This Week in Global Development25 Jan 2024

Preparing for future pandemics, and a landmark moment in global health

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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Episoder(235)

The fight over $7.5B in expiring aid and a rejected State Department grant

We recently reported that roughly $7.5 billion in international affairs funding is set to expire by the end of this month. In a letter, more than 100 U.S. lawmakers have urged the State Department to ...

3 Sep 26min

The water sector’s funding challenge and Asia’s philanthropy push

At World Water Week in Stockholm, financing took center stage ahead of the U.N. Water Conference in Abu Dhabi this December. The annual gathering saw around 2,000 participants discuss water governance...

27 Aug 30min

Special edition: Rethinking the housing crisis

What if housing finance could help solve today's biggest challenges? In this special episode, Habitat for Humanity’s Jacqueline Innocent reveals why housing is an upstream catalyst for health, educati...

25 Aug 27min

Famine reporting goes dark in 3 crisis zones, and COP31’s critical test

Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, three of the world’s most hunger-prone nations, were removed from the latest reporting by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network — a U.S.-based data and monitoring s...

20 Aug 28min

Inside the State Department’s historic pivot to faith-based organizations

In this episode of This Week in Global Development, Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with Senior Reporters Michael Igoe and Sara Jerving to discuss the U.S. State Department’s announcement to...

13 Aug 29min

Special edition: Are jobs for youth development's silver bullet?

In this week’s special edition episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by the International Youth Foundation and the Caterpillar Foundation, we examine how shifting labor mar...

12 Aug 41min

Tracking the real-world impacts of US foreign aid cuts

This week, we discuss The Aid Report, a project supported by a media grant from the Gates Foundation to track the real-world impacts of U.S. foreign aid cuts. Over the past couple of months, the initi...

29 Jul 36min

The new era of US and European foreign assistance

This week we look back at the last 18 months of U.S. foreign assistance — a period defined by the dismantling of USAID and the absorption of foreign aid strategy into the State Department. We break do...

22 Jul 30min