Competence Tree
Visualise the values, capacities, and interdependencies that shape your organisation’s future effectiveness.
From foresight to action
The Future of Aid 2040 initiative now moves from scenarios to solutions. Phase 2 – Pathways to Transformation translates the insights of Phase 1 into practical strategies and collaborative experiments that help organisations become fit for the future.
Through a series of workshops and co-creation labs, aid actors explore how to remain effective, legitimate, and complementary to local leadership in an increasingly uncertain world.
This phase aims to co-create concrete transformation pathways for three categories of actors: local, intermediary, and enabling — so that systemic change is built collectively rather than in isolation.
It focuses on:
Co-creating future-fit value propositions for each actor group, grounded in the four 2040 scenarios and CLA insights.
Building complementarity across the aid ecosystem, starting from local leadership and extending to intermediaries and enablers.
Developing practical tools, including a Fit-for-the-Future Toolkit — to guide organisational learning and transformation.
Watch the opening session and take part in the #Pathways2Transformation survey →
How phase 2 works
Phase 2 unfolds through a global, iterative consultation process linking online and face-to-face sessions across regions.
Virtual consultations introduce the four 2040 scenarios and invite participants to identify and rank the key levers of transformation most relevant for their organisations.
Local actors in Eastern Europe, Central America, South-East Asia, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa analyse the scenarios and crisis typology, map value chains and fragilities, and co-design four to five future-fit value propositions per profile.
Intermediary actors build on local insights to define complementary roles and competencies, refining proposals through joint iteration sessions in Europe and Asia. Local and Intermediary actors reconvene online to validate and consolidate the emerging value propositions, testing complementarity between local and intermediary roles.
Enabling actors: donors, networks, coordination bodies, then review the consolidated results and co-design incentive mechanisms that foster collaboration, innovation, and scaling.
Tools for Transformation
Each phase contributes to a growing Fit-for-the-Future Toolkit that helps organisations reflect on their capacities and experiment with pathways for change. Rather than prescribing a single model, the toolkit offers a flexible set of facilitation tools adaptable to different contexts and stages of transformation.
Scenario Immersion
Explore how your organisation might operate under each of the four 2040 futures and test implicit assumptions.
Robustness Test
Assess how current strategies perform across multiple scenarios, identifying strengths, fragilities, and gaps.
Adaptations Workshop
Reflect collectively on what may need to evolve, pause, or emerge to remain relevant in changing contexts.
Back-Casting Canvas
Map the milestones, enablers, and decisions that connect today’s actions with your organisation’s 2040 horizon.
The toolkit will evolve throughout the consultation cycles and be refined through lessons emerging from the Phase 2 workshops.
Workplan and expected outputs
By April 2026, Phase 2 will deliver:
A portfolio of future-fit value propositions (4–5 profiles per actor category).
Recommendations for incentive systems that strengthen collaboration and innovation.
A validated diagnostic and fit-for-the-future toolkit to guide organisational transformation.
A Phase 2 Report consolidating results from all consultations.