Devex @ UNGA 79: What it would take to move the needle on locally led development

This week we published an exclusive interview with Nicholas Kristof, an award-winning New York Times columnist. He spoke about what he saw in Sudan and the global community’s failure to respond to one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises — as the conflict in Gaza overshadows other crises around the world. As public attention wanes in the face of new crises, we question whether crisis fatigue is hindering humanitarian aid from reaching those in dire need.We also discussed a study that revealed European companies — including Siemens, BioNTech SE, Möller Group, and SUEZ — are benefiting from investments in over 60% of the EU Global Gateway projects examined. We dig into the study’s details and whether Europe is doing enough to channel funds to the Global South and meet the needs of local communities. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, it appears as though the Department for International Development — which was merged with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2020 — will not be restored anytime soon. We learned that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rejected top-level advice that he could restore a separate U.K. aid department with “negligible” cost and disruption, according to a new book by former senior development officials.For the latest edition of our podcast series, Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel sits down with reporters Elissa Miolene and Rob Merrick to discuss our top stories from the past week. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters. 

Last week, we published an exclusive article on the European Union’s plan to cut its development spending by €2 billion (around $2.2 billion) over the next three years. This will account for a 35% reduction in the amount of money it gives to the world’s lowest-income countries as the bloc aims to focus on other priorities, including supporting Ukraine and stopping migration to Europe.The European Union is not the only entity in Europe reducing its aid budget. The French government also announced a €1 billion reduction in foreign aid — the third cut in the last two years — while the new U.K. development minister Anneliese Dodds suggested that the government will continue to direct the country’s aid spending on hosting refugees. Why are European countries slashing their aid budgets? What are the implications of these cuts?To answer these questions and dig into the issue, Devex Business Editor David Ainsworth sits down with Deputy Managing Editor Fiona Zublin and Senior Reporter Vince Chadwick for the latest episode of our podcast series. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters.

In April, a group of multilateral development banks signed an agreement to work more closely together, known as a viewpoint note, which set a series of goals, including scaling up their financing capacity, and delivering more on climate. Earlier this week, at the U.N. General Assembly, the heads of MDBs sat down with U.N. leaders to identify how they could make more progress to deliver those goals. Devex heard from Ilan Goldfajn, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, about the steps taken so far.Goldfajn said there had been considerable progress in unifying the goals of the MDBs with the Group of 20 major economies and with U.N. agencies.MDBs have increased lending capacity by $400 billion over the next 10 years, mostly through reforms but partly due to closer working, Goldfajn explained. He added that last year, the banks had lent a quarter more on climate and doubled the amount of finance mobilized, compared to 2022.He also highlighted several projects where IDB had worked together with the World Bank and the EIB.Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger sat down with Goldfajn for a special episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast series.Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters.

In a special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast recorded on the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly, chef and entrepreneur José Andrés spoke with Devex’s Kate Warren to discuss his humanitarian work with World Central Kitchen and the challenges of addressing global hunger.For Andrés, having a set system for food aid doesn’t work. This explains WCK's unique approach. Rather than shipping in prepackaged food aid to various humanitarian situations, WCK partners with local communities and restaurants to provide culturally relevant, cost-effective meals.This model, while seemingly obvious, is not the norm in the humanitarian sector. Andrés believes that the tendency to overcomplicate solutions often prevents effective action. "Sometimes big problems, they have very simple solutions, but [it] seems humans, we’re very good at overcomplicating the problems," he said. "We don't respond [in] every place in the same way," he explained, citing examples of serving fresh fish in Gaza to avoid it going to waste, and bringing in food from European countries to support Ukraine's collapsed distribution systems despite the quantity of grain available.Andrés emphasized the importance of adapting to local conditions and empowering communities to be part of the solution. “The most important, is having boots on the ground,” he said. For Andrés, there is “nobody better than the local community to help you respond.”The risks faced by humanitarian workers are a sobering reality for Andrés, who has lost employees in Gaza and Ukraine. He expressed a deep sense of responsibility, noting that “if we were not there, this wouldn't be happening.” However, he believes that the potential to save lives outweighs the dangers, stating, “If not, those people on their own will be alone, forgotten and anyway, dying.”Andrés sees both the promise and peril of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. While AI has the potential to revolutionize food production, distribution, and waste reduction, he also cautions against its misuse, calling for robust regulations and safeguards to prevent AI from being weaponized against civilians or humanitarian workers.Looking ahead, Andrés shares his skepticism about the world's ability to achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals within the limited time frame to 2030, citing a lack of accountability and the disillusionment of young people with leadership. He emphasized the need for more support for youth to become agents of change and for real, tangible progress to be made, not just empty promises.“Doing good and promising good is not good enough. We must do a smart good,” he said.

This week Devex is in New York covering the 79th United Nations General Assembly as well as the Summit of the Future. In addition to hosting our very own summit on the sidelines of these events, we are also closely following the conversations happening at the U.N. and around the rest of Manhattan that are most important to the global development community. From reforming the international financial architecture to addressing geopolitical issues — we explore whether the discussions taking place will lead to meaningful change and help achieve the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. What does the Pact for the Future mean for the world? And is the legitimacy of the U.N. on the line?For the latest episode of our weekly podcast series, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar discusses with Senior Global Reporter Colum Lynch the most important updates from the 79th United Nations General Assembly. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters.

It’s no secret that promises to deliver more humanitarian and development funding to local and national organizations have not been fulfilled. During the high-level week of the 79th U.N. General Assembly, Devex caught up with Degan Ali, who heads the Kenya-based NGO Adeso. Ali is a leading voice in the aid decolonization movement, which seeks to decenter the voices of Western decision-makers and shift more power to local leaders in the global south. Ali discussed the lack of trust and credibility given to local NGOs compared to international organizations, challenges in meeting the 2016 “Grand Bargain” target of 25% funding to local organizations, and how bureaucracy and risk aversion in organizations like the U.S. Agency for International Development is hindering localization efforts.  And while she gave USAID Administrator Samantha Power credit for elevating the localization agenda, Ali called the effort to get bilateral organizations to shift to locally led development an “impossible, impossible uphill battle.” “But where I do feel like there's hope and there's opportunity, is for the [international] NGOs to change and philanthropy to change, and those are the spaces where we need to put a lot of pressure,” she said. “And that's what we're trying to do at Adeso with the Pledge for Change with the INGOs, and the decolonizing philanthropy work that we're doing.” Devex Global Development Reporter Elissa Miolene sat down with Ali for a special episode of our This Week in Global Development podcast series.

Among the major development initiatives under discussion at the United Nations this week in New York is an ambitious goal set out by the World Bank and the African Development Bank, which aims to get electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030.During the high-level week of the U.N. General Assembly, Devex caught up with Andrew Herscowitz, CEO of the M300 Accelerator, which aims to make these ambitions into reality.M300 is based at the Rockefeller Foundation and supported by the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, or GEAPP, and Sustainable Energy for All, two international organizations focused on bringing clean energy to everyone.Herscowitz is the former head of Power Africa, a previous energy initiative that, in its first decade, helped deliver new or improved electricity to nearly 200 million people in Africa. But he said the latest project was even more ambitious. In fact, he said, it was “probably the biggest thing that's happening in international development right now.”It needs “quantum leaps in a couple of different areas” for the accelerator to succeed in its goals, he said. But he told Devex that he was confident that he and his allies had the resources to make those leaps happen.Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger sits down with Herscowitz to discuss more about M330 for a special episode of our weekly podcast series.Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters.

As world leaders get ready to meet in New York for the 79th United Nations General Assembly, we explore what we can expect from the event and whether big ideas can translate into meaningful action. The U.N.’s Summit of the Future is also set to take place early next week. With so many questions surrounding the conference, we contemplate whether the world is ready to solve the problems of tomorrow if we can’t solve the problems of today. Meanwhile, from filling the gap regarding inadequate levels of local manufacturing to overcoming overuse and misuse, we dive into a report that outlines the African continent’s priority list for tackling antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, ahead of this month's high-level meeting on the issue at UNGA 79. On the topic of global health, we also take a look at the challenge of vaccinating Gaza’s children against polio amid the conflict in the region. To explore these stories, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with reporters Colum Lynch and Sara Jerving for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters. 

After severe cuts to its 2024 budgets for development and humanitarian aid, we found that the German government is planning to slash funds again in 2025. A recently released draft budget spells out nearly €1 billion in cuts to the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, or BMZ, from €11.22 billion ($12.36 billion) this year to €10.28 billion in 2025.Germany is not the only European country planning to reduce its aid budget. In the United Kingdom, the aid budget in 2024 is forecast to be only 0.36% of gross national income — once sums diverted to hosting asylum-seekers are removed — piling pressure on the new Labour government to rethink its plans. The fresh spending squeeze comes despite the new Labour government promising a “reset” of development policy it condemned as “degraded” under the Conservatives.We also discuss the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation that took place in Beijing. It was attended by 50 African heads of state and China pledged to invest nearly $51 billion in the continent on more favorable terms than Western countries.In order to dive into these stories and others, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with David Ainsworth and Elissa Miolene for the latest episode of our weekly podcast series. Sign up to the Devex Newswire and our other newsletters.

As the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation marks its 20th anniversary, we discuss our latest article on the agency. While MCC has invested $17 billion in 47 countries since its founding, we contemplate whether the agency has lived up to its founders’ lofty aims of holding countries accountable for good governance and rooting out corruption.Meanwhile, one of the biggest threats to aid workers isn't just war or disaster — it's workplace stress. From oppressive workloads to toxic cultures, we explore how humanitarian organizations are unintentionally burning out their own staff members and whether the sector has a staff retention problem. For the latest episode of our podcast series, Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar sits down with Managing Editor Anna Gawel and Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger to discuss these stories and others.