This Week in Global Development

As finance ministers and central bank governors from the G20 nations concluded their recent meetings, concerns over the pace and stability of global economic recovery took center stage. In an exclusive conversation with Achim Steiner, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), key insights emerged regarding the discussions surrounding coordination, the global financial architecture, and pressing challenges facing developing economies.

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund are trying to evolve and prove they are fit for purpose, but the jury is out on just how far that evolution process has gone. 

While numerous announcements were made at the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings last week in Washington D.C., the pace of reform is too slow, according to several experts.

“The rhetoric in terms of the important pronouncements that have been made are saying the right things, but they're not giving you the next three things that could get done in the next month, in the next three months, in the next six months, in the next 12 months,” Afsaneh Beschloss, founder and CEO of investment firm RockCreek, told Devex.  

“And so what I would urge the shareholders to do is really get serious, put pressure on the World Bank to start getting things done, not to look at the negativity, but look at the need,” she said, adding that “so much can get done today as we speak.”

This gap between rhetoric and reality, between policy making at 10,000 feet and the impact on the real ground-level economy, was evident in the meetings, experts tell Devex in this podcast episode.

"The world is in a very, very difficult place. There is progress, but not enough. Reforms need to broaden and deepen to address the grave situation," Rachel Kyte, professor of practice in climate policy at the University of Oxford, told Devex.

We also speak with John Denton, the secretary general of the International Chamber of Commerce.Want to understand what played out at the meetings and what’s next? This podcast episode will give you the rundown.

The World Bank is about 18 months into its efforts to reform the institution in response to shareholder demands and changing global needs. From stretching its existing funding to attracting more private capital, the bank has laid a laundry list of proposals on the table.

So what has been accomplished thus far and what more is needed? That’s what we tackle in the first episode of a special edition podcast during this year’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, which take place in Washington D.C. this week. The bank has a new capital adequacy framework to get more out of its own money, a new mission statement making climate change part of its core ambition, and of course a new leader in Ajay Banga.

Listen in to hear Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger in conversation with Clemence Landers, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, Stephanie von Friedeburg, managing director of banking and capital markets advisory at Citi, and Rep. French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas, who is vice chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

Last week, USAID unveiled its latest $5 billion global health supply contract, part of its NextGen suite of contracts. Worth $17 billion in total, it’s the largest suite of foreign aid contracts ever issued, to be delivered over the course of 10 years. But despite all the talk around localization, it’s highly likely the contracts will end up going to the usual industry players.

“Most of the low- or middle-income countries, they can do without those USAID-funded contractors coming to do things for them,” said Olusoji Adeyi, president of Resilient Health Systems and a staunch advocate for the decolonization of the sector. 

The previous iteration of USAID’s global health supply contract, worth $9.5 billion and delivered solely through Chemonics, failed to live up to expectations after running into multiple delays and performance problems. “USAID has refused to learn, and they are throwing $17 billion of taxpayer money after a failed business model,” said Adeyi.

Listen to the latest episode of This Week in Global Development to hear Adeyi discuss this topic and the other big stories from the week with Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar and Managing Editor Anna Gawel.

Vitala Global Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works with girls and women to develop digital solutions for stigmatized sexual and reproductive health issues, including abortions.
Last week, Aya Contigo, its digital companion for abortion and contraception support that launched in Venezuela and has since expanded to the United States, was a winner of South by Southwest’s Innovation Showcase.

Dr. Roopan Gill, co-founder and CEO of Vitala Global Foundation, was in Austin, Texas, to talk about the role technology can play in providing more accessible reproductive health resources, especially amidst growing restrictions on reproductive rights.

“It's not just an app providing passive information,” she said. “We're really trying to see how it acts as a glue, as an ecosystem integrator, especially in this day and age where we have so much complexity around abortion access.”

Gill spoke with Devex for Devex @ SXSW, a special edition of our This Week in Global Development podcast.

The episode also featured Jarone Lee, co-founder of Health Tech Without Borders, a nonprofit organization working on digital health solutions, including telemedicine and chatbots, in the context of humanitarian disasters.

Listen to the podcast to hear how these two doctors turned social entrepreneurs are leveraging technology to improve health care access in some of the most challenging settings to deliver care. 

There’s no question that artificial intelligence will have a massive impact on the future of food systems, but it remains to be seen whether it will address or perpetuate inequities.

“I think the question is, how's it going to be used in our food system in a way that actually promotes all of the objectives that we want?” said Roy Steiner, senior vice president for the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation. “Technology tends to be a fairly neutral tool. It multiplies whatever is underneath it. So if we have a completely inequitable system, it will multiply the inequity.”
 
Steiner spoke with Devex on the sidelines of South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, where conversations focused on the ways technology will transform every aspect of society, including the way the world grows, produces, distributes, supplies, and consumes food.
The current food system is detrimental environmentally, socially, and nutritionally, Steiner said, adding that he’s hopeful that technological advancements can help the world transition to a more regenerative and equitable system.

Listen to the episode to hear more about the future of food systems on Devex @ SXSW, a special edition of our This Week in Global Development podcast.

The podcast also features Paul Newnham, executive director of the SDG2 Advocacy Hub, which coordinates global advocacy in support of food system transformation, and Joke Aerts, open chain lead at Tony’s Chocolonely, a company on a mission to end modern slavery and illegal child labor in cocoa.

The world needs new approaches, not just more funding, as it faces a financing gap of an estimated $4 trillion annually to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.

“We’re either going to find this money somewhere under the cushions … or we’re going to make it cheaper,” said Hala Hanna, executive director of Solve, an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that launches open calls and backs innovators working to solve global problems. “So we really believe that innovation and finding new voices and new ideas is one key part of doing that.” 

Devex spoke with Hanna at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. She drew on some of the same themes as Najada Kumbuli, head of investments at the Visa Foundation, and Nazanin Ash, CEO of Welcome.US.

Each of them discussed the ways their organizations leverage innovation, technology, and investment to support new solutions for the SDGs that won’t come from traditional models. 
Listen to the episode to hear more on their strategies to build a more equitable future on Devex @SXSW, a special edition of our This Week in Global Development podcast.

It’s no surprise that Anne Marie Burgoyne, managing director of Emerson Collective, had a long line of people forming to meet with her following her session at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas Wednesday. Burgoyne leads philanthropy for this social change organization started by Laurene Powell Jobs. 

Devex's Kate Warren spoke with Burgoyne about Emerson Collective’s unique approach, its growing work on climate through the Waverley Street Foundation, and how Emerson Collective looks at the role of artificial intelligence in social change. 

Listen to the episode to hear more from Burgoyne on Devex @ SXSW, a special edition of our This Week in Global Development podcast.

On this week's episode, we go behind the scenes at SXSW with Devex Executive Editor Kate Warren, who brings us the latest on the innovations in food and agriculture being discussed at the wide-ranging conference and festival. 

We've also got Food Systems for the Future's Ertharin Cousin, who weighed in on our recent piece on the weaponizaton of food, accusations that USAID meddled in Zimbabwe's democratic process, and the utlity of the Pandemic Fund. 

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Next year marks 30 years since the start of the International Crisis Group, which conducts research and analysis to prevent and resolve global conflict. 

Comfort Ero, president and CEO of Crisis Group, says the organization was “made for this moment,” as crises continue to unfold from Gaza to Haiti to Ukraine. 

She spoke with Devex on the sidelines of South by Southwest, an annual conference in Austin, Texas, about America's role in the world, ahead of a high stakes U.S. presidential election, as well as the war in Gaza, and how the climate crisis and the rise of AI are shaping the future of conflict. 

“Our job is to find the political will, and to create ideas beyond the headlines, to get away from the noise, and to quietly try to thread the needle in a very complex and very dangerous world,” Ero said. 

Listen to the episode to hear more from Ero on Devex @ SXSW, a special edition of This Week in Global Development.

During the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, more than 110 countries committed to triple renewable energy capacity worldwide by 2030. Africa, in particular, is a key source of critical minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, and cobalt, which are needed to power clean technologies ranging from electric vehicles to wind turbines. But without proper safeguards in place, there is a risk that the mining of minerals for the green energy transition could end up exacerbating existing inequalities.

“One key element is social equity; prioritizing vulnerable communities to ensure that they benefit from the transition, including job creation, access to affordable clean energy, and protection from adverse impacts,” said professor Youba Sokona, former vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor Sokona was joined by Yamide Dagnet, former director of climate justice at Open Society Foundations, and Devex’s Raj Kumar for a special episode of This Week in Global Development.

2023 was the hottest year on record. So it’s no surprise that the climate emergency was a big focus of last week’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Devex’s Raj Kumar sat down with several leaders to discuss how the climate crisis intersects with their work: Peter Sands, the executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; Sophie Atiende, CEO of the Global Fund to End Modern Slavery; and Jonathan Reckford, CEO of Habitat for Humanity.

Together, they explore the interconnections between climate change and the issues they are focused on, as well as the urgency for action.

Sands describes a visit to northern Nigeria with Muhammad Ali Pate, the country’s minister of health and social welfare, where they saw “a shocking number” of children who were malnourished and severely ill with malaria.

“It’s a good example of how the climate change interaction is sort of multifactorial,” he said, explaining how climate change is harming agricultural productivity, leading to malnutrition, and changing the epidemiology of malaria.

“The combined impact of that is more severely ill children and more deaths of small children,” Sands said. “That's the kind of thing we're still trying to understand. But my view is we need to act while we learn. We can't wait for a perfect answer; we need to be doing more in anticipation of how we see this unfolding.”

Listen to the episode to hear more from Sands, Atiende, and Reckord, who joined Kumar for the Davos Dispatch podcast, recorded from WEF in Davos, Switzerland.

There are a growing number of social entrepreneurs using technology to address a range of development challenges in Africa, from agriculture healthcare to education. But many of them say that financing is the greatest barrier to scale.

At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2024, Devex’s Raj Kumar sat down with three social entrepreneurs: Temie Giwa-Tubosun, CEO of LifeBank, a healthcare technology and logistics company delivering critical medical supplies, Gerald Abila, founder of BarefootLaw, a non-profit in Uganda providing access to justice through technology, and Mayur Patel, chief commercial officer at M-Kopa, an asset financing platform in Africa.

Their conversations point to several ways social entrepreneurs are using technology to address social challenges, as well as the crucial role financing must play in scaling their impact.
"The big barriers for growth are not demand,” Patel said. “They're not the scalability of the platform, or the opportunity. The big barriers to growth are figuring out how you solve the working capital cycle.”

Listen to the episode to hear more from Giwa-Tubosun, Abila, and Patel, who joined Kumar for the Davos Dispatch podcast, recorded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It’s a big moment for the United Nations Green Climate Fund. Its funding levels hit a record high following the climate conference COP 28, with several countries adding contributions to its second replenishment that sent the fund’s total soaring past its $10 billion goal to $12.8 billion.

GCF’s Executive Director Mafalda Duarte oversaw the replenishment after assuming the role only three months prior, having departed her previous job as the head of the Climate Investment Funds in June. Somewhere in there, she was also at the Africa Climate Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, and multiple other global engagements.

“Quite intense,” she acknowledged to Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar in Davos, Switzerland, the latest stop on her whirlwind travel agenda.But if Duarte has been busy, it’s because she’s making huge strides at an organization that was in a notably rocky place a few years ago. On this episode of Davos Dispatch, a series housed under our regular weekly podcast, This Week in Global Development, Duarte gives us the scoop on what’s next for GCF and its role in climate change mitigation and adaptation.

The “billions to trillions” narrative — the idea that a relatively small amount of public financing can be used to crowd in trillions of dollars in private capital to solve climate and other development challenges — has been discussed in development finance circles for nearly a decade now. And yet there’s still an annual $4 trillion gap in financing for energy, water, and other critical development objectives.

Speaking to Devex’s Raj Kumar, Samaila Zubairu, CEO of the Africa Finance Corporation shared how his organization is leveraging public-private partnerships in “risky” countries such as Gabon and Djibouti, and what larger multilateral development banks should be doing to be more effective.

“What is most important is for us to introduce more urgency in our approach to work. We need to really start to focus on outcomes,” Zubairu said. “We should all be accountable. We should be looking at what's the baseline at a certain period of time, and what are we doing to cause improvements to happen.”

Zubairu joined Kumar for the Davos Dispatch podcast, recorded from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

While a new year for many heralds a fresh start, the war that broke out in Gaza in October 2023 continues to rage, with the death toll numbering in the thousands. We take a look at the conflict from a global development and humanitarian lens by speaking with representatives from organizations doing aid work there to get an insider perspective on the crisis.

They reveal the obstacles they face — such as the lack of fuel and inability to keep in touch with staff — and how they try to meet the needs of those affected by the war.

What is the situation like on the ground? What are the misconceptions in the media?

To find out, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar and Managing Editor Anna Gawel sit down with Arnaud Quemin, Middle East-North Africa/Europe regional director for Mercy Corps, as well as Anera Regional Development Lead Saddam Sayyaleh for the latest episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast.

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The latest edition of This Week in Development takes both a ground-level and 30,000-foot view of localization and the latest issues in development, ranging from unpaid workers in Nigeria to a YouTube influencer-turned-do-gooder to a climate fund struggling to get up to speed.

Sara Jerving’s exclusive story offers an object lesson on the importance of coordination and collaboration in large, sprawling development endeavors with multiple stakeholders. She reports on the Saving Lives and Livelihoods initiative, which involved the Mastercard Foundation, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and several other players such as implementers, government agencies, and auditors.

The result? Confusion about how workers in Nigeria — who were not given formal contracts when they were recruited — should be paid, leading to months’ worth of unpaid labor for some.
“This highlights a bigger program in our development space and that is, it shows that process is more important than people,” said George Ingram, senior fellow at the Brookings Center for Global Development. “It’s the green-eyeshade people who are important to ensure there’s not a lot of corruption, but they too often rule and interfere with having effective development, and donors and everybody needs to be willing to take a little more risk in order to get the development impact we’re looking for.”

Ingram joined Devex Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar and me for a discussion that touched on other stories of the week, including thesuccesses and challenges of cash transfers, the Green Climate Fund’s flagging efforts to simplify its application process, and the controversial efforts of YouTube sensation MrBeast to build water wells in Africa, which generated some blowback.

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Public debt across the Middle East and North Africa — or MENA — region is soaring. While debt vulnerability is a global phenomenon, recent data shows four MENA economies — Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan — are among the emerging markets most vulnerable to a debt crisis.

In a special podcast episode, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is joined by Niranjan Sarangi, a senior economic affairs officer in the shared economic prosperity cluster at the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, and Sarah Saadoun, a senior researcher working on poverty and inequality at Human Rights Watch, for an in-depth discussion on the politics of economic reform in the MENA region.

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, they discuss what’s behind the current debt situation, how it’s affecting ordinary people’s lives, the impact of IFI programs on the expansion of social protection systems, and the region’s evolving climate finance needs.

This episode of This Week in Global Development is sponsored by Open Society Foundations.

In this special sponsored episode of This Week in Global Development, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with Natalie Samarasinghe, head of global advocacy at Open Society Foundations, and Richard Gowan, U.N. Director at Crisis Group, to discuss to what’s likely to come out of this year’s United Nations General Assembly, the trust deficit facing the multilateral system, and whether this global gathering is even fit for purpose anymore.

They also delve into the results of Open Society Foundations’ new poll on global public opinion towards human rights and democracy.

This episode of This Week in Global Development is sponsored by Open Society Foundations.

Last week, the World Health Organization released its long-awaited updated guidance on the prevention and management of malnutrition in children, which aims to reduce child mortality through starvation by widening access to treatment worldwide.

For this episode, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is joined by Matthias Berninger, the senior vice president for public affairs and sustainability at Bayer, as well as Devex Senior Reporter Teresa Welsh to discuss the recommendations.

They also dig into how Russia’s war in Ukraine is negatively affecting food supplies in low- and middle-income countries and discuss China’s decision to cut funding to the United Nations.


Don’t forget to follow Food Secured, our series that explores innovative ideas for a more sustainable and resilient food and agriculture sector.

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This week USAID released its long-awaited localization update. Despite the progress made, not least due to the success of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, the agency is yet to come close to reaching its target of spending 25% of funding on local organizations by 2025.

From the U.K. government reclaiming official development assistance via taxes to India’s renewable energy push threatening the country’s food security, the past week has been filled with controversies that have the potential to hinder the drive toward meaningful change.

Tune in to the latest episode of This Week in Development to hear our take on the issues.
For this episode, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is joined by Dr. Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health & HIV policy at KFF, as well as Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel to discuss the most important news from the past week in the global development sector.

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While usually during the summer period news is expected to slow down, it was certainly not the case for the first couple of days of June. As the unexpected struggle to reauthorize PEPFARcontinues and we mark the beginning of a new era at the World Bank with Ajay Banga’s presidency, the start of the month has most definitely been eventful.

From discussing what to expect from Banga’s presidency to a deep dive into a two-month investigation concerning the Africa CDC president Dr Jean Kaseya, we review the week’s top stories in the latest episode of This Week in Global Development.

For this episode, Devex president and editor-in-chief, Raj Kumar, is joined by Devex managing editor Anna Gawel, as well as George Ingram, senior fellow at the The Brookings Institution.

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Seven years ago, the United Nations' World Humanitarian Summit proposed the "humanitarian-development nexus" to improve collaboration between the two ends of the aid sector.
Although it was initially a good idea to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, this framework has struggled to deliver amidst the increasing number of humanitarian disasters and prolonged crises. Recently, Devex's Teresa Welsh discussed the cracks surfacing in the "humanitarian-development nexus."

This week, another global development topic made headlines when USAID Administrator Samantha Power informed the U.S. Congress that the agency would find it difficult to achieve its localization targets, as reported by Adva Saldinger on Devex.

To make sense of these and other significant news stories of the week, tune in to This Week in Global Development.

This weekly podcast analyzes the major headlines in global development and invites top experts to help us understand them. In this week's episode, Raj Kumar, devex president and editor-in-chief, is joined by Nasra Ismail, policy adviser and ICAP Aspen fellow, and Anna Gawel, Devex managing editor.

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The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings have come to an end this weekend. A great sense of change was anticipated for this year’s event, as Devex wrote last week.

But what do we make of the talks now that they are over? That’s the question we asked our guests in the first episode of “This Week in Global Development,” a weekly podcast where we break down the big headlines in global development and bring in top experts to help us do it.

For this episode, Devex president and editor-in-chief, Raj Kumar, is joined by Rachel Kyte, the dean at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and Jeremy Hillman, senior vice president of external engagement at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

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