In her book Dead Aid,* Dambisa Moyo calls for the end of aid to Africa within five years. Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda – which has halved aid as a percentage of its gross domestic product in the past decade – recently argued in the Financial Times that aid creates instability and dependency while failing to reduce poverty or disease.

Ms Moyo and Mr Kagame are among those questioning traditional models of development. While not all favour the pure for-profit approach, many argue that there is a greater role for market-based approaches to global problems. If such models prevail, the question for big non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international public sector institutions is how to fit into the new development landscape.