Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Entwicklung und Humanitäre Hilfe
Global Voices (EN)
It was a privilege to join Global Responsibility for an open and challenging conversation about the future of international cooperation at Aid Matters 2026. At a moment when the aid sector is facing profound financial and political pressures, a crisis of legitimacy and escalating levels of need, opportunities to question not only what we do, but how we do it, feel particularly important.
Commentary by Eilidh Kennedy
I was struck by how strongly the reflections of my fellow speakers, Moses Isooba and Dylan Mathews, resonated with my own. Coming from different perspectives, we converged on a common message: meaningful change will require more than adapting the existing system. It means redistributing power, resources and decision-making, while being prepared to fundamentally rethink the role of international actors. It is a strategic challenge, but one we must embrace.
The international aid sector has spent more than a decade talking about localization, shifting power and more equitable partnerships. We have made some progress. The language has changed, new commitments have been made, and there are examples of genuinely different ways of working. Yet, as the discussions at Aid Matters 2026 highlighted, the underlying architecture of the system is proving remarkably resistant to change.
IARAN’s Future of Aid 2040 research asked hundreds of people across the world to consider how the aid ecosystem could evolve over the next 15 years. While the research explores changes across the wider aid system, the evolving role of international NGOs and NGOs from the Global North was a particular focus of our conversation at Aid Matters. Several interconnected challenges emerged.
First, organizations will need to become capable of operating differently in radically different contexts. The future aid landscape is unlikely to be uniform, either geographically or over time. In some countries, the traditional role of INGOs and NGOs from Global North countries may become obsolete; in others, they may operate under the leadership of strong national institutions and locally led civil society. Elsewhere, they may need to navigate fragmented authority, geopolitical competition or severely weakened international coordination. A standardized organizational model, designed centrally and exported across countries, will become increasingly difficult to sustain. We need to be more creative in how we rethink our structures – this is not about shrinking, but transformation.
Second, the questions of legitimacy, independence and power cannot be avoided. Aid actors will operate amid greater geopolitical competition, contested norms and pressure on civic space. Who funds an organization, whom it partners with, whose priorities it represents and where decisions are made will increasingly determine whether it is considered legitimate. The failure of the international community to make substantial progress in shifting decision-making power closer to communities is a reckoning we cannot escape. We must be honest about the structures and worldviews that underpin the international aid system and the geopolitical realities within which we operate. If we cannot recognize the limitations of our current models, we will never fundamentally change how we work or live up to our commitments to partners and the communities we serve.
Both challenges bring us to perhaps the most uncomfortable question: what value do we actually add?
We need to move beyond the assumption that the natural role of INGOs and Global North NGOs is to design, fund and implement programmes elsewhere. Their future value may increasingly lie in connecting actors and resources, brokering knowledge, providing specialist capabilities, influencing governments, mobilizing public solidarity or defending civic space and international solidarity at home. Some of these functions may become more important, not less.
Finally, transformation requires organizations capable of adapting to uncertainty. We cannot restructure around one preferred version of the future. Organizations need the ability to shift their footprint, partnerships, capabilities, funding models and decision-making as circumstances change. Most importantly, they need to remember why they were created in the first place and ensure that strategic decisions prioritize the needs of communities over organizational self-preservation.
This is where the current financial crisis presents both a danger and an opportunity. Shrinking budgets may force organizations to become smaller without becoming fundamentally different, retaining a business-as-usual approach to their work. We should not confuse contraction with transformation.
The alternative is to use this moment deliberately: to ask what capabilities will still matter in 2040, which should sit closer to communities, which international organizations genuinely need to retain, and what they may need to relinquish.
The future of INGOs and Global North NGOs should not begin with the question, “How do we survive?“ A more useful question is: „What value do we bring in strengthening locally led systems, and how can we ensure our organizations are fit for that purpose?“
They have an important role to play in shaping the future aid system, but that role cannot be taken for granted. We should embrace the challenge of transformation, recognizing that organizations may look very different from those we know today. Rather than seeing this as a threat, we should see it as an opportunity to build an aid system that is more equitable, effective and genuinely accountable to the people it exists to serve.
Eilidh Kennedy is a strategic foresight consultant with a decade of experience supporting humanitarian organizations through research, analysis, and strategy design. She has led multi-country futures projects, developed foresight toolkits tailored to the aid sector, and authored widely used publications such as The Future of Aid, From Voices to Choices, and Strategic Planning in the humanitarian sector: a manual to Foresight and Futures-thinking. Eilidh has managed analytical teams within INGOs, taught on foresight and humanitarian systems, and facilitated change across diverse organizational settings. As Founder and Director of IARAN, she brings a systemic, collaborative approach to navigating complexity and shaping long-term strategies for global humanitarian actors.
In its ‘Global Voices’ section, Global Responsibility invites international experts to comment on current issues, challenges and opportunities in development and humanitarian policy. To ensure democratic and sustainable debates, it is essential that diverse and critical perspectives are taken into account. This commentary has been published as part of an International Partnerships Austria project, funded by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA). ADA accepts no responsibility for the content. Statements, opinions, and information contained therein are the sole responsibility of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the position or views of ADA.
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