DFID, the Private Sector and the Re-centring of an Economic Growth Agenda in International Development

Abstract

This article examines the way in which the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) is returning an economic growth agenda to the centre of its mandate. The private sector is pitched as the primary engine of this strategy, with a growing place for corporations, consultancies and the financial sector in particular. The shift can be understood as a strategic response to an increasingly challenging domestic context, and to a turbulent external arena for the “traditional” donors. This strategy may well achieve growth outcomes in partner countries, but without sufficient conceptual rigour, regulatory oversight or attention to the “connective fabric” between growth and “development”, the latter is more uncertain. DFID's direction reflects wider trends in international development norms, finances and actors. While in some regards we could say that the “traditional” donors are “returning” to older development models, they are doing so with new tools and in new contexts. An optimistic assessment is that this will result in a more effective “beyond aid” development agenda, but there is a significant risk of capture by state-corporate interests that will not aim for or achieve progressive, just development outcomes.