Thank you so much, and welcome everyone, to Woolwich Works, and to the Global Partnerships Conference this morning!
It is my absolute honour and privilege to welcome all of you, and the very broad community of friends and partners who are represented here today.
To welcome those of you for whom this might not be your first international development conference.
Who have been working tirelessly at conferences similar to this for decades, and I thank you for everything you’ve done to get us to the point where we are…
But to also welcome those of you who’ve never been to an event like this before, but you’re determined to play your part in what are undoubtably choppy waters of this decade and those to come.
My sincere hope is that all of you, from civil society, governments, philanthropy, and the private sector and beyond all of that, will experience something new and exciting this week.
Full of purpose, and passion, practical action, and above all, the name of this conference, partnerships.
Now as one of the co-hosts, it is my duty to go through an important list of thank yous to everyone who has made this possible.
But before I get to that, I just want to start with a special thank you to our Poet Laureate, Ayan Aden. Thank you so much.
You’re going to hear a lot this week, a slightly less poetic thing, which is about Compacts – and I will come to more detail about that in a minute, and it’s the kind of language that, us as Ministers, and NGOs, we just can’t get enough of it…
But I thought the most powerful word from the poem we just heard, that I will carry with me as we go through this week, is that we must
“Choose”.
“Choose partnership.”
“Choose love”
“Choose humanity.”
And I think that is why we’re all here.
That’s why I know this Conference has generated such interest internationally…
There have been satellite events in Geneva at the weekend, the various receptions, lunches and dinners, rich discussions we’ve all been having for months into the run-up to this event.
That’s why we’ve looked at the challenges of today and we’ve chosen that we will not be daunted by them.
Because we have chosen to work together in pursuit of common goals, in a new way.
And I hope this special venue shows a bit of this feeling – it’s an old ammunition factory, which you might think is an odd choice, but I think that that shows that now we can take an old munitions factory, it is now home to all of you, talking about how we make the world a better, fairer and safer place.
And with that – let me start the roll call of thank yous, with a huge thank you to everyone here at Woolwich Works for making this possible.
Thank you to our corporate sponsors – the Aga Khan Development Network, EY, Hitachi Solutions and Robiquity…
Thank you to our co-hosts, our co-creators in every way, in every sense of that word – South Africa, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and British International Investment…
And thank you all for coming to be here too, and choosing to be here.
The context though…
With global economic turmoil caused by conflict in the Middle East, I know it is not a simple choice for many of your delegations to make the journey here to London.
But we couldn’t be more grateful to you for having decided to be here, because we’re choosing to tackle today, what we’re choosing to tackle is enormous, but the need is urgent.
Global power is shifting, and hardening. What were tools of economic progress and cooperation have become weapons of geopolitical conflict.
Climate, conflict, health, nothing is getting easier.
These crises are more interconnected than ever, travelling further and faster, and harming us all.
Development though is a pragmatic investment in shared global stability, it is not an optional moral luxury.
No one nation, organisation or person can tackle this alone. You have always known this.
Global challenges cannot be solved by isolationist governments. We must co-operate, collect together and coordinate.
Doing more of the same won’t cut it.
That’s what I’ve learnt since joining this amazing, wonderful community.
Where I now live in the South Wales Valleys, this collectivism runs through everybody, it’s the birthplace of our national health service, where a political hero of many of us, called Nye Bevan, you may have heard of him – if you haven’t, look him up, had a cooperative way of funding healthcare for people who, without it, would give birth unaided, could not afford to get medical attention, they collectivised, and they found a solution.
And then, with the government working together with the local community, with the trade union movement, with civil society, built something strong and lasting that we still treasure today.
This approach runs through me, and it should be no surprise that this is something that countries, the way they want to work together, collectively together, respectfully, in partnership, mutually reinforcing one another, that is the spirit in which we work now.
It is a message I’ve heard loud and clear from 18 months in this job, meeting leaders and communities across the world.
But I have to say, the reality today is stark.
The needs of millions of people living in the poorest countries in the world cannot be met with the resources and the systems that we have now to serve them.
Systems which force women to queue twice for their nutrition and maternal health support.
A financing model wholly incapable of meeting the $1.3 trillion financing gap which Africa needs to deliver each year on the Sustainable Development Goals.
We need a fundamental reset in our approach.
How we work together – and who we work with – is all at the heart of our discussions
We must draw on the strengths that everyone has to offer.
Whether that is governments, international organisations and our rich and diverse civil society.
But also from business, technology, philanthropy and the richness of innovation that diverse coalitions bring to even the toughest problems.
That is the only way we are going to tackle the global challenges of today.
It’s all about partnership.
Countries and communities need to shift the power.
The Indian, Brazilian and South African G20s set the agenda, and we all agree that now is time for a reset.
We heard President Ramaphosa call at the UN General Assembly last year loud and clear – cooperation based on solidarity, equality and sustainability.
For me, this is all about backing communities and country plans.
Understanding the power dynamics in a country, supporting countries aspirations …
Not top-down, lecturing, bureaucratic systems that tie governments up in red tape, equal partnerships, combining expertise with local experience.
Helping incentivise capital and finance to move where it’s needed …
Building deals fit for every context…
While understanding that every single place on this earth is unique…
From humanitarian crises, to countries on the edge of economic transformation …
Confronting the challenges and opening up the opportunities of epoch-defining shifts in technology …
So technology does not become the new frontier of global division, but a tool to unlock talent, and an accelerator of progress.
All of this requires partnerships.
So our aims for the next two days are to listen to each other, hear new voices, to generate new ideas, build new coalitions..
But also inject urgency into reforms in these areas that can transform how we work together.
We need fairer finance. We know 28 countries in Africa spend more on debt servicing than health, and owe the equivalent of 26.6% of their combined GDP.
And we know that only a tiny proportion of the $98 trillion assets under management in the Global North touch the Global South at all.
We need faster, fairer access to knowledge and technology. The kind of data and early warnings which can help countries plan and navigate the food and fertiliser impacts from closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
And also, countries and communities must take the lead, from the humanitarian reset, to local delivery.
Now all that comes together in one choice that you can make…
As soon as you walk out of this room …
To Sign the Compact.
It is a shared commitment to working faster, more openly, and in true partnership.
It is not your standard negotiated text which you might find at one of these conferences normally.
Although I have to say it has been written collectively with contributions from many of you here.
One of our team said it would be written by 400 people, I think that’s probably an underestimate!
But it is a synthesis of what you have told us.
It is a positive expression of partnership.
I hope the themes that it captures – from finance, technology and shifting the power – all resonate as we look to development cooperation in the decades ahead.
That provides the framework.
But, for now, that’s really is all that it is. Until you sign it, until you live its contents, it’s just text.
So, as Ayan said, we have to choose to make it real.
Choose to work together.
Choose to use this moment.
And my call to you all is to bring this spirit into the next two days.
To bring forward ideas. Be transparent.
Proud of our strengths, yes, but honest about our limitations. Learn from one another. And hold each other to account.
But above all – act.
Then we will have used this moment to build partnerships, from coalitions to make new connections, share our experience of what works now, and what can work in the future.
So we can move forward, together.
And while there are plenty of reasons to doubt ourselves, we mustn’t be tempted to sink into despair – that way lies paralysis and inaction.
Instead, we can be inspired by the young people here – lift each other’s spirits – and build the trust and partnerships that we need, and they need, to build a better future.
Thank you.
Watch the plenary sessions from the Global Partnerships Conference 2026 live on the FCDO YouTube channel.
