A Kodak Moment for Development Cooperation: Will Development Agencies Miss the Next Era of International Cooperation?

Author: Julius MURKE

Two transformations are reshaping international cooperation: the move from trade liberalisation towards strategic industrial partnerships, and the move from development assistance towards mutual-interest partnerships. As these traditionally separate worlds begin to converge, what does this mean for the organisations implementing international cooperation. 

During my time as a trainee at GIZ, I worked on strategic innovation: the question of how organisations can prepare for disruptive change before that change undermines the business model on which they depend.

One of the classic lessons is the Kodak case. Kodak did not simply fail because it overlooked digital photography. In fact, Kodak was one of the first companies to develop digital photography technology. The problem was that fully embracing digital photography meant accelerating the destruction of the highly profitable film business on which the company had been built.

That is what makes strategic innovation so difficult. Adapting to disruption may require an organisation not only to acquire new capabilities, but to question some of its strongest existing assets, identities and business models.

Development cooperation may now be approaching such a moment.

Two transformations, one emerging model of international cooperation

The speeches by Emmanuel Macron at the UN General Assembly on 22 September 2026 (France | 81st session - General Debate) and Ursula von der Leyen in her State of the Union address a week earlier (State of the Union 2026) offer an increasingly concrete picture of what a new international alliances could look like.

Macron called for countries to cooperate in defending their sovereignty and shaping the governance of emerging technologies rather than leaving the future of artificial intelligence to a handful of powerful actors. Von der Leyen went further in proposing an Alliance for the Future with Canada, extending beyond the existing free-trade agreement towards cooperation on intelligent manufacturing, AI, quantum technologies, defence industries, critical minerals and batteries.

These speeches illustrate a broader transformation in international cooperation between high-income countries.

For decades, international economic cooperation was strongly influenced by trade liberalisation and market-oriented economic thinking. Governments negotiated trade agreements, removed barriers, harmonised regulations and created favourable framework conditions for businesses to invest and develop international value chains.

Today, governments increasingly want to go beyond establishing these framework conditions. They want to actively develop technological and industrial capabilities in partnership with other countries.

International cooperation is moving from enabling economic integration towards jointly organising the development of technologies, industrial ecosystems and productive capacities.

At the same time, a second transformation is taking place.

Traditional development cooperation between high-income and lower-income countries is increasingly being reframed as cooperation based on mutual interests.

European development policy is moving beyond a predominantly donor–recipient relationship towards partnerships that explicitly combine the economic and strategic interests of Europe with those of partner countries.

The EU's Global Gateway strategy illustrates this shift. Its cooperation with Ethiopia, for example, explicitly combines infrastructure investment, regulatory convergence, technology transfer, regional trade integration and the mobilisation of European companies, universities and financial institutions.

These two parallel transformations point towards a possible convergence of two forms of international cooperation that have historically operated through rather different institutional systems.

On the one hand, cooperation between high-income countries is becoming more interventionist, more technologically demanding and more focused on jointly developing industrial capabilities.

On the other hand, cooperation between high-income and lower-income countries is increasingly organised around mutual economic interests, investment, technology and industrial partnerships.

What if these two developments are moving towards a common model of international cooperation?

And if they are, what does this mean for the organisations responsible for implementing it?

I am usually more interested in what the world needs than in defending the existence of any particular organisation or sector.

However, I believe that the development cooperation community possesses some of the most valuable institutional capacities for implementing the international cooperation system that is now emerging.

Yet development organisations themselves may be among the most important actors to convince of this opportunity.

Perhaps demonstrating that this transformation is also in their own institutional interest is therefore an important part of the argument.

Two worlds of international cooperation — and two different implementation architectures

To understand the implications of convergence, it is useful to briefly compare how international cooperation is currently organised.

Consider the EU's cooperation with Canada or Japan on the one hand, and with Ethiopia or Cameroon on the other.

Cooperation with Canada and Japan is largely organised through direct relationships between the relevant public institutions, supported by research organisations, universities and businesses.

Digital partnerships, for instance, bring together the European Commission's sectoral directorates and their Canadian or Japanese counterparts. Research institutions cooperate through dedicated research programmes, while businesses establish commercial and technological partnerships.

The objective is primarily to connect existing capabilities, coordinate policies, pool resources and jointly develop technologies.

Cooperation with Ethiopia and Cameroon, by contrast, is more strongly structured around development-finance instruments, multiannual country programmes and dedicated implementation organisations.

The European Commission's Directorate-General for International Partnerships, EU Delegations and Member State development institutions play central roles in programming and financing cooperation. Implementation frequently involves development agencies, financial institutions, multilateral organisations and specialised contractors working with partner-country institutions.

The following comparison simplifies two diverse systems but captures their different institutional logics. 

Dimension	High-Income to High-Income	High-Income to Low-Income
Central objective	Connecting capabilities, pooling resources, coordinating regulation and developing common economic interests	Supporting economic and institutional development, addressing global challenges and increasingly pursuing mutual economic interests
Institutional leadership	Foreign affairs and specialised ministries, sectoral European Commission DGs, regulatory and research institutions	DG INTPA, EU Delegations, development ministries, development finance institutions and partner-country ministries
Implementation	Relatively direct cooperation between ministries, regulators, universities, research institutions and companies	Frequently mediated through development agencies, financial institutions, multilateral organisations and technical assistance programmes
Role of companies and universities	Often direct partners in research, investment and technology development	Frequently contractors, beneficiaries, investors or participants in development programmes, increasingly also strategic partners
Financing	National budgets, joint research programmes, commercial investment and reciprocal programme participation	Development grants, concessional financing, guarantees

 These are differences of emphasis rather than absolute distinctions. Development cooperation already includes direct institutional partnerships and industrial investment.

Nevertheless, the comparison reveals an important difference.

Cooperation between high-income countries primarily connects existing capabilities, while traditional development cooperation has frequently focused on strengthening or establishing capabilities in partner countries.

This difference also shapes the role of intermediaries.

In EU–Japan cooperation, a European regulator can work directly with its Japanese counterpart. Universities can establish joint research projects, and companies can develop technologies together.

In development cooperation, an implementing organisation often facilitates the relationship between the financing institution and the partner-country institution while providing technical assistance, managing institutional change and coordinating implementation.

But what happens when cooperation between these different groups of countries increasingly pursues similar objectives?

Convergence of international cooperation models

My hypothesis is that the increasing importance of technology in economic competitiveness, security and geopolitical influence is changing the substance of international cooperation.

In a globally interconnected economy, developing a semiconductor industry, establishing pharmaceutical production capacities or building AI infrastructure frequently requires cooperation across borders.

Governments are therefore becoming more actively involved in organising international industrial and technological partnerships.

This shift contrasts with the predominantly ordoliberal approach to economic policy that has historically been influential in Europe, under which the state's principal task is to establish and enforce the framework conditions within which businesses operate.

The emerging approach increasingly involves governments actively shaping industrial development, mobilising investment and facilitating cooperation between companies, research institutions and public authorities.

And this transformation is not restricted to cooperation between high-income countries.

The same technological, industrial and regulatory challenges increasingly shape relations between high-income and lower-income countries. Especially with the EU that imports roughly 80% of its digital technologies, which makes them a technology recipient not provider and puts them in a similar situation as a lot of middle- and low-income countries.

The future distinction may therefore be less about development cooperation versus strategic cooperation, and more about strategic partnerships between countries with different levels of financial, technological and institutional capacity.

This could fundamentally change the implementation architecture of international cooperation.

Who will implement this new international cooperation?

If international cooperation increasingly involves jointly developing technologies, industrial ecosystems and regulatory systems, who is supposed to implement these partnerships?

If governments want to jointly build battery industries, semiconductor ecosystems, AI infrastructure or health data spaces, exchanging best practices and pooling research funding is not enough. Cooperation has to move from coordinating frameworks to implementing capabilities.

Europe's battery policy illustrates the challenge. The European Battery Alliance mobilised substantial investment and helped build production capacity, but Europe continues to struggle with competitiveness, raw-material dependencies, industrial scale-up and investment. The lesson is not that cooperation failed, but that building an industry requires much more than research funding, political coordination and stakeholder platforms.

The European Health Data Space provides a similar example from regulation and digital infrastructure. Agreeing on a European legal framework is only the beginning. Implementation requires detailed interoperability standards, software architecture, security requirements and coordination across national health systems. This is why initiatives such as TEHDAS2 bring together technical experts from many countries and why the EU also uses specialised consultancies to provide technical support for implementation.

These examples point to an important consequence.

The more international cooperation moves towards concrete industrial and technological implementation, the greater the need for organisations that can combine technical expertise with the ability to manage complex international partnerships.

This requires two capabilities at the same time.

One is technical: understanding software development, industrial production, investment, standards or the specific technology concerned.

The other is institutional: facilitating change, coordinating actors with different interests and working across governments, companies, universities and regulatory systems.

Development organisations have the implementation experience — but not necessarily the technical expertise

Traditional development organisations possess substantial experience in institutional change management, programme implementation, regulatory reform and stakeholder coordination.

However, they often lack the deep technical expertise required to manage advanced industrial and technological development and the network to specialised expert communities and industry partners.

Managing a digital transformation strategy process is not necessarily equivalent to managing a complex international software development project.

And facilitating private-sector development in low-income countries does not automatically provide the capabilities required to structure industrial investments, manage venture-capital portfolios or establish international joint ventures for high-tech industries.

The challenge is therefore not simply to extend traditional development cooperation into new sectors.

It is to develop an institutional model capable of combining existing cooperation and implementation expertise with the technical and commercial capabilities required for industrial development.

This also raises the question of strategic partnerships.

Development organisations are deeply connected to development ministries, partner-country governments, international organisations and development finance institutions.

But their relationships with industrial research institutions, technology companies, business associations, venture-capital funds, innovation agencies and specialised regulatory bodies in high-income countries are often less deeply institutionalised.

These are precisely the actors that increasingly need to be involved in international technological and industrial partnerships.

The emerging model would therefore require development organisations to build stronger relationships with universities, research institutions, industrial associations, technology companies and specialised public agencies.

It would also require much closer cooperation with sectoral ministries responsible for economic policy, technology, research and industrial development.

This does not mean that development organisations themselves should become AI laboratories, semiconductor manufacturers or venture-capital funds.

Their potential lies in combining their experience in international cooperation with the specialised expertise of these institutions.

They could become the facilitators and systems integrators of increasingly complex international partnerships, ensuring that different actors, technologies, financial instruments and institutions work together towards common objectives.

This would create opportunities beyond the traditional geographical and institutional boundaries of development cooperation.

But it would also expose development organisations to competition.

Specialised consultancies, industrial development agencies, research institutions and innovation agencies could all assume parts of this emerging implementation role.

The development sector cannot assume that its historical experience guarantees it a place in the future architecture of international cooperation.

The Kodak moment for development cooperation

This brings me to what may be the most important institutional challenge.

Organisations naturally tend to defend the activities, structures and business models that have made them successful.

One of development agencies institutional assets is their identity as organisations dedicated specifically to development and to cooperation with lower-income countries. That identity provides legitimacy, specialised knowledge, financing mechanisms and a distinct institutional position.

But what if the future opportunity lies precisely in weakening that distinction?

If international cooperation increasingly converges around strategic, technological and industrial partnerships, development organisations may need to stop defining themselves primarily through the objective of development and instead define themselves through their ability to facilitate and implement international cooperation.

This would not mean abandoning lower-income countries or development objectives. It would mean giving up the assumption that cooperation with these countries must constitute a separate institutional universe.

And that is strategically difficult, because it potentially means diluting one of the sector's strongest existing assets: its dedicated development identity.

Yet the alternative may be more dangerous. If development organisations defend their traditional niche while international cooperation changes around them, they risk missing the emerging market for implementation of strategic partnerships. At the same time, specialised technology, industrial and financial actors may increasingly enter the cooperation with lower-income countries that development organisations once considered their own domain.

This is why it may be time for another process of strategic re-engineering.

The question should not be how to protect the development cooperation business model. It should be what institutional capabilities the future system of international cooperation requires — and which parts of today's development organisations should be preserved, transformed or deliberately left behind.

Strategic innovation sometimes means accepting that the best way to protect an organisation's long-term relevance is to disrupt parts of the model that made it successful.

For development organisations, that may mean moving from being agencies for development cooperation towards becoming agencies for international cooperation.

From development organisations to international cooperation agencies

This transformation would not start from zero. Development organisations have already changed substantially.

The shift from the Millennium Development Goals to the Sustainable Development Goals marked a move from a primarily development-focused agenda towards a universal agenda of international cooperation. An OECD analysis estimated a few years ago that more than half of bilateral ODA could already be considered as contributing to global public goods.

Institutional language has changed as well. GIZ is the German Agency for International Cooperation. The European Commission's development architecture is now centred around DG INTPA, the Directorate-General for International Partnerships. Development organisations increasingly work on climate, technology, global health and strategic partnerships, and some already implement projects in high-income countries.

So the foundations for broader international cooperation agencies already exist.

But the direction is not linear. Germany's latest BMZ reform, for example, deliberately refocuses parts of development policy on poverty reduction and least developed countries.

The strategic question therefore remains open.

I believe the emerging international order will require stronger capacities to implement complex international partnerships. Not every partnership needs an intermediary. But the more governments seek to jointly develop technologies, industrial ecosystems and regulatory systems, the greater the need for organisations capable of turning political partnerships into implementation.

Development organisations already possess much of the required experience in facilitation, institutional change and complex programme management. What they often lack is deeper technological and industrial expertise and stronger links to universities, business associations, technology companies, investors and specialised sector institutions.

Their opportunity is therefore to combine their existing implementation capacities with these new communities of expertise.

The central question is therefore whether the capacities built within development cooperation can become part of the implementation architecture of a broader system of international cooperation.

Whether this happens will depend not only on political mandates, but also on whether the development community itself sees this transformation as an opportunity rather than primarily as a threat to its existing identity.