Our appearance on the European public broadcaster explores how human-centered digital tools can help shift power dynamics in international development
In an era shaped by an ever-expanding ‘audit culture,’ what ‘counts’ as success in development aid, and who gets to decide what it looks like?
As part of the Agree to Disagree program for ARTE, the German-French public broadcaster invited Aam Digital to discuss a question at the heart of global aid for years: how effective is Western-led development assistance in actually reducing poverty and improving lives in developing countries?
As the show traces the long arc from development’s darker colonial legacies, to the Marshall Plan, through to today’s complex donor landscape, and the changing geopolitics of aid, it asks whether aid under current conditions merely creates dependencies or can spark genuine structural transformation.
With insights from a range of experts, including Prof. Jörg Faust, director of the German evaluation institute DEval, and Dr. Boniface Mabanza, a policy adviser on trade at the Werkstatt Ökonomie, we were asked to share our thoughts and practical experience on the subject of whether aid accountability, local agency, and fairer partnerships can coexist with scalable development outcomes.
For over a decade, we’ve worked alongside grassroots organizations and international agencies wrestling with this exact tension. Our case management platform was built to address a fundamental gap: how do you create accountability systems that serve frontline workers rather than burden them? The ARTE program’s exploration of this question resonated deeply with our daily work, where data transparency, local agency, and fair partnerships aren’t abstract concepts but practical design challenges.
As Aam Digital founder Sebastian Leidig explained in the program, the current system often prioritizes performance metrics over actual impact:
“I’ve worked in large organizations, and I saw major shortcomings in the basic work. It was 90 percent about data – performance measurements, nice graphs, pie charts and more. But in field work I saw something else.
Many large aid organizations have mastered the game with numbers. Yet smaller organizations often cannot afford the tedious bureaucracy, even though they achieve great impact with their work.
Our approach is to flip the script and give social workers a tool that is useful for their jobs. And that should be an actual project management tool that improves the work, making the monitoring process somewhat a byproduct of good work.“
The program highlighted critical intersections between effective development practice and the technology used to enable it. Three themes particularly resonated with our approach to building software for social impact organizations:
- Local relevance as a design principle: Successful evaluation methods must reflect local realities. Platforms should be built to be adaptable by local organizations, not imposed from afar.
- Amplifying grassroots voices: Development aid always involves complex stakeholder interests. Technology should illuminate these dynamics, not obscure them, while centering the perspectives of community-based organizations doing the actual work.
- Data transparency without paperwork overload: Digital case management shouldn’t replace human judgment. Instead, effective monitoring tools free up frontline staff by reducing repetitive reporting and making data collection a natural part of daily work rather than a burden.
Development aid is not simply a technical challenge; it’s a governance and values test. The episode argues that while the needs of recipients are central, the path to progress is shaped by ongoing dialogue about history, power, and responsibility. Our takeaway is clear: digital tools should support frontline staff, respect local leadership, and enable transparent, shared accountability between donors and the communities they support.
We’re grateful to ARTE for including us in this important conversation.
The episode is available above in German and French. Unfortunately no English subtitles are available.
Aam Digital provides free, open-source case management software for organizations working in impact-led sectors such as education, community development, and social services worldwide. Learn more about how we’re helping to advance equitable access to digital tools at aam-digital.com.