Talk: "International Aid to Education: Power Dynamics in an Era of Partnership"

Public private partnerships are common in international development, but are they fulfilling their promise of creating equitable, cooperative and positive relationships?

Francine Menashy, associate professor of leadership in education at UMass Boston, will discuss her new book which exposes the clear power imbalances that persist in the international aid environment.

Through case studies of multistakeholder partnerships, Dr. Menashy demonstrates how actors and organizations from high-income countries continue to wield disproportionate influence over development aid. At the same time, the private sector's influence over public policy circles is growing. Dr. Menashy's evidence questions if partnerships truly ameliorate power asymmetries, or if they instead produce the very inequities they are meant to eliminate.