Dilma Rousseff, former president of Brazil and president of the New Development Bank (NDB), speaks during the 10th NDB Annual Meeting in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, in July 2025. South Africa’s infrastructure loans highlight the NDB’s growing role as an alternative source of development finance, the writer argues.
For decades, developing economies have been tethered to the Bretton Woods institutions – the IMF and the World Bank – for financial assistance. That reliance has rarely been seamless.
Loans have come with strict conditions, structural adjustment programmes, and the erosion of fiscal autonomy. Supporters of austerity argue that such measures discipline extravagant governments, and in some cases that has been true.
But the broader reality is that these interventions have often stabilised short‑term crises while leaving behind truncated policy autonomy, deep cuts in social spending, and only moderate long‑term growth.
For many in the Global South, the experience has been one of intrusion rather than partnership, with poverty and underdevelopment persisting despite decades of engagement.
