Episode 11: China, Africa and the Toolbox of Development
Hannah Ryder is an economist by training, a former diplomat, and has close to 20 years of experience in international development. She is the founder and CEO of Development Reimagined, a pioneering international development consultancy firm and the first Kenyan wholly foreign owned enterprise in Beijing. Development Reimagined has built a niche in providing strategic advice and practical support to African, Chinese and international stakeholders on issues from the Belt and Road Initiative, to Africa’s growth markets, green growth and China’s foreign aid. Hannah also sits on the Executive Board of the British Chamber of Commerce in China and has played various advisory roles for the UN. She joins us from Beijing, China.
She speaks to us about:
working with the UK government as an economist
disparities in capacities of global north and global south negotiating teams
the challenge of country ownership
centring developing country perspectives
the resource limitations of the UN
establishing Reimagining Development
China-Africa relations
debt as one tool in development
going beyond lazy solutions
working with and pushing the private sector
collaboration
systemic change vs tinkering at the edges - and much more.
Editors note: This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity and coherence.
Transcript
Intro: The majority of development instruments, for example, are created with an expectation of risk assessment. And that risk assessment will almost by definition expect that in a developing country, you are exposed to much more risk, whether you’re a foreign direct investor, whether you are an aid worker, and these sorts of parts of the development system or tools of the development system, are clearly tools that need to be rethought and redesigned. Because COVID-19 is showing that actually, that is a poor assessment of developing countries. And that could actually be a reason why developing countries stay developing because they’re never ever given that sort of equal time of day in a sense.
Safa: Welcome back to the Rethinking Development Podcast. My name is Safa and I will be your host as we speak with and learn from practitioners of all backgrounds and affiliations around the world. In our conversations, we aim to rethink ethical behaviour and best practices through the lived experiences and personal reflections of different practitioners. Our guest today is Hannah Ryder. Hannah is currently the CEO of Development Reimagined, a pioneering international development consultancy firm and the first Kenyan wholly foreign owned enterprise in Beijing. Development Reimagined has built a niche in providing strategic advice and practical support to African, Chinese and international stakeholders on issues ranging from the Belt and Road initiative, to Africa’s growth markets, green growth and China’s foreign aid. Hannah also sits on the executive board of the British Chamber of Commerce in China and has played various advisory roles for the UN. In 2006, she co-authored the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Hannah is an economist by training, a former diplomat and has close to 20 years of experience. Hannah, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.
Hannah: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to join you. Thank you so much for that introduction.
Safa: To start, could you share some of the influential moments or experiences you had in the early years of your life that kind of sparked your interest in working in diplomacy and later in international development?
Hannah: I think the starting point is definitely where I was born in Kenya. Being brought up in a developing country, the majority of the world is in developing countries, of course, for people who are wondering about what is the shape of the world going to be, a key question is how to help improve the situation for poorer countries. My family lived in Nairobi but we would go often to the rural areas to go and see my grandparents who lived at the bottom of Mount Kenya, where there was no running water, there was no electricity. And so I got an understanding of extreme extreme poverty to some degree, but also an understanding of the inequalities in a country like Kenya. Then, at the age of 10, my parents decided that our families should move to the UK, in order for us, my sisters and I, to have a better education. And again, that was an interesting eye opener, to that challenge of how do you provide the key requirements for children and even on education and health wise, how do you help people to get that equal access all across the world? Those are the kind of very, very early experiences I had but once I was in the UK, I think we would regularly travel back to Kenya. I enjoyed traveling in different countries. I also became an economist. And one of the reasons I became an economist was because I was interested in the rest of the world and how the world operated. I initially really very much loved macro economics, eventually loved micro economics too. But it was the macroeconomics of why different countries have different growth paths which really fascinated me and I think that’s been the reason why I’ve stuck with development issues all the way through.
Safa: As you say, you became economist and some of your earlier professional experiences included working as an economist for the Department of Trade in the UK, and later as a team leader at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In those positions and those work experiences, when it came to applying an economic lens to global climate change issues or even other issues, what were some of the challenges or ethical issues you faced in the process of facilitating negotiations or providing financial strategic advice and navigating both the economic aspect of it, but also the political context?
Hannah: Well, I think there’s two things that really struck me in those positions, especially working in government on international issues. The first was that when I first wanted to go into the UK Government for working, of course, as an international development practitioner, what did I want to do? I wanted to go into the International Development Department. For various reasons, I was on this fast stream scheme, which was sort of the bright young things going into government, and they placed me into the Department of Environment, and my initial feeling was, oh I’m so disappointed by this. But actually, what I realized was that any topic, whether it’s agriculture, whether it is environment issues, the biggest challenges are with regards to the foreign implications or the overseas implications of those policies. And, in addition, it had this perspective, which I’ve maintained and is one of the key factors that we have even through my consultancy, that aid is not the only answer to development or it’s just one aspect of the toolbox in development. And so what I ended up doing in those positions was to try to help find a bridge between UK government policy and the domestic priorities and also what the international perspectives were and the developing country perspectives on those issues. And that was particularly important for climate change, where at the time there was some very challenging negotiations, and there are still very challenging negotiations on climate change, but that international perspective from a developing country was something which was very important to integrate into the position. And so that was something I felt that I could really add value with. The second aspect that I found very important to recognize, especially in international discussions, and particularly when I was involved in climate change negotiations, and I think this applies to a lot of UN settings, from what I have seen and discussed also with others who work in the UN, is that there is a huge disparity in terms of the capacity of developing countries to be able to even develop the kinds of positions that are required in order to have an effective negotiation. And typically, for example, when you see this in a very physical way, you’ll have the negotiating teams from countries like the UK or the US or even Brazil and China, being much larger than negotiating teams from developing countries, yet the countries that are being most affected, for which climate changes are absolute present threats, are those poorest and smallest countries in the world. And that always struck me as a real challenge and drove me to try to find ways to improve that situation. And these are all motivations, of course, for creating the consultancy that I run at the moment.
Safa: Very interesting. You mentioned the disparity ( in size and capacity)and the challenges around that aspect. At that time, you were one of the youngest negotiators in climate change talks as representing the UK team. What were your experiences with how younger voices are heard or maybe not heard or how much support they’re given in terms of maybe leading or sharing their ideas or was there still kind of a hierarchy when it came to negotiations at the multilateral level?
Hannah: Yeah. It was a very interesting experience. And I have to say that the majority of my team were very accommodating. And the key thing for the UK team, certainly, and also then eventually with the negotiators that I used to work with was how much do you know? But I think that was part of the challenge that I had to very much prove myself, I had to really know my topic in a great deal of depth, and to show that I had value added and of course that was challenging in a negotiating environment where it’s not only age, I was also surrounded particularly by men. There are a lot of potential reasons that voices might not be heard. But I think, I personally did manage to overcome some of that, but I don’t think it was easy. It wasn’t easy at all. And it still remains difficult I think. The voices of not just young people, but also women, of people who are from developing countries, Africans in particular, it’s hard to make sure that that voice can come to the forefront.
Safa: Mmhmm. So later on you transitioned to working at the Department for International Development (DIFID). How was your experience there and in terms of building partnerships or working with other partners and collaborators, what were some of the observations you had around building trust or the kind of power dynamics that exists between different countries, different partners?
Hannah: Of course, getting into the Department for International Development, eventually after six years in the civil service by then, and working on international issues, was certainly a dream and I was really happy to be there and I definitely really enjoyed the work that I did there. What was most enjoyable about it was the UK, certainly at the time and the department itself, had such a strong reputation of being a thought leader on a whole range of development issues, and it was great to be part of that club, as it were, and also to be able to be given the space. Eventually, I think, with every organization there is a process of assimilation and coming into that space, to be given a space to be creative and bring forward ideas for new projects and so on. I think the key observation I had, though, at the time and again I would say that these things are still challenges for DIFID and also many other OECD donors to take into account. And as I’ve also worked in China, also for Chinese aid to take into account, is how do you make sure that the needs in developing countries are at the absolute forefront of your design of policy? And it doesn’t mean just, you know, going and doing a survey, it doesn’t mean just listening and talking to some NGOs or speaking to some government partners when you’re designing a proposal, it means finding a way to integrate those people in that process and even thinking about ideas and commissioning ideas. That I believe still remains a huge challenge, this idea of and what’s known in development as country ownership or local ownership is a huge challenge, and we definitely haven’t got there. And I think working in DIFID was definitely my first foray into seeing just how difficult that was to make happen.
Safa: And later you kind of began to focus on issues related to China and relationships with China. What sparked that shift in focus?
Hannah: Well, actually, while I was in DIFID, one of my roles was to be helping the Secretary of State, actually the Development Minister at the time to co-chair something called the Global Partnership for Effective Development Corporation. That’s a very long phrase, but what that organization was was a platform for exactly the sorts of conversations that we’re having and brainstorming and trying to find a framework for key challenges with the way that development is done. So whether it’s things like local ownership, or whether it’s, for example, transparency, how transparent aid flows are, these were big agendas which were being discussed under that specific platform. And so while I was doing that post, and I have to say, I had personally been interested in China for a long time, because I had seen, when I was going back to Kenya, and also then when I was working on climate change issues — it doesn’t sound quite right but we did travel a lot while I worked on climate change issues, I did come across and see that China was having this huge impact in all of these different countries that I was going to and I would always, you know, ask questions. Do you know about this vote? Do you know why this decision was taken? Do you know about these new buildings that were being built with Chinese contractors or so many different questions about Chinese aid and support for the countries I was in, but very few stakeholders, as I realized, actually understood, or had access to that information about how China worked. So that piqued my interest, and I thought, you know, there’s something here, there’s something which doesn’t seem to be working. And then in this global partnership, one of the key questions was, how is China involved? And how much is China also going to be, at the multilateral level, engaging on discussions? How can China make aid more effective? How can China be more transparent? How can China prioritize the same things other donors are aiming to prioritize? So there was that discussion happening, and through that, I became much more interested in speaking to and getting to know some Chinese counterparts and the kinds of challenges they were facing in the work and constraints that they were facing in their work. I felt like any person working in international development, if you don’t know much about China, and about how China works, then there’s something you’re missing. And that’s why I felt that it was really important to have at least some experience of working in China. And yes, here I am five plus years later, still working on Chinese development corporation.
Safa: Can you tell us what led to the idea for Development Reimagined and also the story behind the name and the work that you’re focused on and you’re committed to facilitating and leading?
Hannah: Well, after being in DIFID, I had the opportunity to get a role in China working in the UN Development Programme (UNDP) China office, which is a fairly large office and was really quite unique at the time because it was one of the first offices in China to have two prongs. One prong was focusing on domestic poverty reduction challenges in China, which was the historic work of the UN in China, and, of course, typically is the work of the UN in most developing countries. But then it had this special section which was about China’s south- south cooperation or China’s global cooperation. And that was the unit that I then headed up. It was a fantastic job. What was really interesting as well for me was moving from a position of representing the UK Government and, you know, still trying to have a very progressive and positive, open foreign policy perspective within that UK point of view, but then shifting to having a UN voice and being somebody that’s representing all member states, and in particular, the majority of member states, which are developing countries. That was very interesting and quite a major shift. And I really enjoyed that voice, actually. But then I left. I mean, so why? Part of the reason I did was, well, there’s two reasons. One, the UN is a fantastic organization in principle and amazing individuals are working there, but the challenges of delivery are very huge. You have to go through so many approval processes and so on. And of course, I was used to that, I used to work as a government economist, I used to work in government, but the bureaucracy in the UN was even more challenging. And, of course, also more political because you’re dealing with a huge number of member states who might have a potential interest or a conflict of interest as well. So I wanted to work faster. And basically, that was the first reason. The second reason was, I was also very surprised by the financial constraints that the UN was under, I think, you know, everybody knows, it’s constantly talked about and even at the moment, you know, with the discussions about the World Health Organization, the funding being cut, etc. We know these things in principle, the UN always needs more money, but I think being in, especially at the senior management level, to be really part of those conversations about how to stretch resources and prioritize resources, I was struck that that was a real constraint on the organization. And so that’s why I then thought, is there another way of delivering the kinds of support that I want to provide, as an individual, as an international development practitioner, somebody really committed to trying to improve the world, is there another way? And that’s when I started to speak to a number of other consultants in this space, other people who had also specifically worked on Africa — China cooperation as well. And I was also realizing that actually, there was a need for the private sector. And there was a huge kind of groundswell of the development community also accepting that the private sector is really important for development, both in terms of finding solutions and also carrying out those solutions. So I felt that that would be a really interesting move and in China, of course, would also be doubly interesting because China is also seen as a very important place for business and for engagement of people from other developing countries and developing nations themselves. How difficult would it be to set something like this up from China? But the need was really there, there was a very, very strong need. There is no other international development consultancy like ours in China. And the majority of international development consultancies do not have an office in China. So I kind of had this idea, and here we are, several years later.
Safa: Wonderful, and in terms of deciding to name it Development Reimagined?
Hannah: Great question, Development Reimagined. Well, I’d always felt that in international development, we are consistently coming up with very similar solutions to the same issues. But we are not addressing those issues. And so I wanted the name of the consultancy to kind of help people think immediately that what we are going to be helping you with is actually reimagining, is thinking differently and not thinking linearly about development. It’s the sorts of points I mentioned earlier, things like aid is one of the tools but not the only answer to development. When we think about development, we can find results through all sorts of different means. And, that’s why I felt that this was the right kind of title for the company. When you hear it, it literally brings that idea to you and people who are engaging us to work with them will be doing that because they do want to find solutions. That was my feeling. Those are the people that I really wanted to work with. Those are the clients that I really wanted to build. The other point is that being in China as well, the company also had to have a Chinese name and finding a Chinese name for your business or even if you want to have a personal Chinese name, which I do as well, is not a simple task. And so I went through a whole set of different potential names, development refreshed, development rethought and eventually found Development Reimagined, which actually aligned with the Chinese name, which means to think originally and to think forward at the same time, so it kind of also incorporated that sense in the Chinese side.
Safa: Speaking about the work you do, fostering relationships between China and Africa, sometimes the narratives that we hear concerning China is that there are cases where maybe the treatment is not fair or there are stories around stereotypes or stories around racism. Sometimes on the podcast we speak about the power of words and the power of stories and the power of certain narratives dominating not just media but a landscape within a sector or that organizations’ strategically use dominant narratives for their own intentions. So what have been your experiences with trying to establish new narratives around different African countries as partners and also China as a partner?
Hannah: Well, this is really at the forefront of my mind at the moment, especially because of COVID-19. I think there are lots of aspects of our world and our personal life too, but also the way the world works, which COVID-19 is exposing as seriously vulnerable and are not necessarily built the way that they should be. I think one of the key issues that I am really aware of, I think maybe I’ll mentioned two. The first one is around African debt and in general, debt for developing countries. This has been an area that I have actually been asked to work on quite a lot and my team has worked on quite a lot in the past, in terms of thinking about why are countries in debt with China? Is that good? Is that bad? You know, these sorts of normative questions, those sorts of questions do come up all of the time. And one of the things I’ve tried to emphasize is that when those questions are asked, they are often coming from a perspective that isn’t a perspective of need. If you think about the majority of developing countries, a country like Kenya or Ghana, or you know, even in much more fragile situations, Somalia, Ethiopia, etc. These countries, they need infrastructure, they need some kind of extra finance from external partners to help and debt can be one of those means of getting that help. It shouldn’t always be seen as something which is bad. We don’t see debt as bad in our personal life, so why would we do that at the country level? I think that is something which the world is still grappling with. And I constantly come across people who inherently think going into debt is bad, yet at the same time, they still want and think that we need to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and you know, we need to have better transport. Well, you know, how do we do that? Are we going to do that through foreign direct investment? Oh, no, that’s going to be falling and that might not be working. Okay. Well, so can we do it through taxes? Domestic taxes? No, there’s not enough people paying tax in country. Well, then where is the answer? I think that’s one of the narratives which I have really felt we need to look closely at and reimagine and rethink, in order to come to a better solution and find some better answers. And I think that’s one of the key vulnerabilities which is being exposed right now through COVID-19, it is this question of debt. The other perspective that feels very challenging is this perspective, which was expressed quite early on when COVID-19 was about to hit the African continent, is that African countries are absolutely going to be overwhelmed, and that their health systems and generally that their governance systems are really behind the rest of the world. That doesn’t only extend to African countries, but I think there’s this feeling that poorer countries will always suffer and they will always do the worst compared to developed economies. I think COVID-19 has really turned that on its head, but at the same time, that narrative is very difficult to break out of when you come to actual development instruments. So the majority of development instruments, for example, are created with an expectation of risk assessment. And that risk assessment will almost by definition, expect that in a developing country, you are exposed to much more risk, full stop, whether you’re a foreign direct investor, whether you are an aid worker. And these sorts of parts of the development system or tools of the development system, are clearly tools that need to be rethought and redesigned. Because COVID-19 is showing that actually, that is a poor assessment of developing countries. And that could actually be a reason why developing countries stay developing, because they’re never ever given that sort of equal time of day, in a sense, even through our development lens. There’s definitely a great deal of introspection that we need to have for development.
Safa: You’ve spoken about the perspective that within the toolbox of sustainable development, there’s more options than just aid and also the role of the private sector. In terms of working with businesses, advising businesses or the experiences you’ve had around south-south cooperation and the private sector, what have you found to be the strength of their role, their participation, and also maybe the limitations or some of the more complicated or ethical issues that come up when trying to collaborate with businesses?
Hannah: Well, I think the key strength of businesses is they want to move fast. And when they see an opportunity, they want to get that opportunity as quickly as they can. And, for example, even just my own consultancy, we really try to work very fast, we deliver quickly, much faster than any other organization delivers, because we have an incentive to. You know, there’s a contract which is involved. So we always want to say yes effectively, but at the same time, you asked about what are the challenges with that? Well, when it comes to development, of course, we definitely need to be working fast. But the private sector can also get very stuck into certain types of business models. And the private sector itself can be very difficult to disrupt. So an example would be the private sector being very used to selling real estate and looking at real estate or looking at offices and thinking that this is how it works. Then there’s a disruption, which is co-working spaces, and that changes the way that people do work. And that is a new type of business model. And we’ve seen that happen in so many different settings. How can the private sector help to disrupt the international development business model and the ways of doing things? That I think we still haven’t got to grips with and I still think we haven’t brought that kind of open thinking to the international development sector and even when the international development sector works with the private sector, it’s very much working on issues like agri processing, or even when the private sector is brought in to help on trade, it is typically around trying to reduce barriers to trade. Well, those might not be the answers, there might actually be some other ways of working, where we can get the private sector to do even better than it’s doing right now. And so even though the private sector does work fast, there’s also the challenge, I think, that it can be a little bit lazy, as international development practitioners are not pushing the private sector to think differently and to disrupt, then it’s easy to get lazy and provide lazy solutions.
Safa: Mm hmm. So in terms of the different cultural expectations or the different approaches to doing business from a Chinese perspective versus a country in the African region, what have been your experiences with kind of negotiating those expectations or those assumptions around, this is how we do things and this is how we think is the right way to do things, and at the same time having to also adapt and work with the expectations of partners?
Hannah: Yeah. Well, I think, certainly working in the private sector now, that is always a key question. We are a private sector organization which is focused on sustainable development, it is fundamental to the work that we do and the clients that we try to find and the clients that we work for, and we want them also to be focused on sustainable development and poverty reduction. At the same time, part of our role is also to help them see where they can become more focused on sustainable development, to bring those ideas to them. It can be challenging because we’ve had clients — for example, one of the values that we try to bring in, for example, is any research that we do for a client, we usually want to put that out into the public, for instance, we want that to be shared with others. We think that if they’re asking questions about international development that are relevant to internal development, then that public good element is going to be there. But we do find, for example, clients that don’t want to do that, or we have to kind of find a way that they can. So we might do two different versions of a report, one for internal use and one for external use, these sorts of things. And then when it comes to actually delivering programs on the ground, I think there again, what we try to do is find ways of bringing in that local perspective, the on the ground perspective, much more to the forefront and I think every single organization struggles with that and every single development organization, in particular, struggles with it. But understanding where your clients are coming from, understanding where the ultimate beneficiaries are coming from and bringing that need to the forefront is really key. When we’re working with Chinese clients in particular, one of the key challenges that other consultants have said to me right in the beginning, before Development Reimagined was even registered, was that Chinese clients, they often don’t want consultancy work. And that does happen, for example, we are regularly approached by Chinese companies who would like to go and perhaps invest in an African country or explore whether there is a market for their product in an African country. And they will come to us, we’ll do a proposal for them. And then we’ll find that they have been able to be introduced to that country by another Chinese firm that is operating their or another Chinese partner. But at the same time, that approach is shifting, because those companies themselves are realizing that what they really need is — that introduction wasn’t enough in order to be able to integrate. And I think this is the challenge that most international development organizations, private sector or public sector, have realized that you must have a much stronger knowledge of what your market is and of your intended beneficiaries. That is really worth investing in order for you to be able to do something really positive and make a profit too, but definitely to do something positive. So we’re seeing more coming, that part of our work is building more and more, but it certainly has been a struggle. And it’s been interesting seeing the Chinese companies and stakeholders realize the value of that extra perspective that we can bring because we have that network into developing countries, we have that network into the African countries and we can bring that information to them quickly but also in an easy to digest way.
Safa: Your experiences have spanned a variety of different sectors. For example, you’ve had experiences with working with government, with UNDP, in consultancies, with businesses — in that whole ecosystem, how do you see the role of the different actors? You touched on the financial constraints that some UN agencies feel and for example, President Trump’s withdrawal from WHO, and these kind of situations, how do you see maybe the role of one or the other growing or diminishing or how do you see them working together maybe in the future or the interaction amongst them in the years to come?
Hannah: Well, I think there’s going to be a lot more space for much more collaboration and I think definitely the private sector will be more and more to the forefront. Because while COVID-19 has demonstrated the ability of governments to really take the wrong and the right decisions, when it comes to their citizens and their economies, they can’t do that without the engagement of individuals, they can’t do that without the engagement of the private sector, informal or formal. And so I think, in addition, partly because of the constraints on public funds, and also on the UN system, the role of foreign direct investment will also rise going forward. I think those are all opportunities. They don’t have to be seen as a positive or negative. I think we have to be willing to engage and be willing to see how can we help those stakeholders to be as positive as possible and to have the poorest people, those who have very little, at the forefront of their minds and in what they’re doing. I think that’s going to be the biggest challenge. And whether it’s the UN, whether it’s donor organizations, I think the UN and bilateral donors will most likely be taking a smaller role. I mean, bilateral donors have been taking a shrinking role, aid has been rising, but the actual results which are generated through aid are becoming much more dependent on their engagement with other stakeholders like the private sector or non government organizations. I think those trends will only accelerate going forwards. But we can shape them. I think there’s real potential to shape them. We just have to be very intentional about it. And I think that’s one of the key points that we say when we work with governments, African governments in particular, with all of these stakeholders, you need to be much more intentional. It comes back to the point that I mentioned right at the beginning about the capacity of developing countries, that capacity to engage and plan, be strategic. That capacity really needs to improve and really strengthen. And I hope it will.
Safa: Throughout your different experiences, have there been times where you felt particularly maybe discouraged or just questioned the state of affairs and of course with Development Reimagined it’s a fresh perspective or your contribution to overcoming some of those challenges, but are there trends that you continue to see that maybe discourage you or you worry about?
Hannah: Well, of course, on a personal level, running a business is both challenging and rewarding at the same time and doing that for international development and having a mission makes those emotions even stronger. But at the same time, kind of looking more broadly, the sorts of trends that I see that worry me are the trends which are very much around the status quo. What we’re seeing, not just through COVID-19, but in particular through COVID-19 and also these real challenges to multilateralism coming from the US and also coming from China’s role, how to address those? How open can we be, can the international system be to rethinking and redesigning some of those structures? There are some days where I am hopeful that that can happen. There’s many days where I’m very, very worried that we will continue with these structures that are effectively not delivering the world that we need. And what we’re doing is just tinkering at the edges. I really do worry about that a lot. But, you know, the time will come when we have to work on it. I hope it will be sooner rather than later. And especially to address things like climate change. We’re just not doing that in the right way yet. Despite, you know, in 2006 we had a very clear message that the economic cost of inaction will be much larger than the economic cost of action. But even so, that message is still not going through, not just to governments, but also to the private sector as well. So there’s so much for us to do. But I still feel privileged to be able to think about it every day and to be able to work on these issues. And whenever I’m asked to write a think piece or you know, get my team to be writing policy briefs on these issues, I feel very privileged to be able to do that and to lead those kinds of conversations, and ultimately, to make that happen in practice. I still have hope. I’m a very glass half full person, my husband will tell you that, but nevertheless, yes, I do, I do feel worried.
Safa: Yes, I understand. And hopefully there will continue to be positive developments and changes, especially with Development Reimagined. We wish you continued success. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
Hannah: Thank you so much for having me. It was a real pleasure to talk to you and I hope together we can continue to rethink and reimagine development.
Safa: Thank you so much for speaking with us today. It’s been really great to listen to your thoughts and reflections. And I also want to thank our listeners. To keep up with our latest episodes, you can listen to us on your preferred podcast provider, and follow us on social media to join in on the conversation. I look forward to continuing similar conversations with you all next time. Until then, take care.
