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Washington, DC, USA, 6 February 2024 - Prince Rahim Aga Khan met the President of the World Bank, Ajay Banga, at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC, today.

am grateful to Mr. McPherson for his kind and generous introduction, and I welcome this opportunity to share with a concerned and well-informed audience some thoughts on the Third World today. To do so in the presence of my old friend Brad Morse gives me particular pleasure. To me Mr. Morse is a symbol of a new pragmatism in development thinking that I sense in both the industrialized states and among the heterogeneous group of countries that are confusingly lumped together as the Third World. That term reminds me of a speaker who was explaining the role of UNDP.

Thank you, Jim, for your kind words of introduction and for inviting me to address this gathering. It is an honour to have this opportunity to speak to an audience that is so distinguished and so accomplished.

The rapid developments in information and communication technology are of immense importance for those of us engaged in promoting positive economic, social, and cultural change. Like Jim Wolfensohn, I believe that they are also critical because development in all those dimensions is a prerequisite for world peace.

The essential goal of global development has been to create and sustain effective nation states – coherent societies that are well governed, economically self-sustaining, equitable in treating their peoples, peaceful amongst themselves, and sensitive to their impact on planetary sustainability.