This episode of CID Voices explores how development finance institutions have evolved from counter-cyclical lenders during the financial crisis into impact-driven investors operating under mounting fiscal scrutiny. The conversation moves through the tensions shaping DFIs today: the push toward private capital mobilization and what it means for additionality, the segregation of capital pools across risk and return profiles, the challenges of local currency financing in emerging markets, and the growing pressure from governments to instrumentalize DFIs as part of national strategies. It closes on the geopolitical turn in development finance, including the DFC's reframing around national security, and what a future that blends development, climate, and defence finance might look like.
Harvard Center for International Development