There is nothing more invalidating than pouring your soul into a project (writing, physical product, service, etc.), only for someone who wasn’t there for the process to dismiss it as AI or unintentional.

It is deeply disheartening to spend hours researching, refining, and wrestling with complex ideas, only to have someone on the sidelines attach uninformed assumptions to the reasoning and effort behind your work.

It isn’t just frustrating and anxiety-producing, it’s invalidating and epistemic erasure. People don’t see the sleepless nights, the deep study, the scrapped drafts, ( In my case > 50 drafts - I can be a relentless perfectionist when it comes to writing. Writing is very personal art for me and I mull over every word and savour the process of finding and selecting words to match the image or thoughts in my head) , or the mental energy it took to reshape an idea until it finally made sense.

Writing off someone’s hard work without knowing their process is lazy, disrespectful,completely demoralising and quite frankly, it is BULLYING.

To have all of that human effort reduced to a uninformed trope feels like a gut punch. It's enough to make you want to shut down completely.

Behind every piece of original work is a messy, invisible process, late nights, shifting perspectives, and genuine human effort. We shouldn't be so quick to overlook the person behind the work.

Note: This is not about a specific experience - any resemblance is purely coincidental. This is just me thinking out loud.

Representation matters — so do the narratives we build around achievement.

There is genuine significance in someone becoming the first African or Nigerian, the first woman, the youngest person, or the first person from a historically underrepresented group to achieve something. These milestones matter because they can signal that barriers are beginning to shift and that representation is expanding.

These accomplishments can widen people’s sense of what is possible, challenge exclusionary assumptions and make previously marginalised groups more visible.

Recognising the importance of the narrative we build around achievement is also significant. When a complex biography is compressed into a single identity marker: the first, the youngest, the ‘immigrant who succeeded’, the dynamics surrounding an achievement may disappear.

Intersectionality helps explain why people who appear to share one identity can occupy very different social positions. When a complex life is compressed into a single identity marker or turned into a motivational slogan, we are erasing or simplifying complex and material intersectional factors.

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work directs attention to the ways systems of power; including race, gender, class, disability and immigration status, interact rather than operate independently.

These intersections can shape how people are recognised, what institutions they can access, which barriers they encounter and how their abilities are evaluated.

Social position is also affected by broader conditions: family circumstances, educational access, health, professional networks, financial security and the environment in which someone grows up. These factors do not mechanically determine a person’s future, but they influence the opportunities through which talent can be developed, expressed and recognised.

Someone may share the same ethnicity or nationality as another person and still have a profoundly different starting point. Being British, for example, is not an incidental or non-material biographical factor. It shapes access to institutions, labour markets, legal rights, education, networks and familiarity with Britain’s multicultural landscape.

None of these guarantees success, and being British does not remove racism, sexism, class exclusion or gatekeeping. However, someone born and educated in Britain will generally navigate different institutional and opportunity structures from someone who migrated to Britain as an adult, or from someone still trying to build a career in a country classed as “developing”, where access to institutions, resources, networks and global visibility may be more constrained. These are different life courses, shaped by different forms of access and different barriers.

The same applies when achievement is framed around age. Becoming “the youngest” person to achieve something may reflect remarkable talent and hard work, but it can also reflect early access to education, money, networks, family support or opportunities that were not available to others at the same age. This is about unequal positions, not unequal effort.

Recognising those conditions does not invalidate the accomplishment. It gives us a fuller account of how it became possible. Pierre Bourdieu’s account of economic, social and cultural capital helps explain why equally talented and hardworking people do not enter institutions from equivalent positions.

Messages about working harder, taking risks, believing in oneself or refusing to “wait for permission” can be encouraging but when they are presented as complete explanations, they may subtly imply that success is primarily a matter of mindset.
Under that interpretation, structural advantages disappear from accounts of success, while structural disadvantages disappear from accounts of failure.

Many people are not waiting for permission. They are navigating visa restrictions, political conflict, poor socio-economic conditions, financial insecurity, limited professional networks, discrimination, caring responsibilities, mental health challenges, abuse, disabilities and unequal access to opportunities and resources. A person can be extraordinarily proactive and still face barriers that another equally talented person never encounters.

What gets erased when complex biographies are turned into motivational slogans is context. When that context disappears, success becomes personalised and failure becomes individualised. The purpose of contextualising achievement is not to redistribute credit, rank people’s suffering or speculate about whether someone had an easy life. It is to resist converting an individual biography into a universal theory of success.
One exceptional success story therefore cannot prove that everyone could achieve similar outcome by working harder. Exceptional cases at best, show what one person accomplished within a particular set of circumstances.

Recognising privilege, support or structural access does not diminish achievement; nor does it mean that successful people had an easy path. It gives us a more accurate account of how success happens through the interaction between individual agency and the opportunities and constraints surrounding that agency.

The stories I find most inspiring are those that tell the full story. What barriers existed and which barriers were absent? What support was available? What risks could the person afford to take? Which institutions opened doors, and which ones remained closed? Those details make achievement more human and far more useful. Those are the stories that inspire.

I didn’t expect to be writing this on a Monday afternoon, but I just watched a Sunday LBC segment that did not sit well with me. I enjoy LBC, especially James O’Brien’s programmes, but this segment focused on criticising Jude Bellingham on Sunday was disappointing.

I watched the entire LBC segment from start to finish. What I saw wasn't balanced commentary. I saw a broadcaster with a national platform repeatedly portraying a young Black footballer as a moral problem because he showed frustration, however subtly, after a high-pressure match.

I also watched both Thomas Tuchel's and Jude Bellingham's post-match interviews LIVE on Saturday. The only person who came across as unprofessional was the interviewer, who seemed more interested in creating a viral moment than understanding the person he was interviewing. He appeared more interested in provoking a headline than conducting a fair interview in an emotionally charged, high-pressure context.

Jude Bellingham had just played over 100 minutes in extreme conditions, scored two goals, and helped England reach the semi-finals. He showed frustration. He's a footballer and a human being, not a machine. At what point do we start allowing talented young people to be human?

Jude deserves criticism when it's warranted, like any other player. But what I watched wasn't fair criticism. It was a disproportionate and irresponsible attack.

What convinced me this went beyond ordinary criticism were the comparisons the host chose to make. How can you compare a footballer saying "whatever, whatever" after an exhausting international match to someone shoplifting, fare dodging or engaging in antisocial behaviour? Those situations aren’t remotely comparable. By making those comparisons, the discussion shifted from football to morality and criminality. For me, that’s where race entered the picture.

The comparison didn't simply criticise Jude's words; it associated a young Black man with long-standing narratives of disorder and criminality that have historically shaped public perceptions of Black people in the UK.

That's why I believe the comparison was racist, not merely unfair. It invited listeners to see a moment of human frustration as evidence of defective character rather than simply an emotional response after an exhausting match.

Watching parts of the media turn a post-match emotional reaction into a national moral debate made me wonder: who gets the benefit of the doubt, and who is expected to perform perfection in order to earn acceptance? Those aren’t just football questions, they are social questions.

This is exactly why I'm researching belonging in the UK. Belonging isn't only about immigration. It's also about the perpetual negotiation of social legitimacy, who is accepted without question, and who is expected to keep proving they deserve to belong.

One reason this struck such a nerve with me is that it doesn't feel like an isolated incident. I've watched similar narratives emerge around Black England players for years. Bukayo Saka immediately comes to mind. Bukayo Saka is an amazing and incredibly influential player. His movement, creativity and ability to assist goals have been instrumental to England throughout this World Cup. His contribution can sometimes appear quiet, but the effect he has on the team is unmistakable.

Yet after he missed the decisive penalty in the Euro 2020 final, he alongside Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho was subjected to racist abuse online, including racial slurs and monkey and banana emojis.

The response exposed how quickly Black players can move from being celebrated as representatives of England to being racially attacked when they falter.

When Black players succeed, they're embraced as symbols of England. When they stumble or even simply show ordinary human emotion, some people become much quicker to question their character, intelligence, commitment or even their belonging.

Black England players are often celebrated as England's heroes when they deliver success. But when they make mistakes, or simply display frustration, some commentary shifts from evaluating their performance to evaluating their character. That shift is worth paying attention to.

Jude is English. He is also Black because of his mother's heritage. Those identities are not in competition with each other. He doesn't become "more English" because he scores two goals, and he doesn't become "less English" because he shows frustration after an exhausting match.

Perhaps this is why the segment angered me so much. I am tired of watching ordinary moments involving Black people being stripped of context, exaggerated into evidence of defective character, and then connected to wider stories about disorder, criminality and social decline. Jude was no longer being discussed as an exhausted footballer reacting to a provocative question. He was being made to represent a social problem.

This is how media narratives are constructed. A provocative interview creates a headline. The press amplifies it. Commentators escalate it. Before long, we're no longer discussing football - we're discussing a manufactured version of someone's character.

The media has enormous power to shape public perception and with that power comes responsibility. Criticise Jude’s football when he plays badly. Criticise his decisions if they’re genuinely worthy of criticism. But don’t manufacture outrage, don’t dehumanise him or other Black players, and don’t use a national platform to invite millions of people to see them through a lens of suspicion rather than humanity.

There are days when I look at the world and wonder whether some people were simply born ten steps behind everyone else. Not because they lacked ability or ambition, but because they inherited every disadvantage before they had the chance to make a single decision for themselves.

Some people inherit wealth or networks. Some inherit safety. Some inherit confidence because someone spent years telling them they mattered.

I inherited something different.

I grew up poor and female in 90s Nigeria. You know that kind of poverty that you naturalise because it is your everyday until other people point it out to you, directly or indirectly, whatever their intentions might have been. Also, If you understand how deeply embedded Nigeria is in a toxic and unequal patriarchal system, you would also understand why I highlighted being female. I grew up with a father who believed women had no rights or voice. God, being the comedian that He can be, chose to bless my dad with four girls.

I experienced years of unbelievable domestic abuse from the people who should have been my support system. From an early age, I learnt isolation and hypervigilance. I had no support for the trauma I experienced, or even the bare minimum support for my growth as a child. I learnt to navigate life by myself. On most days, life sometimes feels like one long sentence in an isolated prison cell. Even today, I have no real support system except for strangers and a few professional networks -
particularly former lecturers and supervisors - who have shown me support and recognition.

Every milestone in my life has been built on blood, sweat, and tears. Education wasn't just an aspiration; it was my way forward. It was the route I believed could change the trajectory of my life, so I held onto it with everything I had.

Behind every achievement were years of isolation, loneliness, and periods where my own mind became another battle to navigate. There are stories of crises behind every qualification. There were profound crises and moments when simply making it to the next day felt like enough work on its own. On top of all of that, I am diagnosed as neurodivergent with ADHD. Naturally, given my experiences, I have also experienced anxiety and depression, along with the stigma that can follow these experiences within some Christian communities and the heaviness of navigating them without a meaningful support network.

Sometimes I look at all of those things together and think, ‘How on earth am I supposed to fight — when Life has put me in the boxing ring with all of this?’

However, these are part of my story. I refuse to let them become the whole story. I hear stories of great people throughout history and in my own lifetime. People like Michael Jackson, Tupac Shakur, or Jude Bellingham have very different stories, yet they echo something similar —

“Giving up is easy. Getting back up every time life throws you down, that is the stuff giants are made of — It’s okay to be vulnerable — It’s okay to try, and try, and try again until you do something so effortlessly that people think you are not human or that you were born that way — The most important belonging is belonging to yourself.”

[The older I get, the more disillusioned I’ve become by motivation statements. I am not a fan of the trope that behind any afflicted person there is some hidden plot of greatness. No - sometimes pain is just pain and suffering should not be romanticised as some grand plan of the universe for special people or as some ritual rite to success especially not when some people have their success facilitated by network or birthright.]

Regardless, none of my absurd experiences stopped me from trying to achieve, but they changed what it cost. Sometimes, my life feels like a never-ending episode of The Hunger Games or Squid Game but my experiences have never reduced my commitment to my work, but they have certainly changed the conditions under which I have had to do it.

For a long time, I thought I should only tell my story after I had achieved everything I wanted. I thought perhaps then I would have earned the right to speak. I don’t believe that anymore. This is the first of what may become a few reflections because I don’t want the parts that mattered most to disappear.

I’m not writing this because I think the world owes me anything. It doesn’t. I still have faith. I still believe there is purpose in continuing. But faith does not cancel exhaustion. Perhaps this is why I wanted to write today.

I’m not sharing this because I want sympathy. I’m certainly not sharing it because I think hardship makes anyone more deserving than the next person.

I'm sharing it because I've realised that if I wait until I've "made it" before telling my story, I may never tell it at all - not when I am the one defining what "made it" looks like.

My academic curiosity is driven by a desire to understand how social realities are constructed, organised, and experienced and how those processes shape people’s opportunities, identities, and life chances.

That curiosity first emerged through my interest in development and unequal development among countries. I wanted to understand why poverty, exclusion, and unequal opportunity persist across societies, and why some forms of deprivation come to be treated as inevitable when they are often produced through social, economic, political, and institutional arrangements.

My undergraduate research on Employment and the Informal Economy allowed me to examine this question through economic participation, visibility, and the boundaries between formal and informal forms of value.

My work in International development deepened the question. Encountering Amartya Sen’s work on poverty, famine, and entitlements sharpened my understanding that deprivation is not simply about scarcity. It is also about access, distribution, institutional arrangements, and the conditions under which people are able or unable to claim what they need to live with dignity.

That concern later developed into my research on development discourse, legitimacy, representation, and beneficiary salience in local NGOs. I became interested in how needs are defined, how communities are represented, whose voices are made visible, whose agency is diminished, and how institutions construct legitimacy when speaking about the people they claim to serve.

My research in Logistics and Supply Chain Management extended this concern into questions of distribution, humanitarian systems, and knowledge production. Initially, I was drawn to logistics because development is, in part, a question of distribution: how resources, services, and opportunities move, or fail to move, to where they are needed.

Yet, when I studied systems of distribution, I encountered another bottleneck. Decisions about what is distributed, whose needs are prioritised, which solutions are adopted, and what knowledge is considered authoritative are themselves shaped by systems of knowledge and power. I therefore became interested not only in how resources move, but also in how knowledge is produced, organised, diffused, and valued within emerging technological systems.

Across these disciplines, I began to notice a recurring pattern. Whether I was examining development, organisations, knowledge systems, or social participation; I kept encountering forms of inequality that appeared remarkably persistent. Poverty, exclusion, unequal development, constrained agency, and unequal opportunities often seemed to endure even where institutions, policies, and interventions were explicitly designed to address them.

I kept encountering distinctions that shaped people’s opportunities, experiences, and life chances. Some groups appeared more visible than others. Some forms of knowledge carried greater authority. Some voices were amplified while others remained marginal.

At first, I was interested in understanding why these outcomes existed. Over time, my attention gradually shifted towards the processes through which these distinctions are produced, maintained, negotiated, and challenged. This led me towards questions of classification, representation, legitimacy, and, ultimately, boundary-making as a way of understanding how social realities are organised and experienced.

Across these areas, I have found myself repeatedly examining the relationship between systems and experiences: how institutions, categories, narratives, and forms of knowledge shape the realities people inhabit, and how those realities are understood, negotiated, and contested.

This continues to guide my research interests today. The specific subjects have evolved, but the underlying curiosity remains the same: understanding how social realities are constructed, organised, and experienced, and why those processes matter for people’s lives.

There is still no consensus on the definition of development. As an evolving field of inquiry, development continues to attract competing interpretations shaped by different historical experiences, cultural contexts, and societal priorities. In many respects, this diversity makes the search for a single universal definition nearly impossible.

When I first wrote this essay, my primary concern was that the world had become too heterogeneous for the label “developing countries” to remain meaningful. I remain persuaded by that argument. The emergence of an increasingly multipolar world, coupled with the economic, political, and social transformations experienced by many countries, has complicated older distinctions between the developed and developing world.

Also, the problem is not simply that the category struggles to reflect contemporary realities; It is also that the category carries assumptions about progress, deficiency, and normality that were historically produced and continue to influence how countries are understood. The label appears descriptive, yet it embodies particular ways of imagining the world and positioning countries within it.

This does not mean that all forms of classification should be abandoned. Categorisation remains an important part of policymaking, international cooperation, and the allocation of resources. As the World Bank and other institutions have recognised, however, classifications must evolve alongside the realities they seek to describe.

If categories shape how societies are perceived, compared, and governed, then the challenge is not whether to classify, but how. Classification systems should be multidimensional, transparent, and responsive to change rather than dependent upon inherited binaries that increasingly struggle to capture the complexity of contemporary realities.

All groups are not immutable, and neither are countries. Rather than accommodating themselves to externally imposed developmental hierarchies, societies should be able to chart self-sustaining and self-defining paths of development that reflect their own histories, priorities, and aspirations.

I still do not believe that the expression “developing countries” adequately captures the world as it exists today. Yet I have come to see that the more important question is what the category does: how it shapes understandings of progress, influences systems of classification, and helps define the boundaries through which countries are recognised, compared, and valued.

Conceptual Argument

To start with, it is only logical that a clear understanding of “development” and how it can be measured should form an important basis for understanding why a country is categorised as developed or not. It is thus expedient to note that despite this obviously important pre-categorisation phase, there is still no single definition for development or for its measurement.

In Managing Development, Staudt (1991) advances “seven hundred definitions of development.” Development can be interpreted uniquely as good change, as a vision of a desirable society, as a process of social change, or as the practice of development agencies (Thomas, 2000).

Development can also mean economic growth, human development in terms of capabilities and freedom, or sustainable development. Development thus assumes a teleological kaleidoscope of meanings depending on which lens of interpretation you choose to look at.

Koponen (2020) maintains that the definition of development remains a conundrum that has an “historically acquired and accumulated ambiguity.” Although he argues that the strength in this polyvalence is the multipurpose characteristic development assumes, it is exactly for this reason that I argued, and still argue, that if we are going to slap defining labels on billions of people in a particular world region for planning and policy purposes, then such ambiguity raises important questions about the credibility of the exercise.

However, I now think the issue extends beyond credibility alone. If development has multiple meanings, then someone must decide which meaning matters most. Whether development is understood primarily as economic growth, industrialisation, poverty reduction, sustainability, capabilities, or freedom is not simply an analytical decision. It is also a political one. The act of classification therefore depends upon selecting particular visions of progress while sidelining others.

This does not mean that measurement is impossible or that all classifications are inherently illegitimate. Rather, it highlights the difficulty of treating categories such as “developed” and “developing” as neutral descriptions of reality when the concept on which they are based remains deeply contested.

Historical Argument
Furthermore, there is the debate that development is produced historically, and that underdevelopment is the creation of development. Several scholars have therefore advocated for the deconstruction and rethinking of development discourse because it is embedded in histories of colonialism and legitimised through connotations of Eurocentrism, polarisation, Western hegemony, cultural homogenisation, and the delegitimisation of existing non-Western institutions (Escobar, 2012; Simon, 2006; Esteva, 2010; Cowen and Shenton, 1995).

These undertones were perhaps most explicit in the inaugural speech of US President Harry Truman in 1949. By using an “us” and “them” narrative and depicting the non-Western world as afflicted by a lack of progress and in urgent need of Western assistance through industrialisation, development — the future of progress — was defined on Western terms.

This point strikes me differently today than it did when I first wrote this essay. At the time, I saw it primarily as evidence of bias within development discourse. Looking back, I now see it as evidence of something broader: the power to define the criteria through which others are evaluated.

Once development becomes the benchmark through which societies are assessed, those who define development acquire considerable influence over how other societies are understood, categorised, and judged.

For this reason, the conceptual problem with the term “developing countries” is not simply that development itself is difficult to define. The deeper issue is that contested visions of progress are often transformed into seemingly objective classifications. The category appears descriptive, yet it carries assumptions about what counts as advancement, who sets the standard, and how societies ought to evolve.

According to Cowen and Shenton (1995), during the nineteenth century those who saw themselves as developed believed that they could act to determine the process of development for others deemed less developed. Coupled with this, development relied on the production of knowledge from Western institutions that could provide a supposedly scientific picture of a country’s social and economic problems and resources (Escobar, 2012).

Thus, as Escobar (1999) argues, “the Third World” was produced through the articulation of knowledge and power. Its defining characteristic became poverty, and this framing shaped how vast regions of the world came to be understood.

It was contended that:
“Over 1.5 million people, something like two-thirds of the world population, were living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional diseases. This hunger was at the same time the cause and effect of poverty, squalor, and misery in which they lived” (Wilson 1953, cited in Escobar, 2012, p. 21).

Statements of this nature were uttered profusely throughout the late 1940s and 1950s (Orr 1953; Escobar, 2012). The globalisation of poverty that followed relied upon framing two-thirds of the world as poor after 1945. If within market societies the poor were defined as lacking what the rich possessed in terms of money and material resources, poor countries came to be similarly defined in relation to the standards of wealth established by economically advantaged nations (Escobar, 2012).

When I first wrote this essay, I interpreted this largely as a historical critique of development thinking. Looking back, I now think it also reveals something more fundamental about classification itself. Categories do not emerge in a vacuum. They are produced within particular historical contexts and often reflect the assumptions, priorities, and interests of those with the power to define them.

Accordingly, in the early post-World War II period, how to “develop” became a fundamental problem for non-Western countries. Many embarked upon the task of “underdeveloping” themselves by subjecting their societies to increasingly systematic capitalist interventions that, according to post-development scholars, often reproduced rather than resolved patterns of dependency (Escobar, 2012; Haynes, 2008).

Social development and cultural modernisation proposals, echoed in modernisation theory, presented a largely unilinear path from traditional societies to modern ones. Development was increasingly portrayed not simply as one possible route among many, but as a universal destination. Few countries, such as Cuba and Bhutan, chose not to follow this model. Dependency theorists such as Amin and Frank argued that rather than producing development, the unequal structure of international economic and political relations often reproduced underdevelopment throughout the Global South. For example, in their attempts to “develop,” some countries accumulated such significant levels of debt and dependency that escaping those relationships became increasingly difficult (Paul, 2016; Tausch, 2003; Walter, 1973; Frank, 1969).

Over time, different descriptive labels were used to identify countries perceived as lacking development. First came the “Third World,” a term later criticised for its political undertones. Then came the “Global South,” which itself carries ambiguities, particularly because poorer southern regions may exist within wealthier northern countries (Haynes, 2008). Eventually, “developing countries” emerged as a more widely accepted term, despite ongoing concerns about its conceptual and political limitations.

What is striking is not merely that the labels changed, but that the underlying logic often remained intact. Each category sought to organise the world into broad developmental groupings, distinguishing those who were presumed to have arrived from those who were still on the journey.

Historically, developmental classifications relied heavily upon indicators such as poverty, educational attainment, infant mortality, and life expectancy. While these indicators captured important dimensions of inequality, they also contributed to the construction of broad developmental categories through which highly diverse societies came to be understood as sharing a common condition.

As Hans Rosling argues, the problem lies not simply in identifying differences but in the ways those differences are framed, labelled, and decontextualised (Rosling, 2018). Such classifications risk reinforcing simplistic representations of progress and deficiency while obscuring the historical and political conditions through which inequalities emerge.

Some scholars counterargue that rather than encouraging aspirations toward Western models of development, such representations may instead generate resignation and fatalism among populations repeatedly positioned as lagging behind (Das, 2016).

Regardless of which interpretation one accepts, a broader concern remains. As Clifford (1986) observed, no one should continue writing about others as if they were binary, discrete objects or texts.

In broad terms, Clifford was challenging the tendency to represent societies, cultures, and peoples as fixed, bounded, and internally homogeneous entities that could be easily described from the outside. Such representations risk reducing complex realities to simplified categories and overlooking the diversity, contradictions, and negotiations that exist within them.

The danger is not simply analytical imprecision. When categories harden into seemingly self-evident realities, they can reify social groups, obscure internal diversity, and encourage the treatment of highly heterogeneous societies and populations as if they constituted singular, coherent entities. Attending to individuals, communities, and lived experiences provides an important safeguard against the simplification and homogenisation that broad classificatory labels often invite.

Looking back, this point now strikes me as particularly important. The validity of classifications cannot be assessed solely at the level of categories themselves. Individuals and lived experiences constitute important analytical sites for examining how classifications operate, where they break down, and what consequences they produce. It is often at the level of everyday life that the limits, exclusions, and contradictions of broad classificatory systems become most visible.

That observation resonates even more strongly today than it did when I first encountered it. The historical problem with the category “developing countries” is not only that it emerged within a particular moment of global power. It is that the category continues to carry traces of that history while presenting itself as a neutral description of reality.

Seen in this light, the issue is not simply whether the label is accurate. It is also whether the classification reproduces assumptions about who defines progress, who embodies it, and who remains measured against it.

Empirical Argument
One might argue that if we are to prevent entire regions of the world from being left behind, some form of classification remains necessary. I agree. Categories can serve important practical and administrative purposes. Governments, international organisations, and researchers often require systems of classification to organise information, identify patterns, and make decisions across highly diverse global contexts.

Yet contemporary evidence increasingly reveals a world that is more complex than the developmental binaries that have traditionally been used to describe it.
Human Development Index (HDI) data provide a useful starting point. Countries historically classified as “developing” now occupy markedly different positions in relation to health, education, and living standards.

For example, Chile and Mexico are currently classified within the “very high human development” category, while countries such as Niger remain among the lowest-ranked countries globally (UNDP, 2025). Such disparities suggest that countries grouped under a single developmental label often face very different opportunities, constraints, and developmental trajectories.

Life expectancy trends reveal a similar pattern. As Rosling (2018) observed, many of the sharp divides that once appeared to separate the developed and developing world have narrowed considerably over time. India’s life expectancy, for example, has risen from approximately 41 years in 1950 to more than 70 years today (World Bank, 2024). Comparable improvements have occurred across many countries historically classified as developing, particularly in relation to child mortality, healthcare access, and educational attainment.

At the same time, developmental outcomes often vary significantly within countries themselves. Regional inequalities, urban-rural disparities, and differences across social groups mean that national averages can conceal substantial variation in lived experiences and life chances. The reality of development is therefore frequently more uneven and differentiated than national classifications imply.

Institutional practices have also begun to reflect these changing realities. Perhaps the most revealing indication came from the World Bank itself. In the 2016 edition of the World Development Indicators, the institution moved away from the traditional terminological distinction between “developed” and “developing” countries (Fantom et al., 2016).

The World Bank has continued to maintain this position, arguing that the labels have become increasingly difficult to justify given the diversity of countries they seek to describe and the multidimensional nature of development itself (World Bank, 2024). Although the income-based classifications that replaced them have attracted criticism of their own, the shift reflects a broader recognition that inherited developmental binaries struggle to capture the complexity of contemporary global realities.

Taken together, these developments point towards a world that is considerably more complex than the one that informed many earlier developmental classifications. The evidence does not suggest that global inequalities have disappeared, nor that all countries have converged. Profound differences remain both between and within countries. However, it does challenge the assumption that the world can still be meaningfully divided into two broad developmental categories.

The existence of diversity within a category does not necessarily invalidate the category itself. Many classifications contain substantial internal variation. The critical issue is whether the category conceals forms of difference that are essential for understanding the realities it claims to describe.

The empirical problem with the term “developing countries” is therefore not simply that countries within the category are different. It is that the differences increasingly matter. As social, economic, and political trajectories diverge, the category conceals forms of variation that are essential for understanding contemporary realities while continuing to shape how countries are perceived, compared, and governed.

Importantly, this does not mean that classification should be abandoned altogether. As Tezanos Vázquez and Sumner (2013) note, categorisation serves important operational purposes, helping institutions organise information, identify patterns, and make decisions across highly diverse global contexts. The challenge, however, is to recognise that classifications are not merely technical instruments. They shape how realities are perceived, compared, and acted upon, making continual reflection on their assumptions and consequences essential.

References

Clifford, J. (1986) ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’, in Clifford, J. and Marcus, G.E. (eds.) Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 1–26.

Cowen, M.P. and Shenton, R.W. (1995) ‘The Invention of Development’, in Crush, J. (ed.) Power of Development. London: Routledge, pp. 27–43.

Das, R.C. (2016) ‘The Problems of Development Gap Between Developed and Developing Nations: Is There Any Sign of Convergence?’, in Handbook of Research on Global Indicators of Economic and Political Convergence. Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

Escobar, A. (1999) ‘The Invention of Development’, Current History, 98(631), pp. 382–386.

Escobar, A. (2012) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Esteva, G. (2010) ‘Development’, in Sachs, W. (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–23.

Fantom, N., Khokhar, T. and Purdie, E. (2016) ‘The 2016 Edition of World Development Indicators Is Out: Three Features You Won’t Want to Miss’, World Bank Data Blog. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/2016-edition-world-development-indicators-out-three-features-you-wont-want-miss (Accessed: [date]).

Haynes, J. (2008) Development Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press.

José, A.O. and José, A.R. (eds.) (2015) Global Governance and Rules for the Post-2015 Era: Addressing Emerging Issues in the Global Environment. London: Bloomsbury.

Koponen, J. (2020) ‘Development: History and Power of the Concept’, Forum for Development Studies, 47(1), pp. 1–24.

Orr, J. (1953) The White Man’s Dilemma. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Rosling, H., Rosling, O. and Rosling, A.R. (2018) Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World — And Why Things Are Better Than You Think. London: Sceptre.

Roser, M. and Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2013) ‘Global Extreme Poverty’. Our World in Data. Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty (Accessed: [date]).

Simon, D. (2006) Fifty Key Thinkers on Development. London: Routledge.

Staudt, K. (1991) Managing Development: State, Society, and International Contexts. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Tezanos Vázquez, S. and Sumner, A. (2014) ‘Revisiting the Meaning of Development: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries’, Journal of Development Studies, 50(12), pp. 1728–1745.

Thomas, A. (2000) ‘Meanings and Views of Development’, in Allen, T. and Thomas, A. (eds.) Poverty and Development into the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–48.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2025) Human Development Report 2025. New York: UNDP.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2025) Human Development Index Data Center. Available at: https://hdr.undp.org/data-center

World Bank (2024) Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) — India. World Development Indicators. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org (Accessed: [date]).

World Bank (2024) Is It Time to Stop Referring to the ‘Developing World’? World Bank Data Blog. Available at: https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/time-stop-referring-developing-world

Five years ago, I wrote an essay arguing that the expression “developing countries” no longer made sense. At the time, I was concerned primarily with the growing diversity of countries grouped under the label and the conceptual ambiguity surrounding development itself. Today, I think the problem is not simply whether the term accurately describes the world.

The more important question is what the category does: how it shapes the way countries are understood, compared, governed, and positioned within global hierarchies of progress. Reading the essay now, I can see that I was already grappling with questions that continue to shape my current research: who creates categories, what assumptions they contain, and what consequences follow from them.

The discourse of “developing countries” evolved from the assumption that countries grouped under the label shared broadly similar characteristics and were distinct from developed countries. As José and José (2015) note, this assumption may have been more plausible in the past; however, the countries commonly classified as developing have become increasingly heterogeneous over time. Their book further argues that even though there are still extreme transnational inequalities, the economic situation of developing countries is now much more varied. Hence, they state that because of this trend, the term ‘developing world’ has lost part of its accuracy.

It is no doubt that responding to this growing heterogeneity presents a challenge for any system of classification. Yet the issue extends beyond descriptive accuracy. Categories do not merely organise information; they also shape the ways in which realities are interpreted. The question, therefore, is not only whether the label ‘developing countries’ reflects the contemporary world, but whether the assumptions embedded within the category continue to influence how countries are imagined and valued.

Previous studies have concentrated on the anthropology of development and have called for a plurality of discourses, audiences, and terrains to accommodate the diversity of experiences and rationalities in the representation of developing countries (Escobar, 2012; Esteva, 2010; Cowen and Shenton, 1995). However, some researchers have attempted to proffer an alternative multidimensional taxonomy for the categorisation of countries (Tezanos Vázquez and Sumner, 2013).

The expression ‘developing countries’ does not make sense for a broad range of reasons. In the original essay, I focused on conceptual, historical, and empirical rationales for questioning binary classifications of countries. Revisiting those arguments today, I remain convinced that the term is increasingly difficult to defend. Yet I now see the issue not only as a problem of classification, but also as a problem of power. The category carries assumptions about progress, deficiency, and normality that extend far beyond its descriptive function.

In this article, I revisit the conceptual, historical, and empirical foundations of that argument, while reflecting on how classifications can shape the realities they claim merely to describe.

References

Cowen, M.P. and Shenton, R.W. (1995) ‘The Invention of Development’, in Crush, J. (ed.) Power of Development. London: Routledge, pp. 27–43.

Escobar, A. (1999) ‘The Invention of Development’, Current History, 98(631), pp. 382–386.

Escobar, A. (2012) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Esteva, G. (2010) ‘Development’, in Sachs, W. (ed.) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. 2nd edn. London: Zed Books, pp. 1–23.

José, A.O. and José, A.R. (eds.) (2015) Global Governance and Rules for the Post-2015 Era: Addressing Emerging Issues in the Global Environment. London: Bloomsbury.

Tezanos Vázquez, S. and Sumner, A. (2014) ‘Revisiting the Meaning of Development: A Multidimensional Taxonomy of Developing Countries’, Journal of Development Studies, 50(12), pp. 1728–1745.