existing areas, how and to what extent poverty reduction, which should be the main focus of aid, that that is being affected by increasing something, one is reducing something else rather than increasing both areas. And related to this, I want to pick up on what you said about self interest or enlightened self interest. So around five years ago, when the new, the then new head of NORAD, Bodvega, Sulel, he was here in my studio and I was asking him about interest and self interest. He began talking about enlightened self interest, saying our interests are different from maybe the big powers. Norway, Sweden, we are seen to be humanitarian superpowers, right? We have been often told that we punch above our weight. And so I'm beginning to wonder whether that notion of enlightened self interest really requires even further operationalization. What does it mean, you know, because we've been at least in Norway promoting the private sector, our interests are important. You know, we want to make sure that somehow it serves the Norwegian economy. It is not just a one way street. It should be two ways. I heard today, some people talk about win win solutions. That is what we should be pursuing. So I wonder what you think about this enlightened self interest. Does this mean we will focus on certain things that are important to us at the moment, whether it is security, whether it is access to certain goods and services, or do you think enlightened self interest means retaining our original values, our core values of democratic rights about gender equality, fighting, you know, against climate change, that these can't be negotiated with? First, a quick comment on the numbers that you were just citing. Even that story is a bit more nuanced because the Swedish aid budget is cut into different strategies and different sub budgets. So it's true that there have been significant cuts to different sub budgets, but the overall budget, the reduction is relatively marginal. So it's the disposition within that budget that has changed. And also the Swedish industrial development corporation agency, CEDA, is managing, used to be approximately half of that money currently. CEDA budget is reducing more than the overall budget. So there are some nuances to that story. But the fact remains that there are big reallocations ongoing and that has a real consequence on the operations on the ground. However, the objective of these operations and projects and our work has not shifted. The overall objective is and remains enhancing or creating conditions, better living conditions for people living in poverty and under under oppression. That has been the objective for the couple of decades now. We're quite proud that that is something that is decided by the government, sorry, decided by the parliament. So it remains irrespective of the color of the government and that has been guiding our work for a long time. What that then means in practice, I guess that is the challenge ahead to frame that and make that work, even in the current context of geopolitical turmoil. We do need to take this new situation into account. One way of taking that into account is to look at the broader specter of mobilizing financing for development, where you could be working with other types of partners. You're kind of exploiting the full range of actors out there. Nobody has ever said that aid alone would be the savior or the cause of poverty reduction. It is the countries themselves and the actors in the countries that actually make that happen. So how do we collaborate and build those alliances is one part of the answer. But then coming back to the self interest, I would like to disagree in the fact that the overall objective remains. And that is from the viewpoint of people who are living in poverty and under oppression. The self interest part can be disentangled in the short and the long run. But I think what we need to be clearer at is creating a narrative around how what we are doing that benefits the countries where we work, that benefits the people who we serve. How does that link to the bigger picture of the global changes? How does that link to the overall prosperity and the stability in the world and between countries? How does that relate to the trade flows over the long run? And in that perspective, reducing poverty and supporting development in different countries is in the greater interest of us all. So I believe you can frame it in that light as well. There is a more urgent need to be able to argue for what we do, to show the results of what we do, to show the links of how it is connected to our welfare also back home. But we have made surveys about how people feel about aid and there is still very strong support within the general public towards also the more altruistic arguments for development aid and continuing to be a generous donor going forward. One of the big challenges that I suppose you have the same in Sweden as we have in Norway is for politicians to justify aid, you know, to the taxpayer. And there's always this demand. I mean, in both countries, I know we have high amount of public support for aid, but there is always that hunger, you know, people want to know more or unfortunately, sometimes there's one scandal that is blown out of proportion and one gets the impression that nothing works. It could be political parties who are campaigning against aid. So the picture is somewhat nuanced and it is actually quite difficult. I know a lot of people in the aid business and it isn't easy, you know, to keep up to keep justifying that, you know, you have to have a proper evidence, which is what I wanted to talk to you about. You've listened to one of my conversations. I know you have because you posted on LinkedIn that I had with Lynse Moore recently and that has to do with how she and her company are using AI to create an institutional memory for USAID, you know, looking at millions of pages of evaluations and making sure that all the lessons learned, Alina, through all these billions of dollars that were spent is somehow used. And I wanted to ask you how you guys are operating with evidence because we keep thinking and as academics, we keep throwing about this idea, oh, it should be evidence based policy. That's what I just told the NORAD people earlier today at a conference, but it is easier said than done. We do produce a lot of evidence. How do you see this evidence that we produced over decades being used effectively to shape current and future policy? I think this is one of my favorite topics. So thanks for for raising that. The first one on how do we counteract the kind of different narrative around development cooperation. There will always be somebody who has opinions grounded or non grounded opinions about AIID. I don't think we will win that argument by addressing those critiques one by one. There is already an overwhelming evidence base and also great results examples that we could be promoting. I think we need to get ahead of that narrative, bring our own more positive and nuanced, more evidence based narrative out there without being pro. I mean, we need to be more proactive rather than reacting to random critiques that show up every now and then. We know that there are some zombie statistics on corruption. That is just way off by several of the simple points on where the real figures are. We know that there are reoccurring critiques that we need to be able to counteract with facts. But on top of that, we need to also bring out the kind of more proactive narrative on what we actually are doing so that people can feel that their money is spent effectively, that money is well taken care of and that they know what kind of results that they are contributing to. At the moment, when there are a lot of AIID ads being done, there's more focus now on getting the most out of the money or getting the biggest bang for the buck. And sometimes we also hear the argumentation that we should be doing more with less. It is an interesting and somewhat problematic argument that you only hear when it comes to AIID. I haven't seen that argument being used for military expenses. Yeah. AIID is scrutinized in such a way that 1% in Norway receives far more attention than many, many other sectors. Well, let's think positively. It gets far more attention than a lot of other public spending areas. And because it's been so scrutinized, we also know that the money is to the largest extent spent effectively. So I don't think we should be expecting more results with considerably less resources. But there is a lot to do with the resources that we have at hand and the ways to tweak so that we actually get the biggest bang for the buck. And this is where the evidence use comes in. So if we are to maximize every dollar or a corona that we get, I think we should use evidence throughout the whole decision making chain of development cooperation. Starts with what colleagues at the Gates Foundation talk a lot about the allocation efficiency. Which countries do you pick? Which kind of sectors do you work on? And that is something that we have already touched upon in that discussion, that there seem to be shifts in the regional allocation and others. That is not a decision that we as an agency take. That is a political decision based on several factors. But we can influence those decisions by providing the evidence on the consequences of those decisions. And here we usually talk about evidence informed decisions rather than evidence based decisions. Because there are a lot of other factors that come in and just being explicit about what you're doing and what the consequences are. I think that is an appropriate role for an expert agency where the politicians take their decisions on the allocation. But when we have decided on the countries or the regions or the overall size of the budget, that's when we have another type of evidence coming in. Of diagnosing what the most binding constraints are in the country. Where could we make the biggest shift or biggest change for people living in poverty? That is something that we have been working on for a long time. We just evaluated on our efforts to analyze multi-dimensional poverty in our partner countries. It's fascinating to also get an external view on how we're doing. But basically the evaluation confirms that it keeps us on track. And we are strong at analyzing the biggest avenues through which we could or sectors or problems in the country where we could make the biggest difference. But once you understand what you should do in the country. A lot of the evidence discussion at the moment is focusing on the RCT type of evaluations on how you should move things around. So if you already decided that we want to work on health and we want to work on maternal health or we want to work in education and make kids learn. How do we make kids learn in a most effective way? There's a big growing literature on impact evaluations that we should make better use of. And that is something that we are thinking at the moment. We haven't been using it to the extent that we could. But there is just one part of the chain. If you then go further down the chain, you have to use the evidence of thinking about how you're going to implement these projects. I mean, which kind of actors is more effective to go through a multilateral? Is it more effective to go through bilateral doing your own projects? How are you going to go about what actors are there in the country to work with in the first place? You kind of bring this overall scientific knowledge to the context in which you work and use your expertise and your partner's expertise to figure out the most effective way of going about it. And then finally, once you sign the contract or give the grant, that's not where the story ends. Because the development impact is not set in stone. I mean, there's plenty of things that you could do if you are being able to use adaptive management, follow up the results, integrate evidence production or follow up into the implementation and then learning towards the end. So this is the whole chain that we are looking at at the moment in order to squeeze out the most impact. Are you using AI to sort of systematize what you already know, the institutional memory of CEDA? I was fascinated by the stories of Lindsay, who was taking about how they have done that more systematically at USAID and have been since then following up with her about possibilities of being able to do that with our databases as well. What we have been doing is that we have been easing the workload of our colleagues in the field doing these counter diagnostics or updating their data sets. There's a lot of efficiency gains that we can gain already. We have been looking at, I mean, I know partners like the World Bank are building AI databases to scrutinize the RCT wealth of evidence and packaging that to the needs of the country teams. So I guess there are ways of incorporating and using AI to make all of these steps more efficient. I mean, there's no lack of evidence or data or information. What there is lack of is the effective use of that and linking that to our processes. And that is what we are working with, with another previous guest of yours, Dean Carlin, who's helping some of our teams to integrate evidence into their processes and thinking through how we're going to use them most effectively. Well, Alina, you're making me happy that the podcast is actually connecting people. I was telling you, I'm listening all the time. Just earlier today, I was giving a talk at NORAD and I was making the point that maybe, you know, we really have to move away from this. As you said, you signed the contract, the project is done. And then we evaluate, you know, we have to have iterative evaluations. We have to learn after the initial stage. We have to adapt. We have to adjust so that it doesn't come at the end. And this means, of course, more money has to be spent on evaluation, maybe. But the second Alina has to do with evidence, well, we say, and I like what you said, that it is the expert agency, the bureaucracy in York City. Here it is NORAD that can compile the evidence using AI or not. And as you said, it could be evidence informed rather than evidence based. But it is up to the politicians to make that final call. And I know that here there's been this debate, how much is it informing the decisions? And I don't expect you to answer on behalf of politicians, but there is, I suppose, that frustration that despite providing the evidence, not just in Norway, but elsewhere, too, that that evidence does not in the end shape policies. Because politicians come to power and they all have their pet projects and they may sign on or want to initiate certain things because they want to distinguish themselves or differentiate between their predecessor and them. And then the evidence and all that good work may not be used to the fullest extent. I guess that kind of goes to all researchers or development professionals who think they have brilliant ideas. If you just feel that, well, isn't working, I give up. I think you're in the wrong line of business. I mean, it's it is the debate of ideas and it is our role to provide that evidence. And I feel quite comfortable in that role. So providing the best possible evidence based and then see if that is being used to the extent if it is used or not. That's that's a different ballgame. But we did have this evidence conference that was organized by the Minister of Foreign Affairs just a couple of weeks ago, where we could together discuss how how evidence looks like, what is the most effective use. And I know that colleagues on the political side as well are now discussing how their decisions could be informed by evidence to a greater extent. So we'll stay tuned. We'll see how that how that ends up. But a quick comment on that that we need to spend more time and effort and money on evaluating. We're just in a workshop recently with organized by the World Bank together with Jaika and ADB talking about using impact evaluations in the implementation of projects. And they argue that the money that they save or the efficiency gains are just multiples of the money that you actually spend. So whether it is an increased spending or whether it's actually saving you money is worth discussing. They may be different budgets, but I do think that there are large efficiency gains to be had on spending that extra dollar on integrating the evidence use in your implementation. And also, we were talking earlier about the legitimacy of aid and the self interest argument. I think it's much easier to demonstrate what you actually have done if you have proper impact evaluations embedded in those projects so that there's solid evidence to say that this is where your taxpayer money went. And that could be used as the proactive argument to make the case for continued engagement in development cooperation. The one thing that citizens often in many, many countries want is they want jobs. They want to work. They don't want a handout. Yep. They want a job. And it is in that context. I'd like to hear your views on how you think Cedar, Norad, all similar agencies. What should we be doing differently or more of? Sometimes the criticism has been, you know, we are interested in promoting democracy and, you know, human rights and the so-called softer parts of the development agenda. We're not building infrastructure enough like the Chinese are. How do we stimulate the economy? Do you have any sort of best practices in mind? What should we be doing differently and more of? That is another huge hot topic. I mean, everybody's talking about jobs these days. The view that we've had at Cedar is that jobs or productive employment is the main route out of to sustainably reduce poverty. That is the way to link people who are living in poverty so that they can contribute to and benefits from growth. That is the way to sustainably provide means of living and agency to the people that we're working with. So it's a hugely important topic not to say that everybody should be working with their own legitimate reasons for some groups not to be working. But overall, that is what the countries are asking. And that is definitely the topic of concern. I don't think that that is totally different from democracy and human rights. They are inherently interlinked. It is about economic rights. It is about human rights. It is about agency. It's about anti-discrimination. There are a lot of now middle income countries where certain parts of the population are just excluded from the job market. So analyzing what the problem is, why people are not working is one part of the story. But quite often it lands that there is not enough jobs we need to create new jobs. We just had another external evaluation. We have been evaluating a lot these days, but there was this long term evaluation on how Cedar has been creating jobs and working with job creation in Africa. And there are some lessons to be drawn there. One of the insights was that we haven't been creating that many new jobs. The basic reason for that is that people are not unemployed in Africa. People who are living in poverty are or working because they can't afford not to. Creating new jobs is not really the right question to ask. The question is whether we have been able to create decent and productive jobs for people so that they can lift themselves and their families out of poverty. And there the answer was that, yes, we are pretty much doing the right things. However, linking back to our earlier points about making sure that we evaluate the impact and making sure that we have the learning embedded in the program. That is something that we received some criticism on that. We are obviously doing the right things and we can show the change, but we can't put actual figures on that. And we could be strengthening that story if we have better impact evaluations embedded in those programs as well. So I guess the overall direction of change is the right one. I think there are different organizations that can play different roles. So some are good at building roads, some are good at creating institutions, some are good at building capacities. All of that is needed. But what we do need to do is connect these dots and make sure that they combined lead to the results that we can then measure, report back and contribute to an active and proactive change in the countries. I've been making the argument that because USAID doesn't exist in its old form, the contours of development aid is changing. That maybe what we are going to see going forward are new alliances that we will be collaborating, not just with so-called like-minded countries. Maybe the time has come for issue-based partnerships that on certain things like infrastructure or education that we may have to or we will choose to widen the number of actors, the type of actors that we will collaborate with. I'm talking about European actors, maybe collaborating with Middle Eastern or Asian actors. What are your thoughts on this? Do you see that kind of shift taking place, new coalitions being formed in the aid world? I think that has already happened. I do think that we see that all the time and I think it's also not as black and white so that we cannot be working with certain countries. I don't think that has been the case earlier either. That doesn't mean that we should be compromising with our core values. I mean, CEDA will still be prioritising gender equality. We will be talking about environmental issues and climate change. Democracy and human rights are still our biggest sector. But as I was saying that as budgets are being squeezed, we are now heading towards an area where poverty livers are expected to start rising again. I think we do need to use all the resources available, build the alliances where they make sense and there are plenty of good things that could be done with new methods of working with new instruments, with new partners where we share common interests and values. Alina, this was great fun to chat with you. Thank you very much for coming on my show today. My pleasure. Thank you for listening to In Pursuit of Development with Professor Dan Banick from the University of Oslo. Please email your questions, comments and suggestions to inpursuitofdevelopment.com.
