ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the concepts of “development” and “philanthropy”—in fact, philanthrocapitalism—within the framework of the Global Development Agenda (GDA)——that is, as part of the mainstream hegemonic, neoliberal, neocolonial, and financialized development model. It deconstructs the concept of “development” as an empty signifier and a fantasmatic narrative, and offers a brief critical analysis of both the 2030A as a whole and, specifically, its financing model. The chapter analyses the concept of philanthrocapitalism as the addition of two opposites: the transformation of liberal democracies into purely procedural, if not decisively authoritarian, neoliberal models, alongside processes of financialization. One of the basic elements to understand the 2030A as a new step along the path of the GDA has to do with the development finance system that the AAAA has incorporated into it. The AAAA does not question the structural elements related to the functioning of neoliberal and financialized capitalism that underlie the problems of development finance.
