This Week in Global Development

By Devex | Global DevelopmentNews

This Week in Global Development episodes

September 08, 2023 The END Fund's new board chair, and the UK's potential ODA increase
This week The END Fund announced Tsitsi Masiyiwa as the organization’s new board chair, with the aim of ushering in more African voices into discussions about increasing funding for neglected tropical diseases. During our conversation, we explored the role played by boards in influencing the work of philanthropic organizations.

In the United Kingdom, we reported that up to £2.68 billion ($3.37 billion) could be diverted back to aid programs overseas after the U.K. tightened its laws on refugees, which means it can no longer claim spending on asylum seekers as official development assistance.

To dig into these stories and others, I sat down with Anera President and CEO Sean Carroll, as well as Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel, for the latest episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast.

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29 min
September 01, 2023 USAID's staffing shortages, and country-owned strategies in development
This week Devex Climate Correspondent William Worley sat down with Meike van Ginneken, the Netherlands’ special envoy for water, who argued that we should be prioritizing investment to help overcome issues related to water shortages in the face of climate change rather than subsidizing fossil fuels.

In addition to looking back at our Devex Pro event with former senior USAID official Chuck Pope and digging into the agency’s localization targets, we also discussed an opinion piece written by former deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Treasury Department Nancy Lee, who outlines why country-owned strategies will be key to achieving development goals.

To find out more about these stories, make sure to check out the latest episode of the podcast, where I sit down with Larry Cooley, president emeritus and senior adviser at Management Systems International, to discuss the past week's top stories from the global development sector.

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32 min
August 25, 2023 Open Society Foundations' reorganization, and World Water Week
For the latest episode of the podcast, I am joined by global strategy and development leader Nasra Ismail and Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth to discuss the top stories in global development, including insights into Open Society Foundations’ reorganization.

This week we learned that USAID’s NextGen global health supply chain contracts, which collectively are worth $16.8 billion over 10 years, are being delayed. We discuss the possible reasoning behind this, as well as its potential impact.

We are also joined by Devex Climate Correspondent Will Worley live from Stockholm, who provided an update on the World Water Week conference happening in the Swedish capital.

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35 min
August 11, 2023 U.S. and allies block key UN agreement and Germany's aid cuts
This week we broke an exclusive story on the United States, the United Kingdom, and a handful of allied powers blocking an agreement on a draft declaration that advocates the need to accelerate progress on a set of critical development goals, throwing a spanner into high-level negotiations ahead of the United Nations General Assembly taking place next month.

In the United Kingdom, an inquiry has been told that development assistance rules are denying “vulnerable” small island developing states, or SIDS, the help they need to combat the climate emergency as they are classified as “too rich” to receive funding. The U.K. government also received strong criticism for its aid being used to fund the training of soccer referees and coaches across China, even as spending reductions are predicted to lead to thousands of deaths this year across Africa and Yemen.

However, the U.K. is not the only country planning aid cuts. Germany’s ruling coalition has proposed to reduce its aid budget by proposing a 5% cut for 2024, setting off alarm bells in development circles.

For the latest episode of the podcast, I was joined by University of Oxford professor Stefan Dercon and Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel to discuss the past week’s important stories from global development.

Please note that we will not be recording an episode next week due to the Devex Summer Break. We will be back in two weeks’ time to continue bringing you the top stories from the sector.

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34 min
August 04, 2023 USAID’s record breaking localization push and the impact of UK aid cuts
This week Devex reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development saw a record-breaking obligation to local contractors in 2022, up 169.8% in real terms from the previous year. While this is promising, it will be vital to ensure that initiatives are not tokenistic and that localization efforts are indeed meeting the needs of the communities they are aiming to serve rather than ticking development boxes.

In the United Kingdom, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office admitted that thousands of people “in acute humanitarian need” will die unnecessarily from hunger, poor health care, and during pregnancy because of ongoing aid cuts.

At the World Bank, Ajay Banga received some backlash from employees as he announced that while he would like to maintain a flexible workplace, he wants staff in the office more than three days a week. The institution’s staff association argued that the announcement was rushed, with no guidance on how to apply this new “flexibility” and that managers were not consulted.

Are localization efforts heading in the right direction? Will having staff back at the office benefit the World Bank? To answer these questions and others from the past week, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is joined by George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, as well as Spark MicroGrants CEO and co-founder Sasha Fisher for the latest episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast.

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36 min
July 28, 2023 The UK's refugee bill and a call to fight HIV and AIDS
While we usually expect the summer months to be slower than usual, it has certainly not been the case over the past week. In an exclusive Devex story, we found out that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will most likely declare that the United Kingdom cannot legally spend its overseas development assistance on domestic refugee costs because of a new law cracking down on arrivals.

In 2022 the country spent £3.7 billion — 29% of its ODA budget — domestically, exploiting OECD rules that allow the allocation of refugees’ hotel and other bills as ODA for 12 months.

On the other side of the pond, the United States’ bipartisan foreign affairs budget is set to be tangled up in debates around the country’s domestic cultural wars and its competition abroad with China.

To make sense of these stories, as well as UNAIDS Deputy Executive Director Angeli Achrekar’s call to keep the fight against HIV and AIDS on the political agenda, I sat down with Global Nation co-founder Jonathan Glennie and Harvard Center for International Development Executive Director Fatema Sumar for this week’s podcast episode.

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36 min
July 21, 2023 The latest from Women Deliver, WHO rotation, and BRAC localization
This week we’re closely following the conversations that took place at the Women Deliver conference in Kigali, Rwanda, which brought together thousands of people from diverse fields to help elevate women’s voices and accelerate the drive toward achieving gender equality.

We also delve into whether hosting conferences and headquartering development organizations in the global south is an effective tool to drive the localization agenda, and we touch on the World Health Organization’s postponement of its plan to require staff to rotate to different duty stations every several years.

To dig into these topics and get the latest on our coverage of Women Deliver, for episode nine of the This Week in Global Development podcast series I talk to Devex Senior Reporter Sara Jerving and Larry Cooley, president emeritus and senior adviser at Management Systems International.

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32 min
July 14, 2023 AI adoption's risk and rewards, and a US aid agency returns to office
This year is seeing the proliferation of AI technology in our lives, which is having a big effect on the way many of us carry out our daily tasks in the workplace. From improving disaster response to helping address environmental challenges, the new technology has a huge potential to have a positive impact on global development. During our conversation, we discuss the risks and opportunities that lie in adopting AI.

Following the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s decision to bring back staff to their offices, we also delve into the topic of remote work and the potential direction the sector may head in, especially when taking into account that humanitarian missions are often in distant places far away from an organization’s headquarters.

For episode eight of the This Week in Global Development podcast series, I sat down with Anera President and CEO Sean C. Carroll, as well as Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel to discuss the top stories from the sector from the past week.

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38 min
July 07, 2023 WHO's updated malnutrition guidance and China's plan to cut UN funding
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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28 min
June 30, 2023 Financial inclusion takes a hit amid rising debt and high interest rates
High interest rates are threatening the gains made in financial inclusion over the past decade, with investors backing off riskier investments especially in inclusive fintech, as reported by Devex’s Shabtai Gold this week. While some regions have achieved robust progress — such as India, where nearly 80% of adults now have a bank account — others are lagging behind. Over half the population of sub-Saharan Africa, or about 530 million people, are still unbanked.

Meanwhile French President Emmanuel Macron’s global financing summit, which aimed to address rising debt burdens and high interest rates, wrapped up at the end of last week with mixed outcomes, as covered by Devex Brussels Correspondent Vince Chadwick. The summit ended with a number of strong interventions from leaders in Africa and Latin America who challenged Western governments on inequitable global governance structures and called for a transformation of the financial system.

This week, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar is joined by Reuben Abraham, the CEO at Artha Global, and Nasra Ismail, a policy adviser and ICAP Aspen fellow, to discuss these stories and more.

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35 min

About This Week in Global Development

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Dive into the week's most critical global development news with the This Week in Global Development podcast.

In each episode, hosts Adva Saldinger, David Ainsworth, and Rumbi Chakamba…