This Week in Global Development2 Jul 2025

Special episode: Can health survive the development finance revolution?

With aid budgets under pressure globally, delegates at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain, are urgently exploring innovative ways to fund global development. But as the spotlight shifts toward private capital, there’s a growing concern that essential interventions without immediate financial returns — such as health investments — could be overlooked.

“We’re very clear that the cheapest money — concessional money, grant financing, and very concessional loans — should be allocated to those investments that give you this massive societal return, but not necessarily a financial return,” said Kalpana Kochhar, director of development policy and finance at the Gates Foundation, in an onstage conversation with Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, demonstrates how strategic health investments can pay off over time. “Gavi has graduated a number of countries who originally needed that subsidy to bring in vaccines and help purchase them at a lower price, but now [those countries] are doing it on their own,” Kumar said. However at the recent Gavi replenishment round, pledges fell short by about $2.9 billion of its total budget request.

The discussion also highlighted new opportunities to attract private investment in health manufacturing — from vaccine production to locally made bed nets — and reflected on the progress made since the last Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, about a decade ago.

This special episode of This week in global development was sponsored by the Gates Foundation.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(244)

Special Edition: AI in practice: Bridging the implementation gap

Across the global development landscape, artificial intelligence promises to redefine how health, education, and social protection services are delivered. However, moving past small-scale piloting to ...

6 Okt 27min

Special edition: Reimagining financing for development and growth

The fundamental question of how development and growth are financed is undergoing a profound transformation. Over the course of a series of original essays and op-eds, The Next Frontier – a Devex seri...

2 Okt 33min

Inside the US global health overhaul and Buffett's philanthropic strategy

The United States is set to implement one of the biggest overhauls of its global health assistance in decades. The new strategy will reshape how billions of dollars flow to 35 countries, shifting grea...

1 Okt 35min

The Power to Decide: Reclaiming Sovereignty in a Digital Era

In this special edition episode of This Week in Global Development, sponsored by Public Digital, Devex's Alan Robbins sits down with Public Digital's Lauren Kahn and Mike Bracken CBE. Recorded at Deve...

30 Sep 29min

Global Progress in the AI Era: As Anthropic urges caution on AI, its ‘beneficial deployments’ work grows

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei made headlines recently by calling for slowing the development of increasingly powerful AI models to give safety measures time to catch up. That only increase...

25 Sep 30min

Live from UNGA: Navigating the new era of multilateralism

This week we are closely tracking the conversations at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and what they mean for the global development sector. From U.S. President Donald Trump’s ...

24 Sep 20min

The Gates Foundation's latest AI pledge, and a look ahead to UNGA 81

This week, we report on the Gates Foundation’s 2026 Goalkeepers Report, which includes a $1 billion pledge to make AI more inclusive. The funding aims to expand access across health, education, agricu...

17 Sep 38min

Special edition: The real funding gap isn't money

In this special episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by Rippleworks, Devex Senior Editor for Special Coverage Catherine Cheney sits down with Doug Galen, CEO of Ripplework...

15 Sep 32min