Listening to Leaders 2025: Development cooperation over a decade of disruption

Disruption has defined the last decade of development cooperation—from climate change and global epidemics to persistent conflicts and geopolitical competition. For the past ten years, AidData’s Listening to Leaders program has been at the forefront of efforts to help development partners better respond to the priorities, preferences, and perspectives of their counterparts in low- and middle-income countries. In this report, the authors bring together for the first time four waves of our global leader surveys, conducted at critical intervals during this decade of disruption (in 2014, 2017, 2020, and 2024). They analyze how more than 13,000 responses from public, private, and civil society leaders representing 148 countries and territories rate the performance of their external development partners, how leaders’ attitudes have evolved, and what factors might explain their perceptions. This report’s findings can be used by donors to optimize future assistance efforts; by Global South leaders and watchdog groups to inform reform efforts to make assistance more accountable and responsive; and by policymakers to explore whether and under what conditions development finance helps them project global influence.