The head of the United Kingdom’s development finance institution said on Thursday that the global development financing system is undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by shrinking Western aid budgets and the economic fallout from the Middle East conflict.
Speaking at the Semafor World Economy summit in Washington, DC, British International Investment (BII) Chief Executive Officer Leslie Maasdorp said the old model of development financing was no longer fit for purpose. “The development finance system has been in need of a sort of structural reset,” he said, adding that many recipient countries had grown uncomfortable with what he described as a paternalistic donor-recipient dynamic.
Maasdorp called for a decisive shift toward investment-led approaches, capital mobilisation, and deeper regional integration. He said BII was actively building partnerships designed to de-risk investment in markets that global capital has historically treated as too volatile to enter.
BII is among the partners supporting Mission 300, the initiative led by the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to connect 300 million Africans with electricity by 2030. Since Mission 300’s launch in 2024, the initiative has connected 44 million people to electricity, with 30 countries signing energy compacts focused on expanding infrastructure, integrating regional power systems, and attracting private investment.
BII has also committed funds to scale battery rental operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where more than 80% of the population lacks electricity access. The institution is additionally backing a major port project in the conflict-affected DRC, one of several large-scale infrastructure bets the organisation is making in frontier markets.
BII has total net assets of £9.87 billion and has committed to directing at least 30% of its new investments toward climate finance between 2022 and 2026.
Maasdorp’s Washington remarks reflect a broader rethinking underway at development finance institutions globally, as aid budgets tighten across Europe and the United States and frontier markets look increasingly to private capital and institutional partnerships to fill the gap.
