The United States is set to implement one of the biggest overhauls of its global health assistance in decades. The new strategy will reshape how billions of dollars flow to 35 countries, shifting greater responsibility onto their governments through bilateral agreements that encapsulate the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy.

In this episode, we discuss what we know of the ins and outs of these health deals, what they mean for the wider foreign aid architecture, and why their known components are already proving controversial despite being largely shrouded in secrecy.

The conversation then turns to our event with Howard G. Buffett, who criticized the West’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He urged greater support for Ukraine, while also calling out philanthropic organizations to step up. At our event, Howard also offered a closer look at Warren Buffett’s philanthropic strategy, revealing how his father’s charitable trust could deploy up to $23 billion annually as it works to spend down his fortune by 2034.

To dig into these stories, David Ainsworth sits down with Anna Gawel and Andrew Green for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

When most of us think of pensions, we think of a tool that provides retirement security. But what if pensions could achieve different goals beyond old-age poverty?

In this segment of This Week in Global Development, sponsored by Coller Pensions Institute, David Pinkus, the institute’s executive director, challenges us to think about pensions differently. Speaking to Kate Warren, executive editor and executive vice president at Devex, Pinkus points to their new SDG report to explain how, under the right conditions, well-designed pension systems can significantly contribute to the broader development agenda.

To read the new report, The Contribution of Well-Designed Pension Systems to

Progressing the Sustainable Development Goals, visit:

collerpensionsinstitute.org/our-research/whitepapers

In this special edition episode of This Week in Global Development, sponsored by Public Digital, Devex's Alan Robbins sits down with Public Digital's Lauren Kahn and Mike Bracken CBE. Recorded at Devex Impact House during UNGA, they unpack the urgent need for emerging economies to transition from passive "tech-takers" to active "tech-makers" by reclaiming digital sovereignty.

The conversation explores how developing nations can avoid the developmental risks of vendor lock-in, shape local digital ecosystems, and build resilient digital public infrastructure (DPI). Kahn and Bracken highlight practical steps for governments to move from traditional aid to strategic agency, leveraging open standards and investing in internal civil service capabilities to ensure critical systems can survive future crises.

Dive deeper into these frameworks in Public Digital's newly released book, Digital Sovereignty: The Power to Decide: https://public.digital/pd-books/digital-sovereignty-the-power-to-decide

In a live episode of the Theory of Change podcast, Buddy Shah, CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and chair of the Anthropic Long Term Benefit Trust, shared an inside look at the intersection of global health, market-shaping agreements, and artificial intelligence.

"The mistake that many of us are making ... is looking for an AI point solution. What's a cool use case where you can develop an AI tool and slot it into an existing system? And I think the much more important question is: If you could redesign the system for a world where you have very powerful AI tools, what would that look like?" Shah said during the podcast, which was recorded last week at the Devex Impact House in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Shah pulled back the curtain on CHAI’s landmark deal to secure generic manufacturing of lenacapavir — a twice-yearly injectable drug offering 99% effectiveness against HIV infection.

By negotiating the price down from $28,000 per year in the U.S. to $40 per patient per year in lower-income countries, Shah explained how CHAI, Gilead, generic manufacturers, and global health partners believe they are creating a path that could spell the end of HIV over the next decade.

Addressing his dual role managing corporate governance at Anthropic, Shah previewed how artificial intelligence could fundamentally reshape health delivery in low- and middle-income countries through mobile diagnostics and AI clinical assistants.

He emphasized that LMICs may leapfrog high-income nations in adopting these technologies, while highlighting how incoming philanthropic capital from the AI sector could help fund major systemic solutions.

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei made headlines recently by calling for slowing the development of increasingly powerful AI models to give safety measures time to catch up.

That only increased the urgency of another effort within the company, which is expanding: An initiative to help governments and nonprofits use the models available today.

Elizabeth Kelly leads that effort as Anthropic’s head of “beneficial deployments,” which works with governments and nonprofits to put Claude, the company’s AI model, to use.

Before joining Anthropic, she led the U.S. AI Safety Institute, which worked to evaluate risk and develop safety standards for frontier AI systems. In a live recording of the Global Progress in the AI Era podcast at Devex Impact House on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly, she argued that her past and present roles are connected.

“Safety and access are two sides of the same coin,” Kelly said. “We are not going to see any of the benefits from AI unless we really invest in safety.”

Anthropic used speaking engagements this week at UNGA81 to showcase organizations working with its technology. At its own event on Tuesday, titled The Briefing, speakers included Meenakshi Ramesh, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation, Rwanda’s Minister of Information and Communications Technology and Innovation Paula Ingabire, and Rania Dagash-Kamara from the U.N.’s World Food Programme.

In the podcast interview, Kelly expanded on Anthropic’s partnership with Rwanda, its first multisector government partnership in Africa, which was announced earlier this year. She also pointed to Anthropic’s work with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, on producing situation reports during the recent Ebola response in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Other examples she cited included the International Rescue Committee’s work on child malnutrition in Nigeria and maternal care in Burkina Faso.

This week we are closely tracking the conversations at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and what they mean for the global development sector. From U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech rejecting international governance frameworks and championing national sovereignty to questions around AI regulation, we break down what the discussions at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York mean for this new era of global policy.

Beyond reflecting on outgoing U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ legacy, we unpack the latest developments in the secretary-general race. Amid the leadership discussions, we analyze whether traditional development priorities are increasingly taking a back seat to broader geopolitical tensions and global security issues.

To dig into these topics, Adva Saldinger sits down with Colum Lynch for a live recording of our weekly podcast series.

In a live episode of the Theory of Change podcast recorded at the Devex Impact House in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, David Beasley, the former World Food Programme executive director and former governor of South Carolina, laid out his playbook for navigating today’s increasingly hostile political climate — while leaving the door at least somewhat open for his own return to the political arena.

Beasley — who led the U.N.’s food security agency when it won the Nobel Peace Prize — shared his journey from working in South Carolina tobacco fields to negotiating with the Taliban to feed starving children to battling with billionaire Elon Musk on Twitter.

He described the culture shock of a United Nations outsider confronted with bureaucracy and jargon, and offered his diagnosis for why the development sector keeps getting its pitch wrong.

Beasley offered a bleak assessment of current humanitarian aid cuts, calling the domestic political environment “horrific” and warning that Western nations are actively undermining their own geopolitical stability.

“America is great because America is good, and if we ever cease to be good, we cease to be great. And right now, we're not being good,” he said.

This week, we report on the Gates Foundation’s 2026 Goalkeepers Report, which includes a $1 billion pledge to make AI more inclusive. The funding aims to expand access across health, education, agriculture, and digital equity to directly benefit the global south. We unpack how AI can help lower-income nations tackle critical challenges while ensuring local communities remain central to the process.

From the highly anticipated leadership races for the top jobs at the United Nations and World Health Organization, to a critical high-level meeting on pandemic preparedness, we discuss the major themes ahead of UNGA 81, as well as highlight the sessions we are most excited for at Devex Impact House.

To dig into these topics, Rumbi Chakamba sits down with Anna Gawel and Catherine Cheney for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

In the segment of the podcast funded by GSK/ViiV Healthcare, Devex Executive Vice President and Executive Editor Kate Warren speaks with GSK's Chief Global Health Officer, Dr. Harmony Garges. They explore how community-led models, local health worker support, and strategic partnerships are addressing last-mile delivery challenges — from integrating malaria vaccines into primary healthcare in Liberia and Sierra Leone to expanding access to HIV care globally — ensuring much-needed health innovations reach remote and underserved communities.

Request to attend Devex Impact House @ UNGA here:

https://pages.devex.com/devex-at-unga-81.html

In an interview on Devex's Theory of Change podcast, Alight CEO Jocelyn Wyatt warned that the traditional humanitarian business model is facing structural failure.

Following the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the transition of U.S. foreign aid programs to the U.S. State Department, organizations are having to rely on more rigid grants from United Nations agencies that typically cap overhead at 7%, leaving virtually no resources for operational leadership, compliance, or innovation, Wyatt said.

Global humanitarian assistance fell by roughly 30% between 2022 and 2025, with 13 of the 20 largest donors cutting relief aid in 2025, according to the latest State of the Humanitarian System report, released last week.

Wyatt highlighted how structural defects and funding restrictions in the traditional framework actively undermine long-term progress:

• The misallocation problem: Private donor funding floods highly publicized, geopolitical conflicts (such as Ukraine), while long-term, acute humanitarian disasters (such as Sudan) receive virtually no private support due to public narrative fatigue, donor bias, and political media coverage.

• Survival over solutions: With institutional funds shrinking, remaining aid is strictly funneled into immediate lifesaving care, stripping away funding for education, job training, and economic development that actually helps people transition out of displacement.

• Failing durable pathways: The three traditional solutions for refugees — returning home, integrating locally, or third-country resettlement — have largely stalled or collapsed under political and financial strain.

“This world order and these systems that were developed post-World War II have seemed like they're hitting their expiration date, and they will need to be reinvented. But that is not happening in 2026 or 2027, probably 2028. So in the interim, we need to find ways to help people be able to provide for themselves and their families,” Wyatt said.

To survive the breakdown of the traditional model, Wyatt argues that humanitarian organizations must pivot toward financial self-reliance and market-driven solutions.

“Let's actually put our resources to social enterprise models where we can recycle capital, where we can help people start businesses. Let's actually train people and connect them with employers so that they can get jobs and make money for themselves,” she said.

“To think that governments are going to be the continuous providers of financial support to refugees ... I think is just a fallacy at this point,” she added.

In this special episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by Rippleworks, Devex Senior Editor for Special Coverage Catherine Cheney sits down with Doug Galen, CEO of Rippleworks, and Azeez Gupta, co-founder of Rocket Learning, to reimagine how philanthropy thinks about scale.

As foreign aid budgets shrink, most conversations stop at the number cut. This one asks a different question: What if the real constraint isn’t how much capital is available, but what that capital is allowed to pay for?

Unpacking Rocket Learning’s growth through sustained operational support, the conversation makes the case that flexible, founder-friendly capital shouldn’t be the exception in philanthropy — it should be the default.

This week, we discuss our in-depth story on Operation End Starvation, a new initiative aiming to remake the global malnutrition supply chain. With a focus on cost-effectiveness, the project pairs public cash for ready-to-use therapeutic foods, or RUTFs, with philanthropic dollars to fund manufacturers, transporters, and delivery partners worldwide. The initiative represents a wider shift in foreign aid — for example, it bypasses the traditional multilateral system — and critics argue it still isn't cost-effective enough and is siphoning away crucial resources from broader hunger prevention efforts.

We also reflect on our key takeaways from the Africa Food Systems Forum, including the innovations driving the future of African agriculture and how the continent's agribusiness sector is responding to a changing funding landscape to become more self-reliant.

To dig into these stories, and others, Adva Saldinger sits down with Tania Karas and Elissa Miolene for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

In the sponsored segment of the podcast, hosted in partnership with The Pfizer Foundation*, Devex Executive Vice President and Executive Editor Kate Warren speaks with Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, founding director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, about how AI-enabled tools are being piloted and refined alongside local communities — and what it takes for promising innovations to scale responsibly and advance equity.

*Founded in 1953 by Pfizer Inc. as a charitable organization, The Pfizer Foundation is a separate legal entity from Pfizer Inc. with distinct legal restrictions.