The Open University (OU) is a longstanding hub for interdisciplinary, critical, and forward-looking research on international development. Celebrating its work and engaging with current debates, the University is launching the OU Global Development Annual Lecture series.

In the first in the series, Abolition and International Aid and Development, Dr Olivia Umurerwa Rutazibwa, Assistant Professor, MSc Human Rights and Politics, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics and Political Science offers reflections on what it means to take anti-colonial and decolonial critiques of international aid and development seriously.

Dr Rutazibwa argues that this requires a genuine engagement with abolition rather than reform; and repair and dignity rather than aid and development.