Global inequality is the gap in income, wealth and opportunity between countries and within them. For three decades it narrowed, as China, India and other emerging economies grew faster than rich ones; today that progress has stalled for the poorest countries, while wealth at the very top keeps concentrating. From 20 to 22 October 2026, the Berlin Global Dialogue at ESMT Berlin asks how to combat widening inequalities between and within countries. Much of the answer lies in taxes, debt and trade. Part of it lies somewhere less visible: inside the companies that are supposed to turn money into jobs.
A mixed picture, and a worrying one
Fewer than 60,000 people now control three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity, according to the World Inequality Report 2026. In 2025, the richest 10% of the world's population received 53% of global income, while the poorest half earned just 8%. The top 10% own three quarters of personal wealth and the bottom half only 2%, Al Jazeera reported from the report's data in December 2025.
Yet the trend is not one of uniform decline. For most of the past three decades, global income inequality fell: the global Gini index dropped from about 70 at the end of the 1990s to about 62 in 2019, as poorer countries grew faster than rich ones, World Bank economists Nishant Yonzan, Daniel Gerszon Mahler and Christoph Lakner estimated in December 2022. Inequality inside many countries fell too. The number of high-inequality economies, with a Gini index above 40, declined from 74 in 2000 to 51 in 2020, according to the World Bank (January 2025).
The worry is what has happened since. The pandemic caused the largest annual rise in global inequality in three decades, driven by widening gaps between countries rather than within them, the same World Bank economists found. For the fourth year in a row, the gap in human development, which combines education, health and income, between countries with low and very high human development increased, the United Nations Development Programme reported in May 2025. Convergence has not reversed everywhere. For the poorest countries, it has stalled.
Capital can cross a border in seconds. Capability still has to be built, one company at a time.
Poverty is concentrating where states are weakest
Around 2000, about one in five of the world's extremely poor people lived in fragile and conflict-affected situations; by 2020 it was about half, the World Bank estimated. By 2030, an estimated 59% of the extremely poor will live in such places, according to the World Bank (January 2024). The two estimates use different years, poverty lines and lists of fragile economies, so the trend is indicative rather than exact, but its direction is clear.
Money is also flowing the wrong way. Developing countries paid a record $1.4 trillion to service their foreign debt in 2023, and the poorest countries eligible for the International Development Association paid $96.2 billion, with interest costs four times higher than a decade earlier, the World Bank reported in December 2024. Money that goes to interest is money that cannot go to schools, infrastructure or the companies that create jobs.
The Berlin Global Dialogue program reflects how these pressures connect. Its sessions on the demographic economy and the competition for talent, on guarantees that unlock investment in emerging markets, and on building competitive workforces in the AI era all circle the same question: who will have the skills to use the capital, the markets and the technology that are available?
Why money alone has not closed the gap
Development finance assumes that a business which receives a loan, a guarantee or a grant can put it to work. In fragile economies, that assumption often fails. The problem is rarely a lack of people in general: over the next ten years, 1.2 billion young people across emerging economies will reach working age, while only about 420 million jobs are currently expected to be created, according to the World Bank. What is scarce is experience: the managers and specialists who turn finance into production, exports and jobs.
The evidence that this matters is strong. In a randomized experiment, free management consulting for large Indian textile firms raised productivity by 17% in the first year, Nicholas Bloom, Benn Eifert, Aprajit Mahajan, David McKenzie and John Roberts showed in the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2013. Across more than 20,000 small firms in seven developing countries, better business practices were associated with about 35% higher labor productivity, David McKenzie and Christopher Woodruff found in 2017. In many fragile economies, the scarcest resource is not money but the experienced people who know how to turn it into results.
Ukraine shows the pattern at its sharpest, because war has removed people a functioning economy already had. In June 2026, a record 71% of Ukrainian industrial firms named staff shortages as their main obstacle, according to a monthly survey by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting. Some 5.76 million Ukrainian refugees live abroad, according to UNHCR.
Migration is the classic answer to such gaps, and for many families it works. Remittances to low- and middle-income countries reached an estimated $685 billion in 2024, more than foreign direct investment and official development assistance combined, the World Bank reported. The World Development Report 2023 finds that the gains for origin and destination countries depend on how well migrants' skills match needs, and notes brain drain in some origin countries. Remittances support households. They rarely bring back the know-how a company lost.
Technology could widen the gap further. Almost 40% of global employment is exposed to AI, rising to about 60% in advanced economies but only 26% in low-income countries, which lack the infrastructure and skilled workforces to benefit fully, IMF staff found in January 2024. We explored what that means for jobs in AI will take jobs: here is part of the plan.
“In most scenarios, AI will likely worsen overall inequality.”
Kristalina Georgieva, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
What works: moving capability, not only capital
The same research carries a warning. Many business training programs have failed to show results because they change practices only slightly, McKenzie and Woodruff note, while more intensive, hands-on support changes them far more. Together with the fast growth of fractional leadership, that points to a few design principles:
- Need-led: start from a diagnosed business problem, not from the supply of experts or programs.
- Remote by default: expertise travels to the company without anyone having to relocate.
- Inside the company: experts work alongside the local team, and every capability gets an internal owner.
- Measured: success is judged inside the company, by a role still filled after 6 and 12 months and a process that runs for three months without the expert.
None of this replaces fair taxation, debt relief or open trade. It is the layer that helps those policies pay off inside individual businesses.
Where remote expertise has limits
The model is not a cure-all. Remote work suits finance, digital, export and strategy better than work on a factory floor, where a site visit or a local partner is still needed. Language, local context and trust take time to build, and a strong expert can still be the wrong match for a particular company. Above all, donor-funded expert time is a narrow channel next to the scale of the problem: it can strengthen thousands of firms, not rebalance the global economy.
These limits argue for careful diagnosis, local partners and honest measurement, not for doing nothing.
Why projects like BrainGain.Expert can be part of the solution
BrainGain.Expert is a non-profit impact accelerator that coordinates collaboration between global professional talent and growing businesses in fragile and recovering economies. It works as a remote bridge, built on the principles above, and its pilot is designed to test five reasons why models like it belong in the inequality debate:
- 1. It targets the binding constraint. Most support instruments finance loans, guarantees and equipment. Expertise inside the company remains the line item almost no one pays for, a gap we described in People need people: why we built BrainGain.Expert.
- 2. It adds a channel that migration lacks. Remittances support families; remote work brings knowledge back to companies at home, without anyone having to move.
- 3. It reaches firms where most jobs are. Small and medium companies keep jobs, pay suppliers and pay taxes in their communities. If the model works, growth spreads beyond a few large companies, which matters for inequality within countries.
- 4. It can make finance work harder. We expect a company with a diagnosed need and the right expert to absorb loans and guarantees better. The pilot will test whether that raises the return on development finance.
- 5. It is accountable. Results are reported in public at platform and program level, with independent evaluation, and placements that end early are published with the reason.
The first test is Program 01, a pilot in Ukraine for 2026 to 2028. A company enters through a diagnosis of two to three weeks across four areas, which shows where it really loses capacity, and commits to twelve months in the program. The platform, using AI under the supervision of our team, then proposes a shortlist of Fellows who have solved similar problems before; the owner interviews them and makes the choice.
The work itself has two stages. In Advise and Solve, a project of 4 to 12 weeks, the Fellow analyzes the gap and builds a first working version of the solution, such as a new planning system or a plan to enter a market. Where the change needs someone to run it, Implement and Operate follows: for 12 to 24 weeks the Fellow works inside the team, part time or full time, puts the change into practice and trains the people who will carry it on. The company shares the cost of the role from day one and gradually takes it over in full. After 6 to 12 months the company graduates, and a business that has put the change into practice can receive a growth grant.
Results are judged by two tests. The people test: a role is filled, and the Fellow is still in it after 6 and 12 months. The capability test: a process is documented, has an internal owner and runs for three months without the expert. In the pilot, we are testing the hypotheses that 70% of placements last at least six months and that half of the capabilities are still running three months after the Fellow leaves. A role counts only if it would not have been filled without the program, placements that end early are published with the reason, and an independent evaluator reviews the results every year. If the pilot proves the result, Jordan, Albania and Kosovo come next. We describe the full path in Recovery starts inside the company: Program 01 in Ukraine.
“Inequality is not only a gap in income. It is a gap in who has access to expertise, knowledge and technology. BrainGain.Expert intends to help close it globally, by coordinating collaboration between experienced professionals, technology partners and the businesses that need them, wherever capability is missing. We start with Ukraine, where the need is deepest and our network is strongest, and we will open each new country when we show the result.”
Oksana Pashchenko, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, BrainGain.Expert
Closing the gap, one company at a time
Global inequality will not be solved in a single summit or by a single platform. But each company that regains the experience it needs narrows the gap a little, for its employees, its suppliers and its country. Experienced professionals can join the BrainGain.Expert Fellowship, businesses in Ukraine can join the Program 01 waitlist, and donors and companies can help fund the first cohort.