In the latest episode of The Business of Philanthropy, Badr Jafar, Emirati philanthropist and Founding Patron of the Centre for Strategic Philanthropy at the University of Cambridge, speaks with the International Money Fund’s Kristalina Georgieva about the evolving role philanthropy, and the related opportunities and challenges around the strategic deployment of vast sums of philanthropic capital to help solve our world’s greatest challenges.

‘The IMF is the world’s first responder at the time of financial distress,’ said Georgieva, reflecting on cross-sector collaboration. ‘In this crisis, for example, we came forcefully with financial lifelines for the countries that had no access to financial markets. As you know, because of the massive injection of liquidity most emerging markets were able to return and borrow at fairly low rates. But not all – emerging markets with weak fundamentals or high debt levels and low-income countries had no place to go.

‘The IMF for these countries is the most important, fast disbursing reliable source of support. Just to give you the numbers, we have provided support to 83 countries, for 78 of them that was emergency financing, coming within days of requests sent to the fund, two weeks, three weeks, millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars. Sometimes over a billion would be disbursed. And I heard from many leaders in these countries that if we weren’t there, it would have been collapsed for the economies, virtually a matter of life and death. So that we do, and I’m proud to say the staff of the IMF stood up to this challenge, we did what was necessary.’

To hear the full interview, listen below.