In May 2026, a particularly full week of international development convenings unfolded across several global spaces. The World Health Assembly was taking place in Geneva, the Global Partnerships Conference was underway in London, and several other forums were happening in parallel across the sector. For those of us who follow international development closely, it was a week filled with updates, session summaries, reflections, photographs of panels, and glimpses of side conversations. I followed from a distance, taking in the themes, the language, and the signals emerging about the future of development. Much of it was genuinely encouraging, particularly the growing consensus around local actors, equitable partnerships, and the need to rethink what a sustainable development architecture should look like going forward.
At the same time, I kept returning to a question I could not quite set aside.
When we consider the full cost of a week like this one, the flights, the venues, the staff time, the side events, the publications timed to coincide with each convening, a different kind of calculation becomes possible. The relationships formed in those rooms are real, the conversations matter, and commitments made at that level can move significant resources. That is precisely what makes the question worth asking: how much of the energy concentrated in those rooms this week translated directly into investment in a local organization that is trying to build itself into something durable?
The Global Partnerships Conference included a session framing local actors as designers of development’s future and asking how traditional institutions could better support that vision. It is the right question. What I would love to see alongside it is a different kind of session, one where the people present make live, named commitments to specific local organizations, where the conversation moves from “how do we support local leadership in principle” to “here is what we are funding, who we are funding directly, and what we are trusting them to build.” Those rooms carry that authority. The format does not always create space to use it.
There is also something worth sitting with regarding the sheer volume of simultaneous events. Each convening has its own logic and its own constituency, and I understand why the ecosystem looks the way it does. For local organizations working in the systems these conferences discuss, though, the fragmentation creates real costs. Tracking multiple agendas, preparing for multiple engagement opportunities, synthesizing multiple sets of signals about where priorities are moving: all of that absorbs capacity that smaller organizations cannot easily spare. The organizations with the least slack carry the highest cost of a sector that convenes itself frequently and across many rooms.
What I keep returning to is that there is genuine momentum right now. The language has shifted, the intent feels real, and weeks like this one are part of how that momentum builds. The question I am holding is how to close the distance between a commitment made in a conference room and a decision that changes the trajectory of a local institution in Nairobi, or Dhaka, or Kampala six months from now. That closing of distance requires fewer intermediary steps, longer funding horizons, more direct relationships between investors and institutions, and a willingness to fund the infrastructure of an organization, its governance, its financial systems, its ability to learn and adapt, rather than only the programs it delivers.
The conversations happening this week are the right conversations. What I am watching for now is how the commitments that emerged from them show up in the partnership agreements and budgets that follow.