Non-governmental development organizations (NGOs) are political actors who tend to think of the future through two types of spatial imaginaries. While they are part of the international aid system – which mainly considers the World as a set of Nation-States –, NGOs also embody the ideal of a transnational actor. They are indeed seen as capable of implementing programs without taking State borders into consideration, so as to address the needs of citizens and territories. This article shows how the current dynamics of the international system tend to devitalize this ideal. It also shows how the generalization of funding based on a « call for projects » model, as well as the growing difficulties of access to the field in the light of postcolonial issues, both feed this tendency. This study, centered around the geographies of French development NGOs in the World, investigates the ways in which transnational actors such as NGOs struggle in their practices to transcend the Nation-State system when they address global political issues.