In development, big wins come from working together — building trust, sharing expertise, and bringing the right partners to the table.

In this episode of The Development Podcast, we explore why partnerships matter — from the teamwork and great duos we see in sport, to the coalitions needed to deliver results at scale.

We look at potential from a partnership with Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University (AAMU) — a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) and an 1890 land-grant institution with a long tradition of practical, community-focused problem-solving — and how AAMU’s expertise can connect to global development priorities, including Mission 300 and AgriConnect.

Join us as we hear from: Ambassador Roya Rahmani, Director, Global Engagement, World Bank Group; Dr. Daniel K. Wims, President, Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University; Ajay Banga, President, World Bank Group; and S.L. Price, sports journalist and author of The American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse.

Timestamps

[00:00] Every great team, every unforgettable moment, starts with partnership

[00:50] S.L. Price, sports journalist on why partnerships matter in sport

[05:30] Some recent partnerships in health and energy

[07:34] Partnerships with academia and the legacy of HBCUs

[12:52] What Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University could bring to Mission 300

[18:04] Why agriculture matters and the potential of partnerships for AgriConnect

The sound of community, because in basketball, just like in life, nothing great happens alone. Every great team, every unforgettable moment, every championship banner starts with partnership. The trust to pass the ball, the instinct to move together. The belief that when it matters most, someone's got your back, and that's what we're talking about today on the Development Podcast with me, your host, Toni Karasanyi.

00:50

But before we look at how partnerships can move the dial in improving lives, let's return to a place where teamwork really does make the dream work, the basketball court. I caught up with sports journalist and author, S.L. Price. Scott was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated for 26 years and has written five books, including the American Game: History and Hope in the Country of Lacrosse. I asked him about the importance of teamwork and for his thoughts on great partnerships in sport.

S.L. Price: I went to the University of North Carolina in the 80s as a writer at the school newspaper, covered Michael Jordan's sophomore year at North Carolina, where he really exploded upon the scene. He had hit the game-winning shot the year before that won the national championship as a freshman, but really, nobody knew who he was. In fact, everyone knew him as Mike Jordan. Very quickly, it became clear to everyone that he was the most spectacular individual talent that the sport of basketball had seen, and he went on to win Player the Year honors and then was drafted by the Chicago Bulls. And from the start, he was a superstar, individual talent, not only great on the offensive end but the best defensive player in the league as well, and played with an intensity that was really fiery and unstoppable, and as everyone knows, he obviously became a global superstar. But the interesting thing about Jordan is that he was so good and he so desperately wanted to win, and he was so much better than his original teammates with the Bulls, but in the end, he could never win a championship by himself. He couldn't get past the Celtics, he couldn't get past the Detroit Pistons and their Jordan rules. It took a while for Jordan to accept that, and he wasn't a selfish player, but he was surrounded by a cast of players that were not as good as he was. He slowly but surely came to understand that in a very visceral way, meaning will he give up the ball in key moments? And people really thought, "Ah, well, maybe he's just a ball hog. Maybe he's not good enough to make the players around him better," which really is the secret of sports, the secret notation that puts you in superstardom. Finally, Jordan begins, especially in his partnership with Scottie Pippen, and then along with that, which is the most obvious and well known partnership because Scottie Pippen was almost as talented a player as Jordan was on both ends of the floor, he also took into account the contribution of role players. And in 1-9-9-3, with three seconds left in game six, instead of taking the game-winning shot, Jordan passed off to John Paxton, little known John Paxton, who hit the three pointer and won the Bulls their championship. And it really was a watershed moment because it was the final understanding and expression of the greatest individual player of all time that he needed teammates, that he needed to spread the ball around, that he needed to trust, that he needed to listen to his teammates, cultivate them, and bring them along with him. And so that to me... Now again, there are other partnerships, but that to me is the most spectacular one we've seen, if simply because he was such a spectacular individual talent, and you could really see him coming to understand the importance of everyone around him in real time.

Toni Karasanyi: Given all that you've just said, do you think there's truth in the African proverb, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together"?

S.L. Price: In the same way as it is in sports, it is in life. We all love the idea of the solitary genius, right? Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs working in a garage, but one of the most famous eureka moments in all the history of modern technical inventions, the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell is calling out for Thomas Watson, his assistant. "Come here. Mr. Watson, come here, please. I want you. I need you." This is always the way. The fact is as great as Diego Maradona was in '86 in that singular goal against England, weaving through I think it was 11 people by himself, he needed Claudio Caniggia. Michael Jordan needed Scottie Pippen. Muhammad Ali needed his entire entourage. You cannot go it alone in this world in sports. You cannot go it alone, so you need family, you need friends, you need professionals who are working with you. You need people who will call BS on you. You need to learn how to trust other people, you need to listen to them. You need to hear tough advice. You need to understand that the goals are more rewarding when they're shared, and when there's sacrifice of, say, your individuality to a little bit of the group getting forward in a way. My question is why would you want to go it alone? It's just much more fun to do it together.

But how does all this relate to real life when the stakes are high? Well, think about some of those key qualities like trust and listening. In today's world, challenges are complex, urgent, and interconnected. To cut to the chase, they're too great for one organization to tackle alone. To meet this moment, partnerships are critical, and here's World Bank Group President, Ajay Banga, demonstrating just that, beginning with a plan to help countries reach 1.5 billion people with quality, affordable health services by 2-0-3-0.

Ajay Banga: I think it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of knowledge, a lot of financing, and a lot of partnerships. Financing is the obvious one. We're talking about putting to work 50% more money per year than what we used to spend in healthcare pre the pandemic. This financing has to be catered for the country and its stage of development. We can bring that knowledge as a partner.

Toni Karasanyi: And in energy access, partnerships are how you get from ambition to megawatts on the ground.

Ajay Banga: Because of M300, 30 million people are already connected in our partnership with the African Development Bank and others. A pipeline to reach more than 100 million additional people is already moving through procurement, through financing, and through construction.

Toni Karasanyi: And to safe, secure nuclear power.

Ajay Banga: For the first time in decades, the World Bank Group will begin to reenter the nuclear energy space. That is new. It's a significant step and one that we take with care, but importantly, with partnership and with purpose. Nuclear is not for every country, but where it is chosen, where it can provide a reliable, clean source of power that strengthens energy security, that supports economic growth and helps to meet long-term development goals. The thing is the World Bank Group cannot do this alone, and that is why the partnership with the IAEA is critical to us.

So partnerships, partnerships, partnerships. Some of the obvious combos, governments and the private sector, but delivering big impact is more of a fast break. It works when everyone's moving together, civil society, faith organizations, philanthropy, think tanks, academia. Wait, hold that last thought, because in this episode, we're looking into the promise of a new partnership between the World Bank Group and Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University, or AAMU for short, which is an American university. Now, quick context for international listeners, AAMU is both an HBCU, a Historically Black College or University, and an 1-8-9-0 land grant. Land grant universities were created to teach practical fields like agriculture and engineering, and to share that knowledge beyond the classroom. For more than a century, HBCUs have been laboratories of resilience, innovation, and mobility, producing generations of scientists, engineers, and leaders who change not just their communities, but the United States. So what could happen when the World Bank Group partners with institutions like these and connects their strengths with global challenges? Well, the World Bank Group's director of global engagement, Ambassador Roya Rahmani, and AAMU President Dr. Daniel K. Wims sat down to talk about what can be achieved together? President Wims began by unpacking the legacy of HBCUs for African Americans.

Dr. Daniel K. Wims: HBCUs are something that we define as not just being a federal designation along with the 1-8-9-0 land grant status, but institutions and universities and colleges that are somewhat sacred and divine and have a mission for helping particularly and specifically African Americans coming up out of slavery and reconstruction and post-reconstruction and Jim Crow and segregation to become a part of the fabric and fiber of the nation, the United States of America. So both HBCU and 1-8-9-0, these institutions have helped create what we call an educated and middle class for African Americans, and they also offered disciplines, particularly the conservative area of the agricultural and mechanical sciences.

Toni Karasanyi: So that's the legacy, but now let's hear about the future. Over to the World Bank Group's Roya Rahmani.

Amb. Roya Rahmani: The World Bank Group and HBCUs have been striving towards this strong partnership for a past couple of years, and it's a partnership that is designed to open doors for shared research, deeper talent pipeline, and knowledge exchanges that connects US institutions with global development priorities. So in that context, I would like to hear from where you said, what would make this partnership most meaningful and impactful?

Dr. Daniel K. Wims: Of course, we are continually trying to scale up and develop and enhance capacity to do research, instruction, teaching, community service and the like. However, as you know, funding becomes a challenge. And so any partnership with a major government agency is always important for us and enables us to expand and enhance our ability to serve our population and allow us to expand our capacity. But number two, we are in a strategic effort to expand our footprint. We would like to enhance our recognizability internationally, particularly South and Central America and Sub-Saharan Africa. We do have some projects. We have one with Rwanda now, we have one with Brazil and Argentina, but we would definitely like to get involved more in developing countries. Most of our families were either subsistence farmers or sharecroppers, and so as a result, we have a history of taking people from that situation, scenario, to becoming more able to cultivate and produce on a larger level, but also process and distribute. And so we think our extension programs, our public service programs, our research and instruction programs would be key to helping the 90% of agricultural producers who are still at the family and subsistence level, particularly in developing countries. So if the World Bank Group would look at us as a partner, let's develop this partnership and be able to transfer our knowledge, expertise, and experience to the developing world. I think it would be a win-win.

So what could this kind of knowledge and talent partnership look like in practice? Starting with one of World Bank Group's big plans, back to Roya Rahmani and President Wims.

Amb. Roya Rahmani: One of the World Bank major initiatives currently is Mission 300. Mission 300 aims to provide reliable, accessible and affordable electricity to 300 million Africans by the year 2-0-3-0 in these partnerships that you have been building. Why do you think that access to electricity is so fundamental or such a fundamental pillar of development? And what would you or your university could potentially do in terms of this partnership in medium to long term in this regard?

Dr. Daniel K. Wims: Well, there are a couple of things here that we can do. We can provide technical assistance. That's number one. Number two, research-based information, where also our extension professionals could really help to teach and to train and prepare the population for adjusting to greater access to energy. Now, with electricity, there's something else that's got to come with it too, which is plumbing and the ability to, for lack of a better term, move water, and of course, it takes energy to do so. And so irrigation is very important.

Some of the countries, particularly on the northern basin of Africa, that have really engaged in large scale agricultural development, the first thing that they had to tackle was the irrigation problem, and of course, energy is necessary for you to move water, particularly from underneath the surface. And so growing up in the South myself, being a youth in the '60s and in the early '70s, there were many small farmers and subsistence farmers, sharecrop families still existing and still operating in the South, and many of them did not have running water or plumbing, and many of them were not connected to electricity and/or telephone services. And so I grew up watching the transformation of that as many of our research scientists and extension agents that are still working did. And so we saw how it allowed them to scale up and allowed them to increase and enhance their production, to be able to store food, to be able to process food, and to prepare for distribution. We think our technical expertise at the 1-8-9-0, which still works with small farmers in the Southern states, that we're able to help in a more direct fashion maybe than some of our 1-8-6-2 partners, and a more acceptable fashion, because the community has to accept you and take your advice, and they have to have trust and belief that you have their best interest at heart. The other piece of it is that we have a diverse faculty, particularly Alabama A&M University. We have one of the most diverse faculties of any institutions in the country, and many of those faculty are from African nation states, South and Central America, and they have a firsthand experience of growing up and living in those dynamics and those situations where they're able to impart firsthand knowledge. And we feel like we would be a great fit. We already have some projects that are wildly successful, but we need more support from the World Bank Group to really expand those projects and allow us to lend you our expertise and our experiences.

Toni Karasanyi: President Wims is describing how power unlocks everything else. Electricity isn't just lights. It's water and plumbing, irrigation, cold storage, processing, and getting goods to market. Once communities have reliable energy, whole sectors start to move, and then there's the people side. None of this lasts without the workforce to build it and keep it running, and that's where partnerships with HBCUs like AAMU can really matter. HBCUs are a small share of US institutions, but they produce an outsized share of African American STEM graduates. So they're already doing workforce development at scale, but they could help train the workforce that sustains Mission 300. Now, let's return to that conversation, because there's one sector where AAMU's expertise really does run deep, agriculture.

I'm very pleased to mention that another major initiative that the World Bank Group has is the AgriConnect Initiative that is focused on strengthening value chain for the farmers by connecting them to markets, to data, to finance, to technology, the whole entire ecosystem. When it comes to agriculture, I would like to ask you, given that your institution has been so deeply involved in it for so long, in fact, it's in your university's name, that why do you think it is such a critical element for development?

Dr. Daniel K. Wims: Well, agriculture, and I don't want to insult anyone, but from our vantage point as agriculturalist, is the first true religion, because before there was some ideas about how to engage in cultural practices, the human family had to learn how to feed itself. But agriculture is not just food, it's also fiber, and so food and fiber are the basis of community and economic development and national interest in terms of being able to develop institutions and organizations and agencies that are able to serve the larger population.

We have some very unique practical application projects. We have in agronomy and the agronomic sciences, plant and soil science, we have a project where we're able to predict climate impact on agricultural production, particularly on the plant science and crop science side. We have projects where we're looking at the effect of water quality on crop production and the effects of pesticides and insecticides on crop production outcomes. We have some projects where we are working with farmers now to get them to shift from some of the traditional crops, and we've been doing this for the last 20, 30 years, to getting into vegetable and fruit production, which are smaller scale but higher yield and higher profitability. But also on the animal side, the poultry farming, how do you produce chickens and subsequently eggs at a pace and a rate to be able to serve the population in a way and in a healthy fashion, with lesser bioengineering, for lack of a better term, and biochemical input. And so we feel like we've got the example and the strategy to be able to help developing countries and those who are attached to your project's Mission 300 and AgriConnect, to be able to help them to do so.

Amb. Roya Rahmani: Amazing. From everything that you say, it is just the embodiment of how your university, like other HBCUs, is such a great embodiment of history, purpose, talent, and building resilience. President Wims, thank you. You have shared today what I deeply believe in, and that is that development is ultimately human.

Dr. Daniel K. Wims: Yes.

Amb. Roya Rahmani: It grows out of the institutions that nurture talent. It's the educators that open the doors, and it's the partnership that bring purpose and possibilities together.

Toni Karasanyi: Well, that's all for today. Thank you to Roya and to President Wims, and above all, thank you for listening. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.