In our work to shift power, deoclonise, redistribute wealth and decisionmaking, and shift our practices more broadly, we need to understand why things are the way they are, and what prompted these approaches in the first place. That will give us the best tools to understand how to undo whatever needs it.

In the 20^th century, many countries gained independence from colonisers, and among a few other factors, that led to a shift in how power holders engaged in our sector.

Key among this was the establishment of the UN and other Bretton Woods institutions, which consolidated power and re-established a blueprint for how we work – including how philanthropy is run.

Finally, the politicisaiton of our sector – aid, development, humanitarian, whatever you call it – during the Cold War exacerbated these divisions between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, leading to the harmful binaries we have now.

First, 120 countris gained independence during the 20^th century. I include the new countries that emerged out of the Cold War in this. Naturally, this shifted the map of our world, through physical borders and spaces. New governments, policies, systems, and people emerged, determining for themselves how they wanted their futures to look.

This was also the result of centuries of brutal colonisation, exploitation, and conquest so we also saw a shift towards wanting a more peaceful future, and a wish to rebuild a better world. I realise I’m condensing hundreds of peoples’ histories down to a few sentences; but this is important context to have.

New relationships of power had to be rebuilt, and naturally these mirrored the colonial dynamics that existed before – colonisers continue to hold undue power, despite the fact that more than half our world is made up of former colonies.

The devastation that two World Wars had in Europe and North America led to these continents taking the lead in creating institutions that would help them better respond to threats.

Dozens of countries who were colonised by Europeans during these World Wars – including Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka – were forced to fight someone else’s war. The disastrous impact they had on our people is a topic of many books so I won’t go into it here, but is important to honour.

After WW2, the UN was established as a platform for coordinated international efforts. Several UN agencies were created to address various aspects of our sector, including UNICEF and UNHCR. The Marshall Plan, which sent huge amounts of money to help rebuild Western Europe after WW2, was one of the first large-scale development projects and set the stage for future aid efforts.

As power holders in ‘The West’ looked to rebuild their realities after WW2, the role of institutions as actors supporting governments emerged. To me, this laid the foundations for large institutions like DFID/FCDO, and private philanthropies, to become important global actors alongside governments.

Then in the Cold War, our sector was used as a strategic tool in the tug of war between the US and USSR. Both used development assistance to spread their influence, in poorer countries.

USAID was established in 1961 for example, with the aim of stopping the spread of communist and socialist influence worldwide, through disbursing funds from the US.

Both countries sent huge amounts of money to the education, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors of ‘developing’ countries, and aid was politicised and aligned with specific ideologies.

Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were designed in the 1970s as a way to make ‘aid’ conditional. The idea that an outsider pointed to their perceived lack in your country, or identified a deeper issue they had helped to cause, like a lack of access to global markets, started here. They would then deploy large sums of money to help ‘fix’ the problem, based on their conditions – and here, the objectives were economic growth and development, driven entirely by GDP per capita and income levels.

This is also where we saw the binaries start to take hold – we went from ‘more developed’ to ‘less developed’, even ‘least’, to ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, to ‘first’ and ‘third world’, and now the trending binary is ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, or ‘Majority World’.

There is of course, so much more that went into an entire century of our planet’s history. In planning my course though, I tried to identify common factors or important milestones that shaped our geopolitical aid agenda, and the historical factors that led to these systems remaining in place.

What else sticks out to you, and which are the most important historical factors that shaped your country and people? What important 20^th century milestones shaped your organisation or institution? I’d love to hear from you!