Policymakers striving to help achieve global sustainable development can no longer take broad public, political and financial support for granted. They need to re-build public trust in international co-operation and build stronger coalitions for sustainable development.
Communications can help. Transparency and proactive communications can reassure citizens that funds are being spent wisely. Strategic communications can help organisations tackle mis- and disinformation and improve their reputations at home and abroad. Communications can promote global citizenship, inspire sustainable behaviours and mobilise investors.
Policymakers who want to modernise communications have three urgent priorities.
Rewrite narratives on development co-operation. Neither traditional “aid” narratives nor newer “national interest” narratives will work – they are too polarising.
Rethink campaign strategies. In today’s media environment, development communicators need to take risks, engage with emotions and invest in better visual and engaging content.
Update skillsets. Communicators need to master storytelling, data analysis, digital content creation and artificial intelligence in highly complex ethical, financial and political contexts.
Re‑building trust in international development co‑operation
For policymakers working to promote global sustainable development, these are trying times. Ten years ago, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provided them with an ambitious new mandate for their work. Today, the SDGs look far out of reach.
Achieving them by their 2030 deadline would require a massive push. Yet, several OECD governments are scaling back their commitments to global sustainable development. Following a 9% drop in Official Development Assistance in 2024, the OECD projects a further drop of 9-17% in 2025 (OECD, 2025[1]).
Alongside falling budgets, development organisations have also faced severe, headline-grabbing criticisms about their value and effectiveness (Box 1).
In 2024, the German Development Ministry (BMZ) created a “frequently asked questions” page to address misinformation about development policy. This followed a parliamentarian’s criticism of a sustainable mobility project in Peru, which went viral despite including misleading figures.
In February 2025, leaders of the French Development Agency (AFD) appeared on several media outlets to respond to widely reported accusations by a French member of the European Parliament, who had suggested that development co-operation was taken “from the pockets of French people” and “waste[d] on absurd projects”.
In September 2025, the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JICA) had to issue a correction regarding its “Africa Hometown” initiative. The initiative had sparked controversy online after being misinterpreted as a relaxation of Japanese visa rules.
Source: Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (2025[2]), Frequently asked questions addressed to the German Development Ministry (BMZ); Sud Radio (2025[3]), La réponse de l'Agence française de développement à Sarah Knafo; Japan International Cooperation Agency (2025[4]), Correction Regarding Media Coverage on "JICA Africa Hometown".
While many of the criticisms are unfair and fuelled by mis- and disinformation, they also appear to have hit a nerve. Citizens still strongly support development co-operation, but appear to have become less supportive in recent years (Figure 1).
% of respondents who think their governments should keep or increase current aid budgets
Note: Respondents were asked “Of its total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of (…), the (…) government currently allocates (…) to international aid for developing countries. Do you think that the government should increase or decrease the budget it allocates to international aid for developing countries?” Respondents were asked to choose from the following options: “Increase significantly; Increase slightly; Keep unchanged; Decrease slightly; Decrease significantly”.
Source: Development Engagement Lab (2025[5]), France Dashboard June 2025.
Development organisations striving for the SDGs can no longer take broad public, political and financial support for granted. The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has launched a major review on how development co-operation can “better reflect the reality of today’s world in transformation” (OECD, 2025[6]).
If policy reforms are to bear fruit, development organisations will need to build trust and coalitions. They will need to demonstrate value to the taxpayers that fund them and the communities where they operate. They will also need to inspire public and private partners to keep sustainable development on the global to-do list. Communication will have important roles to play.
Communication cannot be a substitute for sound and successful policies. Yet, good communication can be a core element of successful public policy (OECD, 2021[7]).
For a start, government transparency helps build trust and thereby provides public institutions with the legitimacy they need to put their programmes into practice (OECD, 2024[8]). Transparency on development co-operation is linked with greater taxpayer support (Heinzel, Reinsberg and Swedlund, 2024[9]). It could thus help development organisations stem the decline in trust that they, like most other public actors, have suffered from in recent years (Development Engagement Lab, 2025[10]).
Beyond basic transparency, communicating proactively is a way to reassure citizens that funds are being spent wisely and achieving results (Zimmermann, 2020[11]). To this end, communications is also a crucial weapon in the fight against mis- and disinformation on development co-operation (Zimmermann and Meyer, 2022[12]).
In a tense geo-political landscape, communications can help development organisations maintain good reputations in partner countries, where OECD members have recently faced both scepticism and concerted disinformation campaigns (OECD DevCom, 2023[13]).
This reputational challenge has become even more acute in the context of ongoing aid spending cuts. The OECD has called on DAC members to communicate clearly and responsibly with their partner countries on future funding plans (OECD, 2025[1]).
Alongside trust-building and reputation management, communication also has an educational function. Several agreed SDG targets, including target 4.7, highlight the importance of raising public awareness to promote sustainable development and global citizenship (UNESCO, 2024[14]). People need knowledge and inspiration if they are to help, for example, protect the planet or promote gender equality.
Another development policy goal that communication can help achieve is the mobilisation of private finance (Zimmermann, 2025[15]). Research suggests that better communications could help fill the information gaps and tackle the stereotypes that continue to keep investors away from emerging markets (AUC/OECD, 2023[16]; Wilke et al., 2024[17]).
Communications can thus help build public trust and support, tackle mis- and disinformation, raise awareness and educate citizens, and galvanise action and funding for sustainable development. It should be seen as an essential tool for development co-operation policy.
For development organisations, good communication comes with several challenges. First, they face a narrative challenge: it is hard to simplify stories about a complex policy field. Second, they face a media challenge: it is hard to get messages across in an ever more complex information landscape. Third, they face an institutional challenge: good communication requires recognition, resources and skills.
The narrative challenge: Crafting a complex story in simple terms
International development co-operation policy can be the source of powerful stories about people overcoming adversity and achieving their dreams. Yet, development policy also has features that make it inherently difficult to explain.
Distance. Unlike domestic policies like health or education, development programmes are delivered abroad. Their outcomes are not immediately visible or tangible to the taxpayers who fund them.
Overambition. Development organisations exist to tackle some of the most intractable and worrying problems facing humanity. To inspire confidence and action, they make powerful public commitments to idealistic goals, creating expectations that may well be impossible to meet.
Incoherence. Development organisations can have highly diverse – and sometimes even contradictory – policy objectives. For instance, tackling energy poverty can increase carbon emissions. Tackling irregular migration can stifle trade opportunities and reduce remittance flows.
Unattributability. Sustainable development is a long-term process that must be led by societies themselves. International development organisations can be confident about their contributions, but cannot – and should not – claim sole credit for results.
The media challenge: Getting messages across in a crowded information landscape
Even the most compelling narrative can fail to reach its intended audiences. Development organisations are struggling to get accurate messages across. Today’s media landscape is defined by several challenging features:
Fragmentation. Audiences today cannot be reached through a single broadcast. People consume news on an ever-growing number of platforms, including social media, instant messaging apps, video-based platforms and A.I. chatbots (Newman et al., 2025[18]). Each requires different types of content and communications expertise.
Polarisation. While audiences are divided along demographic and geographic lines, there are also ideological divides, with people choosing platforms based on their political beliefs. Polarisation can also occur within single platforms, when algorithms help create “echo chambers” in which people see only information that matches their existing beliefs.
News apathy and distrust. Many people have lost trust in traditional sources of news (Edelman Trust Institute, 2025[19]). Young people have turned to online content creators and influencers for their information, or have turned off the news entirely, practising total or selective news avoidance (Newman et al., 2023[20]).
The institutional challenge: Securing recognition and resources for professional communications
DAC members have long recognised the importance of public support. Soon after the Committee was created in 1961, the DAC Chair argued that, to expand development programmes, “fresh initiatives should be taken to secure public support”. In 1973, the DAC called on its members “to promote a better understanding …. of the problems of development and the progress made (Führer, 1994[21])”.
Accordingly, DAC members report to the OECD their spending on the promotion of development awareness, which flows largely to and through educational and civil society organisations. While reported spending remains high, there has been a strong downward trend: from USD 469 million in 2018 to USD 349 million in 2023. As a percentage of Official Development Assistance, spending has dropped from 0.36% to 0.2% (OECD, 2025[22]).
In parallel, development organisations have become more transparent. The Aid Transparency Index is a sign of improvements in the quality, quantity and timeliness of aid data during the past 12 years (Publish What You Fund, 2024[23]).
Yet, communicators in OECD DAC member organisations also highlight other institutional challenges that prevent innovation:
Bureaucratic hurdles and risk aversion. Public institutions engaged in foreign diplomacy tend to be risk averse. They are prone to using careful language and jargon that many citizens find hard to understand. In a fast-paced media environment, they can be very slow to move.
Complex governance. Communications teams need to co-ordinate with staff in offices all around the world, providing them with guidance and soliciting their content. In a 2023 survey of OECD DAC communicators, only 2 of 16 respondents considered their country offices well equipped for communications (OECD DevCom, 2023[13]).
Leadership buy-in. While many leaders say that communications is a priority, they do not adequately integrate communications teams into strategic decision making processes. It is hard for communicators to measure and demonstrate their contribution to corporate strategies (Gartner, 2024[24]).
Hiring and staffing. In many development organisations – particularly foreign ministries – communications teams are not made up of trained communications professionals, but of career diplomats. Communication is still not always seen as a profession in itself.
Skills development. Communications technologies are advancing at breakneck pace, powered by artificial intelligence. Communication teams need constant support to prioritise among and master new platforms and tools.
To equip themselves for the future and continue promoting sustainable development, OECD DAC member institutions will need to gain public trust and build coalitions. With political and information landscapes shifting, this will require professional, effective and modern public communication. Here are three priorities.
1. Rewrite the narratives on development co-operation
There is a growing consensus that traditional narratives – focusing on aid mainly as charity – are no longer effective (Kumar et al., 2025[25]). They fail to resonate with citizens in DAC member countries, while audiences in partner countries can find them offensive.
Several organisations have thus pivoted to narratives that focus strongly on the value of development co-operation for OECD citizens. This may be an overcorrection, appealing to a vocal minority of critics, but alienating the many citizens who have long supported development co-operation for moral reasons.
To maintain public support, DAC members need to use narratives that are less polarising. Several already do so, highlighting the mutual benefits of development co-operation, explaining that co-operation is an investment in the future, or emphasising moral values like solidarity or togetherness (OECD DevCom, 2024[26]).
2. Rethink communications strategies and campaigns
With many people turning away from traditional news, development organisations need to find more innovative ways to get their messages across. They need different strategies for different audiences, but three principles can help them with almost all audiences.
First, consider people’s emotions. Alongside their facts and data portals, they need to tell memorable stories about their work and the people who make it possible. Their strategies can also seek to inspire action, evoke hope or build a sense of pride.
Second, be more authentic. This can mean communicating openly and credibly about challenges and risks. It also means finding communications partners who are trusted by key audiences. Municipalities, businesses, online content creators, parliamentarians, diaspora and others can join traditional civil society organisations as effective influencers.
Thirdly, design the visual, interactive content that works best on popular digital platforms. Several development finance institutions have begun to do so (OECD DevCom, 2025[27]), but there is much room for improvement.
3. Update skillsets
The digital revolution – boosted by artificial intelligence – is transforming what it means to be a communications professional. Today’s communicators are not just wordsmiths. To understand audiences, they need to be data analysts. To create powerful content, they need to master a vast and growing number of digital tools and media platforms. In doing so, they need to stay up to date on complex ethical, financial and political considerations.
Today’s communicators also need to be relationship managers. Externally, they need to help their organisations broker partnerships with new players. Internally, they also need to coach organisational leaders, policy departments and country offices to become better communicators themselves.
All of this means that development organisations need to provide their communications teams with adequate training and resources. Some may also need to rethink their hiring procedures and incentive structures for modern communications.
The existence of international development co-operation can no longer be taken for granted. Development organisations urgently need to strengthen public trust and build new coalitions. This Policy Brief has argued that communications can help development organisations achieve these goals.
To do so, they need to re-write their narratives, rethink their communications strategies and update their skillsets. They will also need to reflect on where communications teams should sit within the organisation. In a rapidly shifting geo-political and information landscape, communications is core strategic business. It cannot be an afterthought.
References
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[19] Edelman Trust Institute (2025), 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer: Global Report Trust and the Crisis of Grievance, https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer.
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[25] Kumar et al. (2025), The case for development in 2025: exploring new narratives for aid in the context of the EU’s new strategic agenda, ODI Europe, Brussels, https://odi.org/en/publications/the-case-for-development-in-2025-exploring-new-narratives-for-aid-in-the-context-of-the-eus-new-strategic-agenda/.
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[15] Zimmermann, F. (2025), Changing Perceptions to Finance Sustainable Development: 5 Communications Priorities, https://sdg-communicator.org/2025/02/05/changing-perceptions-to-finance-sustainable-development-5-communications-priorities/ (accessed on 16 September 2025).
[11] Zimmermann, F. (2020), Event Summary: How and why to communicate about development results, https://sdg-communicator.org/2020/11/15/event-summary-how-and-why-to-communicate-about-development-results/ (accessed on 10 September 2025).
[12] Zimmermann, F. and V. Meyer (2022), Fighting Mis- and Disinformation: 7 Steps for Development Communicators, https://sdg-communicator.org/2022/12/06/fighting-mis-and-disinformation-7-steps-for-development-communicators/ (accessed on 23 September 2025).
Contact
Felix Zimmermann (✉ felix.zimmermann@oecd.org).