What does it take to win a public contract in development consulting? I address this question based on interviews with 27 public buyers and private vendors of consulting services in Sweden, as well as an in-depth archival analysis of the consultancy procurements undertaken by the Swedish public aid agency, Sida, during 2018–2020. Results point to three dimensions of competitiveness in consulting: social, organizational and individual. These unravel a number of contradictions in contracting practices and discourses, tied to Sida’s evolving negotiation of new public management paradigms. Specifically, they illustrate how success in tendering depends not (only) on adhering to free-market ideals of cost-efficiency or public sector tenets of transparency and fairness. Importantly, it relies on relational labour and investments in the largely informal social fabric of contracting.

The financialization of development and the outsourcing of aid work to contracted businesses are strengthening the role of alternative drivers among practitioners engaged in international development work. These relate to but also transcend the dichotomy between altruism and personal self-interest, which often frames scholarly research on aid worker motivations. Focusing on consultants and development finance experts, this article highlights three institutional impetuses that guide practitioners’ work. They are concerned with the international competitiveness of donor operations, the stakes of one’s employer in cross-sectoral partnerships and the reputation and position of one’s professional sub-field. Consultants and development finance experts also highlight considerable staff movements across non- and for-profit institutions. In the increasingly complex architecture of aid interventions, such boundary-crossers operate in a new space of development brokerage, as mediators between public and private sector actors.

This text explores locally recruited staff within a growing category of organisations in the international aid industry: Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). DFIs are banks that offer risk capital to development projects in the global South, increasingly using tax-funded aid money. Based on interviews with 13 DFI investment managers, I show how Kenyan DFI staff challenge three of the signature attributes commonly assigned to local development professionals: their 'local' expertise does not contrast with or preclude international expertise, but rather overlaps with it; their formal authority and career ladders are not restricted to technical or support positions - many field offices are headed by local employees; and they rarely face job insecurity given their competitive qualifications and permanent employment contracts. Meanwhile, decisions on investments are rarely taken by these field office staff but by their colleagues at headquarters, and unlike the latter, even those local recruits who head their field offices usually lack a secure place in the global organisation of their DFIs. This suggests that structural inequalities between donor and recipient country staff - integral to the development industry - have not disappeared in DFIs but rather relocated: from within the walls of field offices to the relationship between these offices and headquarters.