As we look 50 years ahead, to 2075, I invite you to imagine a world where local communities do not just receive aid, but lead their own transformative journeys. A world where every community has the resources, agency, and respect to address its unique challenges on its own terms. This future is possible, but it demands that we move beyond the limitations and imbalances of today’s aid system, a system too often distant, competitive, and disconnected from the people it claims to serve.
As a cohort member of Network for Empowered Aid Response’s (NEAR), Re-Imagine the Future Design Series 2025, I have been privileged to work with 19 incredible Global South leaders in the past four months, whose stories and visions fill me with hope, and a deep sense of responsibility. Their experiences illuminate what solidarity, self-sufficiency, and sustainability truly mean, not just in theory, but in practice.
What sustained me most through this process is the common thread that runs through every vision, seeing communities as the architects of our futures. Through several engagements led by our amazing facilitators, Liz Radzicki, Sandrina da Cruz, and Johanssen Obanda, we envisioned a world where:
- — Value is found in mobilizing local strengths, where communities unlock their own resources and unleash indigenous wisdom.
- — Cooperation replaces competition, replacing fragmentation with collective success built on trust.
- — Technology supports human connection and care for the earth, rather than control or exploitation.
- — Power is decentralized, resting closest to those impacted by decisions.
- — Inclusion means lifting every voice and building capacity from within, nurturing confidence and resilience.
This is a vision grounded in care and responsibility, both to each other and the systems that sustain us.
For me, the distance between this inspiring vision and today’s reality feels significantly far. The firm economic policies, exclusionary funding practices, and technological systems are shaped far from local contexts, and all stand in the way. But these barriers are not permanent. We have an opportunity that requires a sense of urgency to remake the future by uplifting leadership at the grassroots, by shifting aid into a system that listens, cares, and empowers.
As we chart a path forward, in our own work at Smart Aid Initiative, we engaged with the young leaders at Maryam Abacha American University of Nigeria, through the Equal Access project in August, 2025. These students expressed their hunger to lead ethically, to use technology wisely, and to protect civic rights. Their thoughtful questions and bold ideas affirmed that the future is not just something to imagine, it is something we must actively prepare for, with care and intention.
The NEAR network is already mobilizing this change through thoughtful leadership support, advocacy for South-to-South solidarity, and platforms that connect and strengthen local actors. With more innovative funding pilots and shared resources, we will improve sustainability for communities.
The future demands that we rethink aid not as charity, but as solidarity. The future asks that we build systems anchored in trust, shared responsibility, and ancestral wisdom. The future calls you to act not just to survive, but to thrive.
Sadiq Ba’aba
November, 2025