April 2026
Iran War, Industrial Policy & OpenAI's $1b in grants for 2026
Top Posts
OpenAI Foundation plans to spend at least $1b over the next year across four areas including:
Life sciences (Alzheimer’s, open health datasets, underfunded high burden diseases)
Run by Jacob Trefethen (ex-Coefficient Giving)
Jobs/economic impact
Ken Opalo - African policymakers should be clear-eyed about Iran war impact
World Bank - The right way to do industrial policy
The Bank published a 276 page report reversing its 1993 position that industrial policy usually fails outside East Asia, arguing it is now far more replicable than previously thought
Todd Moss - Death to the policy report - Think tanks should spend precious time on more useful activities
Global terrorism falls to a decade low (the lowest level since 2007)
Deaths down 28% to 5,582
Incidents down 22% to 2,944
Oli Hanney - There is no randomising a technological revolution
Development economics is failing to address AI questions
GDEA Extra - Under-5 child deaths fell to 4.9 million in 2024
But revised UN population estimates added 209,000 deaths to the 2023 baseline, meaning the 2024 figure is only slightly different from last year’s published number
Nigeria (+89,000) and DRC (+76,000) account for most of the revision - countries that haven’t held a census since 2006 and 1984 respectively
India (-35,000), Ethiopia (-26,000) and Pakistan (-11,000) drove the biggest improvements
Jobs
Impactful Policy Careers - EU global health policy accelerator
A fully-funded accelerator in Brussels that prepares professionals to influence global health governance and development aid through European policy
Coefficient Giving (CoGi) - Global aid policy - Associate program officer
Evidence Action - The AI Access Initiative - Program lead
Gates Foundation - Senior research scientist, eradication & elimination
Talent acquisition partner, senior associate (philanthropy), manager (philanthropy)
Salesforce administrator, recruiter, project manager, research analyst, researcher, senior malaria researcher
Hi-Med Career Planning course - Pathways to impact in medical careers
Probably Good Job Board
Aid
Hannah Ritchie - UK aid budget cuts - falling to 0.3% of GNI by 2027, the lowest in 25+ years; effectively ~0.24% after domestic refugee costs
Sam Anschell -What questions do policymakers ask about foreign aid?
Insights from Japanese and Korean lawmakers; only $1-2 spent on advocacy per $1,000 of ODA disbursed
Semafor - The challenge and opportunity with America First global health agreements
Signed deals represent a ~49% drop in annual US support vs 2024
Zambia rejected $1b+
Zimbabwe suspended $367m
Kenya’s $1.6b frozen
MW Muiru - Dissecting the US-Africa health agreements
SSRN - Aid cuts increase demand for government services and taxation
Evidence from halting USAID funding
Unlock Aid - Funding pathways innovators should know about
Devex - From aid to investment - reshaping Africa’s path to growth
Growth
VoxDev - Special economic zones - why they succeed or fail
Over 7,000 SEZs globally
Vietnam’s shifted workers from informal agriculture to formal manufacturing, but Indonesia’s KAPET programme showed no measurable effects
Uzbekistan emerges as one of Europe and Central Asia’s fastest-growing economies, ~6.2% GDP growth in 2025, vs 2.4% regional average
Botswana’s economy shrinks 5.4% in Q4 - mining output fell 47% as global diamond market weakened
Karthik Tadepalli - The institute behind Taiwan’s chip dominance
ITRI started with $16m and 400 employees in 1973, eventually spawning TSMC
Can Asia still deliver the development miracle?
Asia’s share of global GDP rose from 13% (1960) to 31% (2023), but over 100 million still live in extreme poverty and ~1.3 billion work informally
OECD - Iran war erases global growth upgrade, fans inflation
Indian Growth
India’s economy growing faster than previously believed - GDP expanded 7.1% in FY2024-25, up from an earlier estimate of 6.5%, after a methodological update
PIIE - India’s 20 years of GDP misestimation
Ideas in Development - Raghuram Rajan on India’s growth prospects in the age of AI - argues India’s cost advantage persists even when both countries adopt AI
Shruti Rajagopalan - Podcast with India’s Chief Economic Advisor on strategic resilience, financial markets and capital formation
Nicholas Decker - Do developing countries still need manufacturing? - India’s service led growth challenges the traditional model
Emerging Tech & Development
Ideas in Development - How does technology diffuse? - Adoption lags behind innovation due to organisational constraints, not lack of knowledge
Rwanda becomes first country with nationwide autonomous drone delivery network
Agency Fund Accelerator - Year One Update
India shouldn’t build frontier models, it should build plumbing - focus on data centres, advanced packaging and rare earth processing
Rethink Priorities - What does AI progress mean for health systems in LMICs?
Population
AfDB commits $80m to DRC's first census in over 40 years
Ideas in Development - The future runs through African cities - By 2050, 900 million more people will live in African cities
Al Jazeera - India begins world’s biggest population count - Last census was 2011
Alice Evans - Demographic overstretch - When population growth outruns state capacity
Health
VoxDev - Malaria is an economic crisis
GAVI - Kebbi malaria vaccination rolls back hospitalisations and deaths - weekly malaria admissions dropped from 12 to 4
India launches its largest HPV vaccine drive - targeting ~12m teenage girls annually
India accounts for roughly a quarter of global cervical cancer cases
India has made progress against rabies
Dog bite incidence fell from 17m to 9.1m
Ozempic is about to go generic for billions of people - patent expired March 22nd
Prices could drop to ~$15/month
IFC - €1b in financing to Aspen to expand local manufacturing of essential medicines and vaccines in Africa
Aspen targets Mounjaro approval in sub-Saharan Africa this year
Governance, Policy & Democracy
The GPI - Democracy wins, even on growth
Countries transitioning from nondemocracy to democracy achieve about 20% higher GDP per capita over 25 years
Open PEA - Why does Malawi keep choosing maize over cash - The practical politics
CSIS - Nepal’s election marks generational break and new strategic moment in the Himalayas
DevPolicy - Rethinking Indonesia’s reliance on more rules, units and systems - 251,000 applicable laws and 27,000 government digital platforms, yet regulatory quality lags far behind Malaysia and Singapore
Prosperiti - Vietnam’s 2021 labour law reforms made it complete orders 23% faster and 18% cheaper than India and worker earnings are up 53%
Trade
Kenya gains zero-tariff access to China for agricultural exports from May
The Diplomat - Africa gets duty-free access to China, but Chinese companies win on both sides
UK and Nigeria sign £746m ports deal
Kenya and Rwanda sign fintech licence passporting agreement - second such deal after Ghana-Rwanda in 2025
Development Finance
Semafor - South Africa’s debt expected to peak this fiscal year after nearly two decades of increases
Nigeria’s banking sector attracts $13.5b in foreign inflows in 2025 - a 93% increase from 2024, driven by recapitalisation
South Africa - Private investment plans triple as reforms advance
Devex
Is development finance failing, and how do we fix it?
More blended finance doesn’t always mean more development outcomes
EIB says it’s carrying the flag of development
Could a credit ratings agency methodology change unlock billions at MDBs?
World Bank aims to give Mozambique $6b in financing over five years
Debt funding in African startups went from under $300m in 2021 to $1.2b in 2025, growing from 7% to 38% of total disclosed funding
More than 50% of sub-Saharan African public debt is now domestic - reduces currency exposure but rollover risk rises with ~8.8% borrowing costs
AfDB macro outlook 2026: Africa grew 4.2% in 2025, hosting 12 of the world’s 20 fastest growing economies, East Africa leads at 6.4%
Public debt hit $1.9 trillion
Between 2022-2024, countries paid $450b more in debt service than they received in new financing
USAID cuts amount to ~$4b across 44 African countries (via Africa Brief)
Evidence & Data
GiveWell - Investing in information for greater future impact
JAMA - FDA releases draft guidance permitting Bayesian methods in clinical trials, allowing sponsors to incorporate historical data and abandon traditional type I error control
Lant Pritchett - Low-bar poverty lines: Ending the Reign of Error
Argues the dollar a day poverty line was too low to be the goal of development, and proposes replacing it with a prosperity gap measure and an upper bound poverty line that better reflect what we actually care about
VoxDev - North Korea’s economy: a study of economic black holes
Gallup - World Happiness Report 2026
In 85 of 136 countries, under-25s are happier now than 20 years ago
Youth happiness has declined in English speaking nations
Startups & Business
Sunbeth Global Concepts raises $118.4m through commercial paper to expand cocoa exports
Realistic Optimist
Vocal for local - global tech often fails to penetrate local markets
Rethinking VC fund structure in Africa
Rest of World - Can Africa succeed where India failed with the $40 smartphone?
Infrastructure
Connor Tabarrok - The trillion-dollar bill on the sidewalk
Water infrastructure returns $21 per dollar invested but fails due to institutional design
Bloomberg - World Bank plans $500m to upgrade Kenya’s commuter rail
World Bank - Ports and jobs - Supporting maritime development in Senegal, Timor-Leste and Comoros
Semafor - Africa’s mobile money market hits $1.4 trillion in transaction value, roughly doubling in four years, with sub-Saharan Africa accounting for three-quarters of the global total
Agriculture & Food
ISAAA - 73 countries have now adopted genetically modified crops since 1996 - 44 through cultivation, 29 through imports
Egypt reports $11.5b in agricultural exports for 2025, reaching 167 countries, and launches first ag-dedicated PE fund
Nigeria exported just $1.8m of cassava in 2024 vs Thailand's $518m - despite being the world's largest producer at 60m tonnes/year
Ghana to reduce palm oil imports by $200m with new China deal
Dangote strikes $4.2b deal with Chinese firm to power East Africa’s agriculture
Devex - ADB gets moving on its $40b commitment to food systems
World Bank grants $216m to Burkina Faso to boost agriculture
For more African agriculture news check out Ag Safari by Hannatu Asheolge
Energy & Climate
Todd Moss - Africa has a nuclear bros problem
Devex - Mission 300 sends energy fellows into governments across Africa
The energy security fallout - From fossil fragility to electric independence
VoxDev - A ray of hope: the rise of solar energy in China
Rockefeller Foundation and Global Energy Alliance invest more than $100m to expand electricity in Africa
Hannah Ritchie - Will Africa still be energy-poor in 2050?
Conflict, Corruption & Crime
Ken Opalo - Conflict in the Horn of Africa isn't inevitable
Over 300,000 farmers in Nigeria displaced by armed groups, leaving fertile land idle ahead of rainy season
CEGA - How much peace can a dollar buy?
Chris Ogunmodede - The lessons of the war in Iran for the Horn of Africa
Semafor - Conflict threatens Gulf investment to Africa
Gulf states may reduce $100b+ in regional capital flows due to Middle East conflict costs
Rafael Proença - Which countries are most exposed to economic shocks due to war
Innovation & Metascience
Renaissance Philanthropy launched SCI PHI - A new publication on science and philanthropy
Pop-Up Journal - The Griliches Question: how much does R&D actually return
Five year NBER project to establish reliable estimates. US government spends 0.6% of GDP on R&D but estimates range from $2 to $20 per dollar invested
Accepting ~$250k grant proposals
Anthropic launches science blog - AI-assisted discoveries and supports AI for Science programme providing API credits
Alexander Kustov - Academics need to wake up on AI
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham - Research in the time of AI - LLMs compress the research timeline but the hard part is still knowing where to walk
Tom Kalil - Philanthropic moon shots and how to fund them
Philanthropists should fund ambitious goals that risk averse government peer review won’t touch
Abhishaike Mahajan - Coming up with drug candidates isn’t the bottleneck on finding new treatments. Can AI help with the things that are?
Abundance & Growth
Clinical trial reforms that once seemed radical - preregistration, RCTs and mandatory results reporting are now standard. Individual patient data sharing is the next frontier
A directory of living literature reviews - 11 continuously updated research syntheses
Who will program manage the program managers?
Cosmos Institute - Science needs scientists
AI will revolutionise discovery but understanding requires human engagement
Research on Research Institute - Why metascience matters
India spends 0.6% of GDP on R&D vs 2.5% for competitors and argues India’s science policy is not evidence based
Macroscience - Virtue metascience
Proposes evaluating science through virtue ethics rather than outcomes
David Oks - How citations ruined science
Astera Institute - Announcing Radial, a new life sciences division
Charities & Foundations
The Agency Fund Spring 2026 Open Call is live now
Gates Foundation - Grand Challenges grant - Up to $150k for solutions connecting donors with causes
Joey Savoie
How important is incorruptibility in grantmaking?
Top new philanthropic funds
GiveWell
2025 grant investigation survey results - satisfaction ratings improved from 4.2 to 4.6 out of 5
Following the data on Dispensers for Safe Water - declined to renew funding after discovering actual usage was ~2m people rather than 5m
Coefficient Giving
Going bigger: scaling effective giving and careers - nearly 3x more funding available in 2026
RFP for effective careers organisations
Introducing 8 new evidence-based nonprofits from Latin America
Other Links
China spent $2b+ across 11 African countries on facial recognition and vehicle tracking
OWID
Why cheap waste management is key to stopping plastic pollution
Outside rich countries, widespread informal work means unemployment rates are low
What are the world’s deadliest animals, and can we protect ourselves against them?
Book summary of Why Nations Fail
Good News
Latin America and the Caribbean advances in eradicating hunger - 6.2m fewer people experiencing hunger
Chile becomes first country in the Americas verified by WHO for the elimination of leprosy
WHO validates elimination of trachoma in Libya
US adult smoking rate drops below 10%
India’s murder rate halved since 1991 - from 4.6 to 2.0 per 100k
For more good news check out Fix The News & Human Progress