Blog post
Academic Engagement at the 2025 Busan Global Partnership Forum
Nowella Anyango-van Zwieten took the floor (see the recording here) at the 2025 Busan Global Partnership Forum (30 Sept. – 1 Oct 2025) in Seoul, South Korea to advocate for deeper academic engagement with the Development Effectiveness Agenda. She is part of an academic effort mapping out experts and institutions working on development effectiveness - across disciplines, sectors and regions, including those from the Global South. Academic engagement is an ambition in the working programme of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC).
Nowella gave further elaboration at the 30th Steering Committee Meeting of the Global Partnership, which she attended as an observer on 1 October 2025.
The growing international team of scholars that she is working with have a four-part action strategy:
- to build a comprehensive global mapping of academic scholars and institutions working on development effectiveness;
- that will be demand driven and responsive to stakeholder needs;
- and will include an Development Effectiveness Expert Survey to track expert views, respond to emerging challenges, and gather rapid, rigorous input on proposed policies and interventions;
- and provide an opportunity for policymakers, businesses, civil society organisations or communities to commission systematic academic reviews and evidence gap maps to synthesise the state of knowledge on priority topics.