2.7 Shifting the Power: Decolonizing Aid and Development

Arbie Baguios is currently a Programme Quality and Accountability Specialist at ActionAid UK.  He studied development studies at the Ateneo de Manila University and the London School of Economics and Political Science.  He has worked with Save the Children, the British Red Cross, ActionAid and others in the Philippines and the UK with missions to other countries. In Sept 2019 he founded Aid Re-Imagined, an initiative to help usher the evolution of aid towards justice and effectiveness through deep, radical, and evidence-based reflection and research. He has drafted a “re-imagined aid model” in a bid to offer a framework for designing, implementing and evaluating aid projects that are just and effective. He speaks to us about how development is taught in different countries, decolonizing project management tools such as the logframe, power dynamics amongst donors and agencies, pushing back against the status quo, audit culture, working in crisis mode, being more reflective, ActionAid's feminist principles, accountability as the responsible use of power, the new frontiers of the aid and development sector, his Aid-Re-Imagined project, and much more. He joins us from London, UK.