Making Hope Happen – Now and Then - by Jamie Drummond

This is a personal reflection by Jamie Drummond on the last 20 years, with a special reference to challenges and opportunities in the UK creative campaigning context, as we contemplate how to build support for a modern-day Marshall Plan for People, Planet – and Hope. Share your views here – jamie@sharingstrategies.org.

Twenty years ago, 250,000 people marched on the streets of Edinburgh demanding we Make Poverty History as billions watched the Live 8 concerts. For months before, millions had been mobilised, wearing white bands, writing to policymakers, raising their voices. All this built pressure on politicians around the world, especially the then Group of 8 nations leaders, to respond to our demands – like “drop the debt”, “double aid”, and “make trade fair”.  

As President Trump’s cuts, backed in milder form by PM Starmer, threaten to kill 14 million people (according to this study in The Lancet), as many deaths as a world war -  we have to ask: where are we…where are those marching people, now? And what might make them march, with hope in their hearts, once more? 

I was honoured to be a busy  part of the movement back then..  Here’s my take on what it did and did not  achieve. An honest assessment is needed- of what went right and wrong, where we can go from here – and who "we" might be. This assessment gives me hope that we can rebuild a better, bigger movement than before.  

The marching and slogans were supported by fiercely non-partisan political alliance-building and aimed to scale effective proven programs – and it worked, certainly at first.  We forced politicians to drop 100% of the debts owed by some of the poorest nations, promise to double smart aid investments for data-driven health and humanitarian programs (a promise half delivered) and make trade a bit fairer, while also taking steps to strengthen democracy accountability and transparency – what we called then “the data deal”. This notion of a mutually accountable partnership was lifted from the inspirational Millennium Action Plan for Aica, launched in 2000 at the hopeful dawn of a new millennium. This report outlined how these steps could unlock job-rich economic growth rates every year for the continent for the next generation.  

At that rate, Africa’s economies would more than double and poverty more than halve by 2025 – by now.  This deal was reflected in the “In our Common Interest” report, which influenced the Gleneagles G8 communique. Agreed July 6th, 2005.  President Mandela and Archbishop Tutu called for the original New Partnership. It was drafted by leaders like Meles Zenawi and Trevor Manuel – before anyone says the campaign came about only as a top-down colonial concept. It was an incredibly hopeful time that still inspires those who were there to hear Mandela’s words – “we can be that great generation… to make poverty history”. 

It was a restless rollercoaster as a network of activists surfed the jetlag with  Bono, Geldof, Richard Curtis, as well as African influentials like Youssou Ndou, Djimon Hounsou and Angelique Kidjo and Hollywood celebrities like Ashley Judd and Brad Pitt. We worked closely with faith leaders, and especially the right and left in the US Congress and across the “Heart of America” to generate strategic media attention and direct it towards passing historic legislation and funding to fight AIDS and extreme poverty. We set up an entity, DATA (later rebranded to ONE), whose aim was to catalyse a wider movement of fact-based activists or “factivists”. There were tensions, of course, but for a while at least it felt as if the world was indeed as one. 

Did We Make Any Poverty History? 

Some today breezily dismiss it all as an idealistic, sloganeering, celeb-studded waste of time. That is evidently false, even if our impact was too fleeting.  It is true that extreme poverty rates in Africa haven’t declined fast enough, and we will dig into why this happened below.  But since the mid-2000s, child deaths have more than halved, from just over 10 million to 4.8 million, and deaths from AIDS have more than halved from 2 million to 630,000 a year. Between 2000 (when we first got debt relief for some countries) and 2020, extreme poverty rates in countries like Ethiopia and Ghana halved, and education enrollment increased by 50 million students. Much of this happened because of heroic partnerships that channelled financing for medicines and technology to empower local health workers and teachers. Famine “early warning systems” became the norm, helping reduce food insecurity and prevent famines. The people who marched back then would be so proud of all this. If only they knew. Why don’t they? 

The narrative that none of this works is false. We hear it constantly from those on the far right who don’t like support for anyone abroad, but also from many partners who worry about a lack of local agency when Big Aid once stepped in and sometimes pushed local views and ideas aside.  

What Went Wrong: How Hope Retreats 

A few years after the 2005 high point, the world hit the low point of the Global Financial Crisis. Brexit, Trump, nativist populism — you can trace so much back to the original sin of a poorly regulated US financial system which screwed up the world economy, forced an era of austerity upon hard-pressed communities after we all had to pay for the bailout of the banks, and gave us all anger and justified distrust in elites and experts. As a result, the promised increases for Africa dried up a few years into the delivery schedule. There followed an era of very low interest rates caused by quantitative easing. As aid stopped increasing, many countries borrowed large sums pegged to the dollar at low-but crucially variable-rates of interest. While some of this was well invested, tragically, not all was. A related problem was the natural resource boom as companies raced for resource extraction contracts and a wall of often corrupt, easy money bribed officials for these extraction rights. The so-called “resource course” screwed up governance in too many places. As too many bad new debts piled up, some leaders became complacent and sadly corrupt. Poverty levels stayed too high because not enough of the newly borrowed money went into real investment – digital and sustainable infrastructure, health and education to transform economies – and too much into daily consumption or lost through corruption.  

The smart programmes, which had been put in place to ensure citizens locally could transparently track and receive investments, were too often sidestepped. Then COVID-19 struck. Then, Putin invaded Ukraine. Debt and interest rates went up dramatically. – So those who had borrowed heavily started to experience more distress. All the while, climate and biodiversity loss impacts worsened. Coupled with rapid population growth, these caused tensions which often broke out into open conflict. Then Trump raised tariffs and cut aid, and forced the EU and UK to cut it further to fund regional defence (and some defence increases are needed to defeat Putin).  

There's an inspiring generation of entrepreneurs across Africa and other emerging regions who are up for turning these toughest of times around – if they can access fair investment on decent terms. But the above summarises devastating cumulating crises – almost impossible for any country or community to face. 

Something else happened to many in the international campaigning world, at least in the UK. As aid investments increased, too many of the youthful activists of 20 years ago became middle-aged service providers. The progressive faith groups and internationalist trade unions that were once the bedrock of anti-apartheid, Jubilee and make-poverty history campaigns went into retreat, lost membership and became more inwardly focused.  All our efforts with celebrities and politicians back then stood on the shoulders of these giants of social movements. Social media also didn’t help social movements as much as we hoped back then, instead delivering ever more special interest campaigns which end up militating against each other in hierarchies of hurt. Rather than provide the platform for partnerships to tackle extreme poverty or injustice, too, social media has too often been a place for grandstanding grievances. The universalist call to action of Martin Luther King, Archbishop Tutu or even President Obama has been replaced by siloed efforts to mobilise micro-communities, too often at the expense of each other.

A specific, strange and in some ways excellent thing happened in the UK.  While implementing post-GFC austerity domestically, a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government increased aid to 0.7% of gross national income, and legislated for this, as a way of showing they were still compassionately conservative. Had the quality of that increased investment all been excellent and not been spread around different Whitehall departments and frittered on domestic refugee costs, the politics of ”aid” might now not be so bad.  

In 2015, it did seem for a moment like internationalism had escaped the global financial crisis’s long shadow as the international community agreed on the Paris Climate Treaty and the Sustainable Development Goals. But the long, angry arms of austerity and distrust reached out in 2016, with the Brexit vote and President Trump's first election. Nativist populism, which pits the poor at home against the poor overseas, and the long term against the short term, arrived with a bang, and is still banging its angry drum ever louder. But also the interests that had scuppered the climate agreement in Copenhagen in 2009, and who had been beaten back in 2015, got reorganised to delay or distract from urgent action on climate or financing development and resilience in climate-vulnerable countries. 

Combine the mal-governance in the global economy with challenges in some specific emerging countries, with the particular toxicity of austerity, while increasing aid in the UK, and then a conservative leader in Kemi Badenoch who withdrew bipartisan support for international investments, and then we have the current situation at least in the UK. 

Hard-Headed Hope 

So, how do we rebuild from here – and who are “we”? 

In acknowledgement of how far things have gone wrong, Pope Francis called for a new Jubilee starting in 2025. The Jubilee is an inspirational Old Testament imperative where the ancient Hebrews were obliged to cancel the debts, free the slaves and redistribute the land every jubilee year.  Pope Francis added another word to the jubilee concept in 2025: “hope”. Some scoff at this idea in such dark times, and it’s hard not to. But even the tough nut of the current debt crisis can be cracked as the cornerstone within a wider reform of the financial system that finances the future for all people on our planet – and restores hope for all. 

Today, 3.3 billion people live in countries where debt service exceeds investments in health. These countries need a mix of relief, debt restructuring arbitrated by independent and fair mechanisms, and a surge of new investment into a transformative country-owned platform for growth. New “'Borrowers' Clubs” are being formed, announced recently at the  Seville financing summit, to help African and other nations help each other negotiate better terms to restructure debts. If these borrowers club together, they can build on and far improve the existing debt restructuring effort (of the G20 nations) and better bring creditors as diverse as China and the private sector to the table to restructure these debts on better terms to attract future investment and growth. 

The best opportunities to invest in the world are in these countries with their booming youthful populations and abundant land, resources and comparative advantage in renewable energy generation (given the solar, geothermal, hydro and wind potential). The extraordinary drop in solar installation costs and rise in renewable energy generation in the last few years is an exceptional shot of hope. However, the lack of investment now to scale these breakthroughs in emerging economies might mean we miss the chance to enable these economies’ clean, green growth—a growth path the whole world needs these nations to navigate if we are to avoid climate catastrophe. 

Here's where hardheaded hope helps. The last debt relief program had a terrible name - the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. Who wants to be in that club?  New rounds of debt relief restructuring and investment could instead be dubbed the High Opportunity Partner Economies club - or H.O.P.E.  

Restructuring and relief must, however, be conditional on the radical transparency demanded by citizens in these nations. People in whose name debts are borrowed must be able to track new debts and public finance flows 100% of the time.  If citizens can’t follow the money, don’t drop that debt. This radical transparency must infuse not just debt architecture but our international financial system as a whole. Radical transparency helps rebuild trust- and rediscover hope, for us all. Digital and AI can be harnessed far more to power platforms which help citizens and policy makers “follow the money” through the system and ensure that the resources invested achieve real results, invested in scaling solar and delivering effective health and education services. 

The City of London, in particular, needs to root out those closed and kleptocrat-friendly tendencies which have too often diverted funds from these people and planet-saving investments. Fighting corruption is a campaign that, to his immense credit, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy is leading on – along with support from Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell. Cleaning out corruption in finance will be the best thing we can do for African partners, and the best thing we can also do for British citizens. The abiding reason why we have not made poverty history is not because investments didn’t work, it’s because too many unaccountable elites let people down. So, let’s make common cause on holding government and elites accountable from London to Lagos– fighting corruption, enforcing tax compliance, improving tax collection, especially from the wealthiest, and applauding responsible investment. Across this new hope agenda, there are win-wins like these which benefit people all around our world.

A modern Marshall Plan - For People, Planet and Hope

 In the UK and all richer Western nations, the case for international investment needs to be seen as part of the wider work we must do to deliver sustainable, hopeful economic growth for ourselves, at home. African economies could all be growing at 7-10% but too many are stuck in debt, conflict or climate crises. That’s a humanitarian concern, but also a loss of economic growth, stability, and security for us all. Helping the continent of Africa get on a good green growth path is great for our good growth path too, as these partners become stable suppliers of critical minerals, talented entrepreneurs and key elements in green clean supply chains, and don’t become exporters of new pandemics or unmanageable mass climate and conflict-driven migration. As Sir Nick Stern keeps reminding us, an investment surge for sustainable and digital infrastructure is the only route to a well-governed growth story for all in the 21st century, reducing inflation, corruption, instability and building resilience to shocks. 

An austerity story this is not. We have the resources. Our public development banks have trillions in underused capital, but some technocrats sit timidly on innovations that could unlock these funds. Our politicians must direct them to act. Our Ultra High Net Worth Individuals are under-taxed, and as loving parents too, they should be worried for their children’s social acceptability and even safety in the future. Private personal savings and investments equal over a hundred trillion more. We must persuade asset managers in private finance to understand the choice is between a fearful and failing search for 30-40% returns for a few years more, then a breakdown in the financial system as insurance markets fail as climate impacts break their models, then spreading climate catastrophe and spreading conflict. Alternatively, we could generate a profitable scaling of sustainable and digital infrastructure with returns at a decent rate, which delivers for people and planet for the longer term. There’s not just more money to be made this way. It’s the only money to be made, unless you deny climate science. 

The Marshall Plan of the 1950s was a geo-economic masterstroke – it delivered hope to a hopeless Europe in recessionary, fearful times after the Second World War. That hope saved Western Europe from totalitarian sovietism. Today, we need a distributed and data-driven Marshall Plan for People and Planet, delivering hope for all. 

Winning Message, Messengers and Mission.  

The data says – don’t despair about other people. While people dislike vague concepts like “foreign aid” or “global development”, if you ask citizens whether they support specific, effective, lifesaving health and humanitarian programmes, they say yes, and don’t cut that good stuff that works. And if you ask them how much goes on aid and how much should go, they tend to say 10-20% of the government budget currently goes, and maybe it should be more like 2-3%. In fact, less than 1% goes on aid. It might be fashionable on the far left and far right to want to end all aid, but most people in the middle are kind and compassionate and don’t agree. But there we go again – the campaign was never only about “aid”, but also about debt, trade, investment, governance and partnerships – all the elements of the new partnership “data deal”. “Foreign Aid” as a concept certainly needs to go into total retirement. It’s staggering that smart data-driven guys (like the heroically generous Bill Gates) still use a phrase that the data says nobody likes. Let’s fully replace “aid” with investment or partnership. “Global development” is another terrible phrase. Call it “humanitarianism”, ” or “international cooperation”. “Global health” equally ghastly. Call it “shared health security”.  

While the words we use matter, who uses them and where matters more.  One of the challenges is that the local level grassroots organising we used to do has been replaced by clicking a button and ordering “global change” online, as if it is frictionless. Clicktivism is too often a corporate commitment-less cul-de-sac. Instead, we must use it to introduce people to real-world engagement opportunities which build real communities of values, where humans actually meet each other. The far right has been far better at offering these places to meet and belong than organisers in the middle or left. 

Hard-hit communities around the world share similar struggles, even if at different levels of severity, and there are some shared solutions. People are already connected internationally through football, food, fashion, faith, music, and the gaming industry. Let’s work with these existing international networks to help them serve local hard-hit communities better, and connect these local communities’ struggles and successes so we learn from each other, and rebuild cooperation between people, communities and nations from the grassroots up. Take Arsenal Football Club’s Coaching for Life or Marcus Rashford’s school feeding campaigns - these deliver for local communities, but they could also scale to network every local community globally. Somehow, internationalism became dismissible as the top-down business of elites and billionaires. It must once more become the common connective cause of our local communities around the world. 

Concerned Parents for People and Planet 

But what about that upstream cultural chaos caused by the “attention economy” and its angry, divisive but lucrative algorithms?  We need innovation and smart regulation to create trusted spaces for normal cooperative conversation online. Concerned parents are leading the way, through movements like “smartphone free kids”, planning to save schools and children from poorly regulated social media and its scarring impact on their kids’ mental health. This will hopefully organically grow into a wider movement to counter disinformation, science denialism, and hatred online. 

The words, messages, and messengers we use must also sell and explain the right policies. The data shows the public really supports more action on health, humanitarian, climate and shared growth, which are, for example, the four areas on which the UK government has decided to focus investment. That’s a good base, and a case can be rebuilt from there, so long as we know the best progress will occur, especially when people are educated and when women and girls are empowered locally by these programs. The real answer lies in a nuanced package of policies like the data deal – it’s not about one sector ( say health) or one financing route ( say aid), but wedge issues can allow people and politicians in via issue specific routes (say stopping aids, or stopping climate chaos) so long as we know real victory lies in the enduring implementation of a nuanced policy package that is often harder to communicate. 

Hope at Home. 

The UK hosts the Group of 7 and Group of 20 summits of world leaders in a few years’ time. It took a past movement seven years to deliver Jubilee Drop the Debt, and three years to deliver Make Poverty History and six years to turn things around between the Copenhagen and Paris climate summits. The next generation of creative campaigners, social influencers, and movement builders in the UK has just enough time to get organised before world leaders come to the UK in three years.  The UK itself is certainly a nation and people in need of a shared surge in hope. If we won’t get it from our politicians, let’s generate it ourselves and force it on our leaders.  We can yet crack the interconnected crises of our times and play a keystone partner role in this good growth story for people and planet. It may take longer than you demanded, Mandela, but we can yet be that great generation, so long as we let the next generation join us as the drivers of this journey.