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Darren Walker

Our Predecessors Built a World of Winners and Losers. It’s Time for Something Different.

Our international rules-based order through which the world’s nations pursue global peace and development is crashing into the limits of its founding vision. What our predecessors built some eight decades ago, after the Second World War — from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to the United Nations — is in desperate need of repair. But it remains essential, and salvageable.

For billions of people, the stakes could not be higher. This is painfully true for the people of Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin continues his malevolent invasion of a sovereign nation and subversion of international law. It’s also true across the Global South, where I believe our global development finance system has proved outdated, outmoded and outmatched.

Toward a new gospel of wealth

As I begin my third year at the Ford Foundation’s helm, I am reminded of how privileged I am—and we all are—to serve this institution. For my colleagues and me, these past 15 months have entailed both deep introspection about this privilege and broad exploration of how we can harness and direct it to advance our mission. For us, what has unfolded is a process… Read More »Toward a new gospel of wealth