This Week in Global Development15 Feb 2024

What community leaders think of USAID's localization plans

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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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