Thursday, May 7, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
DEVELOPMENT: ‘Economic Growth the Only Way’
Sanjay Suri
- Developing countries will have to grow out of poverty, not merely get aided out of it, says British secretary for the Department for International Development Hilary Benn.
“In the end it’s going to be economic development that’s going to raise the money that developing countries need to pay for the nurses, the drugs, the clinics and the schools,” Benn told IPS in an interview at the world assembly of civil society organisations called in Glasgow this week by Civicus and the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations (SCVO).
“That’s how Britain did it over 200 years,” Benn said. “That’s why we have transformed people’s life expectancy, healthcare, opportunities for education.”
Developing countries want the same chance, he said. “And that’s why the current failure to make progress in the world trade talks is dispiriting, because we cannot pass up this opportunity. We have now probably the most important means available to us to helping developing countries to get out of poverty.”
So that growth rather than philanthropy is what developing countries need. Or worse than philanthropy, ‘foolanthropy’, as a meeting that Benn addressed described as philanthropy gone wrong.
Western civil society organisations focus, however, on what the North can do by way of aid or measures like debt relief. “Inevitably, campaigning here in the UK tends to focus on what people want us as a government to do, on aid, on debt relief,” Benn said.
The government in turn, he said, will stress good governance in the developing countries that Britain supports.
“We have to tell the truth about other things that need to happen,” Benn said. “So not having a war, putting your guns down and negotiating, fighting corruption, building good governance, developing democracy, encouraging people to come and invest their money in your country – those are fundamental to us making progress, and I’m very keen that we should tell the whole of the development story, and not just half of it.”
The British government is due to publish a white paper soon on development and British support to it.
“The central message is going to be that if we’re going to defeat poverty, we need to have good governance,” Benn said. “Aid, debt relief, and a fairer trading system, so that countries can earn their way out of poverty, but in every country we need much more debate on this.”
Development on that front, as on all others will have to include civil society, Benn said.
“I’m a very strong believer in people making what contribution they can, and that’s partly about governments taking on their responsibility for good governance, us working with developing country governments to build their capacity to deliver the things that people look to governments for – educate our children, look after us when we’re sick, give us peace and security, give us a chance to earn a living,” Benn said.
The Civicus world assembly had brought “a very strong plea from civil society for governments around the world to recognise the contribution that people getting together in their local communities can make to help solve the problem of world poverty,” Benn said. “A strong and vibrant civil society articulating people’s concerns and demands, taking part in politics, is absolutely fundamental to winning the fight for good governance.”
Good governance means also international good governance, and some of that debate inevitably needs to get fair between countries as much as within countries. Fair trade is at the heart of this, and there has been no progress on this, Benn acknowledged.
Progress has come more in the world of aid and support. The summit of leaders of the G8 countries (the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) did not end poverty last year, Benn said. “But did we make progress? Yes we did. And actually we need hope and encouragement if we’re going to carry on doing this.”
Britain itself is sharply increasing aid, he said. “We are the first government in British history to commit to a date by which we will achieve the UN 0.7 percent target in 2013.”
But as a member of the European Union, the British government is a part of the world of restrictive tariffs and the massive subsidies that deny the developing world growth opportunities. So what the developing countries need to do will include in good measure steps that the developed world has to take for them – more by way of fair trade than the aid and debt relief that has been on offer so far.
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