New Delhi, June 5 -- With the Trump administration slashing US Agency for International Development budgets and European nations shifting overseas development aid budgets to bolster defence spending, the world has entered a "post-aid era".

But there is an opportunity to recast development finance as strategic investment: "Country platforms".

Country platforms are government-led, nationally owned mechanisms that bring together a country's climate priorities, investment needs and reform agenda and align them with the interests of development partners, private investors and implementing agencies. They function as a strategic hub: Convening actors, coordinating funding and curating pipelines of projects for investment.

Think of them as th...