ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the current and future challenges facing the international development aid system in the face of COVID-19. It provides an overview of the issues the pandemic has generated as they relate to three critical areas of aid—health, food security, and education—as well as cross-sectional issues with gender. The chapter then turns to the linkages between COVID-19 and the looming debt crisis, using this topic to illuminate some of the broader weaknesses in the contemporary global governance of aid and development. The chapter concludes with three direct observations on aid fragmentation, the lack of transparency, and the sustained commitment to traditional aid structures before offering two big take-away messages on the need to “Go Global” and “Global Local” in the future governance of aid for development and humanitarianism.