The United States is recasting development cooperation as business deals. This post explains the shift to a transactional doctrine and how the King's MSc International Development equips you to assess what development is really for.
This guest post is by Professor Andy Sumner, Programme Leader for the online International Development MSc at King’s College London.
A small cottage industry of commissions, conferences and coalitions has sprung up to ask what development cooperation is now for. The trigger is a dramatic fall in how much rich countries spend on it. Official aid dropped by almost a quarter in 2025. The United States, long the largest single donor, reported a reduction of well over half in its own aid that year. When the biggest player retreats on that scale, the whole field has to rethink its purpose.
In a recent piece, we argue that what is replacing the model is not simply less aid. It is a different doctrine. Development is being reframed as a series of business deals. If you are considering the online MSc in International Development at King's College London, this is one of the defining debates you would step into.
What the new doctrine looks like
The emerging US approach is transactional by design. Development institutions are treated as instruments of an "America First" agenda and assistance is expected to generate economic returns for the United States. The test is no longer only whether a programme reduces poverty. It is whether it pays, strategically or commercially, for the donor.
Climate action and diversity, equity and inclusion goals are excluded by design rather than by accident. And the wider posture is power-centric and sceptical of multilateral bodies. The old, if always imperfect, consensus that aid served recipient development is giving way to something more openly self-interested.
This is a real change in kind. Aid has always carried donor interests alongside development aims. What is different is the willingness to state the transactional logic plainly and to build institutions around it.
Why it matters beyond the United States
The effects do not stop at the US border. When the largest donor reframes cooperation as deal-making, others face pressure to respond. Some may follow, dressing self-interest in the language of partnership. Others may try to hold a different line and find it harder to fund. Recipient countries, meanwhile, must read which offers come with development intent and which come with a price tag attached.
For poorer countries without commercial or strategic appeal, the danger is plain. A doctrine built on returns has little room for places that cannot offer them. The question of who gets left out becomes central.
How the online MSc helps you judge it
This is the analytical work the MSc in International Development at King's is built for. The programme does not tell you what to think about this turn. It gives you the tools to assess it.
You study the political economy of development, so you can see how today's doctrine departs from earlier eras. You examine whose interests a given model serves and at whose expense. You learn to separate the rhetoric of partnership from the mechanics of who pays and who gains. Those are exactly the skills needed to evaluate a doctrine that markets itself as pragmatic common sense.
It matters for careers too. NGOs, ministries, multilateral agencies and research bodies all need people who can read a shifting donor environment and advise on how to respond. Understanding the move from aid to deals and its limits, is becoming part of the basic literacy of the field.
A field worth understanding now
The transactional turn raises the oldest question in development in a sharp new form: what is cooperation for and who is it meant to serve? That question is no longer settled, if it ever was. It is being fought over in real time.
If you want to think critically about that contest and to work in development with judgement rather than slogans, the online MSc in International Development at King's offers the grounding to do so.
You can study 100% online and part-time. To find out more or apply:
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