PREVIEW
Business leaders and state officials cooperate on the Magic Mountain to map out new strategy for assistance
Delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the site of Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, have been tasked with drawing up a new blueprint for development policy as humanitarian aid flows continue to fall. European Union crisis management commissioner Hadja Lahbib announced at the Davos Forum (19-24 January) that the EU would spend €1.9 billion on humanitarian aid, of which €557 million (US$658.6m) is for Africa.
Referencing the €7bn in aid budget cuts made by Germany, France, Finland, Sweden and Belgium between them last year, that ‘the humanitarian system is under unprecedented strain, and public funding alone will not meet the scale of the crisis.’ (AC Vol 66 No 5, Western aid cuts reshape the geopolitical landscape).
Lahbib hosted an event in Davos on 22 January aimed at building ‘new alliances for aid and development’ with the private sector, attended by Alexander de Croo, now the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, who presided over aid cuts as Belgian Prime Minister between 2020 and 2025.
The WEF has also set up a ‘Global Future Council on Reimagining Aid’ which will look at whether policymakers can ‘assemble a new set of principles and concepts for new, reimagined forms of international cooperation’.
Contracting out aid provision and development policy to the private sector is at the heart of United States President Donald J Trump’s agenda (Dispatches, 8/12/25, Ruto moves adeptly to shore up ties with Washington). The Paris-based OECD, which makes the rules on what can be classified as aid, has forecast that net Official Development Assistance (ODA) fell by 17% last year, with the latest figures to be announced in April (Dispatches, 22/4/25, Western aid spending heads towards the cliff-edge as US cuts bite).
These cuts are expected to continue in 2026, dropping ODA to its lowest level since 2020 of around €160bn. But the real figures for aid to developing and least developed countries (LDCs) are much lower in reality. This is because billions of euros formally counted as ODA have been diverted support for Ukraine’s war and housing asylum seekers.
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