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Global development is a complex and evolving industry supported by a tremendously diverse group of professionals. The health workers and sustainability officers. The infrastructure engineers and education specialists. The agronomists and economists. Across this wide spectrum of development sectors, careers and specializations, one feature that has always brought these individuals together is a shared desire to make the world a better place through their work. And today they have something else very much in common: their jobs – and the skills required to perform them effectively – are changing radically as the development field and the world transforms.

Development professionals a decade from now will not look the same. One reason is technology. It’s easy to envision a time when drones streamline every agricultural development program, when every health worker is equipped with high-tech mobile diagnostics, and when artificial intelligence provide real-time data to guide humanitarian interventions. The shifting development finance outlook is another factor. Program managers, resource mobilizers and partnership professionals might continue to seek grants from bilateral aid agencies, but they may also partner with private sector corporations, attract impact investment funds or manage crowdfunding campaigns targeting specific causes. Tying all these together are the softer skills – like communicating across cultures and working in teams – that make the industry truly unique.

In an effort to really get to know the Next Generation Professional, Devex, U.S. Agency for International Development and DAI surveyed approximately 2,500 development professionals – donor and government officials, development consultants and NGO workers, among others – working across regions and sectors. We asked them to characterize the future of development work and predict what will help them thrive and excel. When we conducted a similar survey in 2015, we discovered the community was already grasping the importance of new ways of thinking and doing, including how data-driven and evidenced-based programming, multi-disciplinary approaches and the right balance of people and technical skills were influencing global development. And in 2018, they underscored those beliefs and revealed significantly more…

Global development is undergoing a dramatic transformation that is impacting the industry’s human capital and talent landscape.

The vast majority of survey respondents anticipate major changes in the required skills and career paths of development professionals and acknowledge the overall importance of learning new technology, skills and approaches in order to excel in the future. A confluence of external factors is driving this transformation.

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