Frances Guy, CEO of Scotland’s International Development Alliance reports on the 2026 Global Partnerships Conference.
On 19th and 20th of May I had the opportunity to attend the Global Partnerships Conference hosted by the FCDO in cooperation with the government of South Africa, CIFF (Childrens Investment Fund Foundation) and BII (British International Investment). It was an interesting experiment in how to try to take the positive out of a more than 50% cut in the overseas development budget by the UK.
The vibe was surprisingly upbeat; supported by energetic South African dancing first thing in the morning and a generally relaxed atmosphere inspired by hosting the event in the Woolwich Works (a revamped ammunitions factory). This led to some strange room shapes and echoey audio but was compensated by all participants eating in the same tent arrangement with the consequent opportunity for NGOs and young people to meet with ministers and government officials. Moving poetry at the opening and closing sessions by Birmingham’s poet laureate Ayan Aden helped galvanise positivism but her plea to choose humanity got somewhat lost in discussions.
There was a predominant emphasis on encouraging private investment and less mention of the structural debt issues that make foreign investment a tricky proposition for those already heavily indebted. There was a steep learning curve in new vocabulary for non finance folks around the likes of mezzanine finance, investment offers and leverage; none of which is designed to be understood by those not involved in moving billions of dollars around the world. But when I asked BII what difference their heralded North Star investment in Indian renewables (£1 billion designed to leverage in a further £3.6 billion) would make to the Indian consumer, the answer was that they couldn’t promise cheap electricity because they don’t know what the final cost will be. Of course, making more renewable electricity available to communities without any access is positive but it won’t help the poorest if they can’t afford it.
All of the UK government ministers present emphasised the importance of a real reform to international financial arrangements, including ensuring that voices such as those of Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, are at the table, and committed to tackling unsustainable debt issues during the UK’s presidency of the G20. Yvette Cooper launched a new International Framework for Women and Girls with a new international coalition including the Spanish, Jamaica, Morocco and Bosnia. David Lammy highlighted how much illicit financial flows are costing. But there was some push back from the audience when the Foreign Secretary blamed Iran for the closure of the straits of Hormuz and when she suggested that the UK was pivoting towards offering more technical expertise (the woman from Senegal beside me suggested the notion of technical support was very dated and didn’t reflect the partnership the UK were notionally promoting!)
There were some really inspiring speakers including from the Sudan Emergency committees, and interesting initiatives like GRIT (Gender Rights in Tech) a feminist approach to dealing with GBV in South Africa, and there was an attempt to include young voices through Restless Development and a preconference consultation that led to 10 points including ‘what matters the most is still funded the least’. Given the predominance of older men in the discussions about finance the youth voice felt a little tokenistic, even if they did get the loudest applause.
The juxtaposition between private finance and encouraging truly equitable partnership led to a bit of a disconnect between sessions where speakers seemed to be coming from different worlds but one German official assured me that governments were participating in the different sessions as much as civil society.
What next?
The UK government set out some ambition for its G20 presidency that we can all get behind and keep pushing for real change. There is more work to do to bring private finance into broader discussions and to challenge investors to consult locally and more inclusively. And whilst the value of local actors in delivering humanitarian response was acknowledged, there were no new commitments to transferring resources. But then as the head of CIFF said at the beginning of the conference; we have the SDGs, and the Paris treaty, and many humanitarian compacts; we don’t need new commitments – we need to implement those we have already made…