Delivering on Doha commitments: More trade, more investment, more jobs in LDCs
23 Oct 2026
Later this month, investors, ministers and development institutions gather in Doha for the World Investment Forum. They arrive at a sobering moment. Official development assistance from members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee fell by 23.1 percent in 2025, the largest annual drop on record. For the 44 least developed countries (LDCs), home to more than a billion people, the stakes are clear: shrinking aid cannot sustain growing ambitions. Mobilising private investment is no longer a choice, but a necessity.
Capital exists. The question is whether it reaches the economies, businesses and people that need it most. Foreign direct investment into the LDCs was about $43 bn in 2025, according to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2026. That is a small share of global flows, and it is concentrated in a handful of countries and sectors. Investors do not stay away from the LDCs for lack of interest. Too often, promising investment opportunities remain unrealised because projects lack the preparation, enabling conditions and institutional support needed to attract long-term capital.
This is not a new idea, but the circumstances have changed. When aid budgets were growing, preparation could be treated as a supporting activity. Today, with traditional bilateral flows contracting, it is the surest way to make every dollar, public or private, work harder. Institutions and companies in the Gulf already look at LDC markets with growing interest, in digital trade, agriculture and logistics among others. What they ask for is help in finding the right opportunities and managing the risk.
Bridging the gap between ambition and investability is central to the work of the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF). Anchored at the World Trade Organization (WTO), the EIF is a multilateral partnership supporting LDCs and recently graduated countries in harnessing trade for economic growth and job creation. Rather than duplicating the efforts of investors and development banks, the EIF helps create the conditions for sustainable investment through three complementary approaches. First, we start from country ownership. Every EIF programme is shaped by the LDC government itself and run through a National Implementation Unit (NIU) inside its trade ministry. Priorities are set by those who will live with the results, which is what gives investors confidence that a project will outlast a funding cycle.
Second, we do the unglamorous upstream work that turns ideas into investable projects. That means strengthening investment policy and regulatory frameworks, supporting investment promotion agencies, mapping value chains, and helping small and medium-sized enterprises, especially those led by women and young people, to become export-ready and visible to buyers and financiers. A well-prepared project costs a fraction of what a failed one does, and it is far more likely to attract capital that stays.
Third, we connect. Preparation has little value if no one is looking at the pipeline. In Geneva on 30 October, at the WTO’s Global Review of Aid for Trade, co-hosted by Djibouti and Nepal, the EIF will bring together LDC businesses, investors, development finance institutions, Investment Promotion Agencies and ministers in an EIF Business and Investment Network. The aim is simple: to turn trade and investment priorities into concrete business opportunities, and to give partners a direct line to the people who can deliver them.
These foundations matter more as the EIF enters its third phase, which runs to 2031, concurrently to the Doha Programme of Action. Phase Three is built on multi-year, country-led programming and on partnerships that are specific and visible. Partners can support priorities in named countries and sectors through project-based partnerships and co-financing arrangements, with clear results to show for their commitment. This approach aligns closely with the Gulf’s longstanding commitment to results-driven development partnerships.
The World Investment Forum serves as a key platform for the EIF to build new partnerships, including with the Gulf. It is fitting that this conversation is taking place in Qatar. Qatar is not only a supporter of the LDC agenda; it helped write it. The Doha Programme of Action, adopted in 2022, sets the direction for the LDCs through 2031, and Qatar’s commitment to it, including its founding pledge of $60m, showed that leadership can be practical as well as political.
In March 2027, Doha will again host the world for the High-level Midterm Review of that Programme. It will be the moment to show that the promises of 2022 are leading to concrete outcomes – jobs, exports and investments – on the ground.
What would it take to make that moment count? I would suggest three things.
1. Invest in preparation as seriously as in projects. Feasibility work, regulatory reform and enterprise readiness rarely make headlines, yet they decide whether capital arrives at all.
2. Country ownership means results that last. Partnerships built around national priorities, with clear roles and shared visibility, last longer and deliver more than those designed from the outside.
3. Measure and report results. Investors and governments alike need evidence of what has worked. Transparent results make the next investment easier to justify.
The LDCs are not asking for charity. They are asking to be treated as what they are: young, ambitious economies with entrepreneurs, resources and markets waiting to be connected. With the right preparation and the right partners, they can be among the most rewarding places to invest in the decade ahead. The World Investment Forum in Doha is a good place to begin.
