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Luis Mah

Luis Mah

Assistant Professor in Development Studies at ISCTE–University Institute of Lisbon; PhD from London School of Economics.

Jun 15, 2026

3:39
What would you add, Luis, from a European perspective? I
3:42
would like to come from a different perspective, not so much looking to the transformations inside the DFIs, but to what extent DFIs have now, the development finance institutions, have now become an important object of analysis by those who work in the development field.
4:09
Because DFIs now, they become the main actor in the development sector, in a way replacing development agencies and the NGOs, the non-government organisations, they need to show more transparency, they need to provide more results, they need to show how they have impact in the communities where they're going to invest through the private sector partners.
4:41
I'd like to come back to these Development Finance Institutions Transparency Index run by the Publish What You Fund organization, and where you can see how, in fact, leading development finance institutions are far away from being transparent according to the indicators that the index looks through.
5:04
And the other thing that I found quite interesting also is how DFIs are now tools of geopolitical interest for their main shareholders.
5:15
I would like to, for example, talk about the case of the U.S., the von Fein Institution, that is now clearly a tool by Washington to be used to have equities in mind, to have access to critical minerals that the U.S. considers as relevant, as important for their strategic interests.
5:35
interests.

15 MINS LATER

20:51
So how do they define development and want to contribute to it? But also, do you think that they indeed do contribute to development?

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