This week Devex published an exclusive story on how Ghana-based NGO Youth Opportunity & Transformation in Africa, or YOTA, is embroiled in a dispute with CARE Ghana over a decision to raise staff salaries during an economic crisis where inflation was spiraling and staffers found it difficult to make ends meet. YOTA, which is one of two implementing partners, is accusing grant holder CARE Ghana of “bullying.” The story highlights some of the challenges that global development organizations are facing as they continue to try to localize.

In Asia, a series of leaked trade agreement drafts highlight growing divisions within India’s flourishing pharmaceutical industry, with the leaked documents sparking concerns over access to generic medicines.

We also elaborate on the reasoning behind what made it onto our list of 24 global development organizations to watch in 2024, which we published this week.

What’s next for global pharmaceutical manufacturing? Which organizations are missing from our list?

For the latest episode of the podcast series, Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger sits down with Dr. Jen Kates — senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation devex — as well as Devex Senior Reporter Sara Jerving to discuss the stories above, and more.

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Last weekend we attended the Munich Security Conference, a summit which is not as solely centered around security as its name suggests. We look back at the highlights and lowlights of the conference, which touched upon many issues linked to global development, including food security and climate change.

We also have an update on the future of UNRWA, the United Nations Palestinian relief agency, which is facing calls to be disbanded. The United States is pushing other U.N. relief agencies to take over some of its functions. However, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has voiced concern that weakening UNRWA amid a massive humanitarian crisis would worsen the suffering of Palestinian civilians — as he believes it is the only organization with the capability to deliver assistance to the 2.2 million people with urgent needs.

On the topic of U.N. agencies, we also published an exclusive story revealing that the U.N. Population Fund is planning to move a quarter of its New York staff positions to Nairobi in 2025 to be closer to the people it serves. However, not everyone is convinced that the move is the right one, and some staff are stressed about the relocation.

In order to dig into these stories, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with U.K. Correspondent Rob Merrick and Managing Editor Anna Gawel for the latest episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast series.

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Recently, the U.S. Agency for International Development published 14 "good practices" to define what a locally led program looks like as part of its push for half its projects to be locally led by 2030.

We spoke to local community leaders to find out what they think. While many are optimistic, some have argued that they haven’t seen much change just yet and expressed concern about whether these indicators will translate into action. For one thing, USAID’s localization guidelines do not specify whether local people can voice whether they believe a program is locally led or not.

On the topic of involving local communities in development initiatives, we also published an opinion piece outlining how decolonization must be applied to organizational design, the distribution of money, and how skill sets are valued.

Additionally, this week, the U.S. Senate passed a $95 billion emergency funding bill. While much of it is military spending, it includes about $10 billion in humanitarian aid. It now heads to the House of Representatives.

Advocates are pushing the House to approve it, though its future is uncertain as political tensions continue.

For this week’s episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast series, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with Nicole Goldin, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, as well as Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth to discuss these stories.

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This week we published an article on the development finance issues to watch in 2024. From fresh climate finance targets to the role that private capital mobilization can play in overcoming global development challenges, we discuss what we expect from the upcoming year and whether the ideas proposed will lead to tangible change in low-income countries.

On the topic of capital increase, at an event on Monday, World Bank President Ajay Banga discussed his plans to reform the way the institution runs, including speeding up project approvals and streamlining the International Development Association ahead of its replenishment this year. It is hoped that the reforms will help increase the capital needed to overcome development challenges.

Are the proposed reforms to the development finance architecture achievable? What is missing from the agenda?

To answer these questions and dig into these stories, as well as others, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with Global Nation co-founder Jonathan Glennie, as well as Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger, for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series.

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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.

As we approach the U.S. presidential election in November, we take a look at how the Biden administration set out to change the U.S. government’s foreign aid system. With less than a year left in his term, we consider whether the targets set can be realistically achieved this year.

As USAID continues its effort to localize — or shift power to local organizations — we also dig into a report on the topic based on the feedback of 300 local organizations, international agencies, and USAID staff. The report outlined what needs to change for the agency to reach its localization goals.

Meanwhile in the Middle East, U.N. relief workers are being accused of having participated in the Hamas massacre that took place on Oct 7. The U.S. and other major donors have said they’ll cut funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, stripping people affected by the conflict in Gaza from vital funding.

To dig into these stories and others, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with reporters Colum Lynch and Elissa Miolene for the latest edition of the podcast series.

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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.

A new report reveals serious gaps in the clinical pipeline for diseases with pandemic potential, and limited investments in their research and development over the years. While research and development funding for COVID-19 reached over $14 billion from 2020 to 2022, the combined research funding for the other nine priority pathogens with pandemic potential identified by the World Health Organization total just $1.7 billion. We dig into the report — which comes from the International Pandemic Preparedness Secretariat — as well as how we could improve our preparedness for the next pandemic.

Despite the concerns about global pandemic preparedness, we have seen a landmark moment in the fight against malaria, with Cameroon becoming the first African country to roll out WHO's first recommended malaria vaccine into its routine immunization program.

This week also marked the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Millenium Challenge Corporation, or MCC, a U.S. aid agency which set out to help the lowest-income countries clinch large grants if they could turn their economic and social policies around and demonstrate good governance. However, concerns remain over where they can operate in the future based on their unique model.

For the latest episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast series, Devex President & Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sat down with Ayoade Alakija from AVDA/ACT-Accelerator and Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger to dig into these key stories.

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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.