The 22nd Amplifying Africa’s Voices (AAV) dialogue took place on 17th September 2026 under the form of a consultation to gather inputs into the Norwegian development policy in the making.
This dialogue was organized at a very opportune moment when development cooperation is at a turning point.
Several major bilateral donors have reduced their aid budgets, shifting geopolitics is reshaping partnerships, and many African countries face tight fiscal space and heavy debt service obligations. Meanwhile, Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched Project Vendepunkt, a process to develop a new Norwegian development policy in response to the far-reaching geopolitical changes and shifts in aid financing of recent years. The process will culminate in a white paper to be presented to the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) in its spring 2027 session.
Thus, this dialogue provided a platform of engagement for African think tanks and other stakeholders from the Future of Development Cooperation Coalition to share their perspectives, expertise and policy priorities, to highlight key messages and recommendations on equitable partnerships, locally grounded knowledge and future-oriented development cooperation, and to help ensure these perspectives are reflected in the Norwegian Government’s process, laying the groundwork for continued engagement with the Ministry and Norad as the white paper takes shape.
After Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, ACET President and CEO, welcome remarks, H.E. Stine Renate Håheim, Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Norway, introduced the meeting by offering an overview of Norway’s new international development strategy. While Norway has the ambition to maintain a high level of development assistance, the Deputy Minister emphasized the continuation of work on humanitarian assistance, on peace and human rights, as well as on global public goods, especially related to climate, health and knowledge.
The Deputy Minister then put a series of questions to participants:
- Has the international development system become too fragmented, and have donors like Norway been too eager to create new initiatives, funds and programmes rather than strengthening and using national systems?
- How can partnership be made real on a continent too diverse for a single approach, and what should be the division of labor between Norway’s bilateral efforts and the UN and multilateral development banks?
- Should job creation and economic transformation be at the heart of Norway’s long-term development policy, which sectors can deliver jobs at scale, and how should the informal economy be addressed?
She pointed to areas where Norway has experience to share (renewable energy, ocean management, taxation and natural resource management), noting that Norway’s prosperity owes less to oil and gas than to how that wealth was managed, to women’s participation in the workforce and to a well-organized labor market. She also underlined that Africa has capital and that development finance is much bigger than aid: how capital is mobilized and directed is largely a question of rules, institutions and incentives, which moves the conversation from development cooperation to political cooperation.
Norway is currently engaged in a myriad of countries and project thematics. The new strategy is therefore an opportunity to streamline its approach and focus on “doing fewer things more at scale”.
The Deputy Minister summed up with three questions:
- What does Africa need from a partner like Norway that it is not getting today?
- Where can Norway make a distinctive, not necessarily the biggest, contribution? and,
- If we are serious about more equal partnership, what should Norway do differently and what should it stop doing?
Beyond the pledge, participants welcomed this exercise: consulting think tanks and experts prior to setting priorities is a strong signal for alignment of development cooperation with African priorities and the identification of value-added areas. Participants broadly endorsed job creation and economic transformation as the main priority yet they added some nuances.
Several voices highlighted fragility as a key characteristic to take into account, including poverty and vulnerability of the population as well as climate and conflict-affected countries.
Peace and security are cornerstone to development. Without addressing the deep roots (basic public service, health, education) instead of symptoms (institutional stability, coups), fragility can negatively impact surrounding countries – as shown in the Sahel region. It is therefore important to maintain humanitarian action to protect people in crises but job creation should be thought as an integral part of the process to trigger longer-term stability. In that regard, peace should be considered as a global public good as well.
Participants underscored the centrality of locally-led development.
System-approach and holistic vision based on countries’ priorities are a must. To ensure long-term sustainability, transformative actions should rely on local knowledge and leverage local drivers of change for the realization of locally embedded projects by local partners – that should include not only NGOs but also the research and education ecosystem, private sector, entrepreneurs, financial institutions and government systems. A fundamental paradigm shift needs to occur, stemming from “what can we do for them?” to “what do they want/need from us?”, to minimize the adverse consequences of maladapted interventions imported from the outside. Locally-led development entails local leadership and ownership. Beyond democracy strictly speaking, it comes with the need to ensure a broader participation to decisions that are affecting the people’s lives while taking into account cultural norms and practices.
Participants shared the Deputy Minister’s concern about fragmentation.
To avoid treating “Africa” as a single context, partners should start from countries’ own plans and diagnostics, adding a note on their specific value-add but also building on lessons learnt from previous experiences around both struggles and incentives. They should also be willing to pool funds, sometimes lead and sometimes play a supporting role, so as to reduce transaction costs for governments. One concrete experience was shared: pooled sector funds for health, education and water, in which partners’ contributions are combined, and projects are implemented under national procedures, including national procurement, with a single government authorization and all partners around one table. Participants also called for a rethink of accountability: mutual accountability, in which both the country and its partner answer for outcomes delivered to citizens, not for money disbursed, to make room for continuous adaptation.
Political institutes emphasized the criticality of regional dimension for accelerated economic transformation. Many development challenges cannot be addressed solely at the national level. Intra-African trade, infrastructure corridors, energy markets or food systems require regional coordination. Regional integration is to be facilitated by regional institutions in sync with national initiatives towards more functioning African systems. Easing the tension between national and regional, demands alignment with regional agreements while concomitantly engaging at the country level. In addition, the whole regional value chain across countries should be considered within the bigger picture of the continental integration.
Participants – quoting the counterexample of cotton production in Mali and Burkina Faso – underlined the question of productivity levels. Job creation implies manufacturing and industrialization and should goes with transforming local resources to create value locally. They also advised for a more productive utilization of debt. Recalling that some countries are currently losing their ability to intervene in crucial sectors (such as social spendings and public investments) due to debt burden, participants suggested that Africa needs allies to further push for a global financial architecture reform beyond G20 and the Common Framework efforts.
For the participants, the stages of operationalization and implementation are of utmost importance to tackle poverty and unemployment. The continent doesn’t lack plans (being national, regional or continental – AfCFTA, Agenda 2063). Alignment with these frameworks is necessary but no longer sufficient; it is important to strengthen Africa’s capability to actually deliver on those priorities. To that end, institutional capacity will be key to undertake the much-needed long-term structural transformation. The practical test of a partnership should be that, when it ends, African institutions can sustainably do what they could not do before. It was proposed that ACET and Norway pilot one or two African-led development delivery mechanisms to translate existing strategies into a limited number of jointly agreed measurable outcomes. African think tanks and policy institutes could contribute technical knowledge and provide contextual evidence, closely working with countries and regional institutions, so as to test new models organized around building lasting delivery capabilities (incl. financing, knowledge partnerships, accountability).
Norway detains no African debt to cancel, it has a dedicated Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Norfund), and it is not a former colonial power. These elements constitute a competitive advantage that can help the Scandinavian country play a more prominent role in Africa’s development. Furthermore, it possesses solid expertise in domains relevant for the continent. Among those domains, participants notably listed: revenue management (incl. sovereign wealth fund), natural resources governance, water management, green economy, renewable energy, climate change, ocean (incl. fisheries), knowledge and innovation, and public-private relationships. On taxation, however, participants cautioned that Africa does not lack technical solutions; the binding constraint being the political economy of taxation. With the right tools, these selected strategic sectors are where Norway could add relevant value and make the difference on the ground.