Ten years ago delegates from all over the world gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the future of development finance. African countries saw grounds for cautious optimism. Foreign investment flows to the continent had doubled over the preceding decade. New sources of credit - especially dollar-denominated bonds and Chinese loans - created financing options beyond traditional aid. An ambitious list of "Sustainable Development Goals" SDGs was being finalised. The World Bank talked of turning "billions to trillions" by courting the pension funds and insurers of rich nations.
But the last decade has not turned out as promised. Growth in Africa has slowed, from an annual average of 5 in the ten years before the third International Conference on Financing for Development in Addis Ababa in July 2015, to 3 since. The next of these United Nations conferences is on 30 June in the Spanish city of Seville.
The UN thinks that another 4 trillion is needed every year to achieve the SDG targets, but money is hard to come by: the US is cantankerous China preoccupied investors hesitant taxpayers indignant and budgets stretched. Four days of talking in Seville will not change any of that. But the conference, the fourth in a series since 2002, is a forum where countries meet on a slightly more equal footing than usual. For African countries, it might be an opportunity to articulate an alternative vision of how to finance development - if anyone is listening.
A lost decadeIn retrospect the Addis Ababa conference of 2015 was a high-water mark, held at the very moment the tide was about to turn. The miracle of Chinese growth and the convulsions of western finance had, for a time, worked in Africa's favour: low interest rates, quantitative easing and soaring commodity prices all brought capital to the continent.
But however carefully they managed their economies, and however vital their natural resources, African countries were still on the periphery of the world economy, buffeted by forces beyond their control.