January 2025 Links
2024 reviews, conflict and free meals
Top Posts
Ten key insights from development economics research in 2024
Kevin Starr - Funders, Do Your !!@%@#! Job - Be accountable for impact
Research I'd like to see - Alex Cohen, Principal Researcher at GiveWell
Ken Opalo - 2024: Year in Review - African countries weathered ongoing fiscal squeeze better than expected, with emerging shoots of economic recovery
Indonesia launches free meals program to feed children and pregnant women to fight malnutrition. Expected to cost $28b through 2029
Open Philanthropy - Five Highlights from our Scientific Research Portfolio
Advancing nutrition for malnourished children
Deciphering the mechanisms of aging
A novel approach to malaria prevention
Support for a malaria vaccine
Advancing a hepatitis E vaccine
Africa is now experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946 according to analysis by Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo
Events
28th January - Using evidence to make humanitarian aid more effective
29th January - The Economic Impacts of Antimicrobial Resistance - CGD
3rd-4th June - First Annual Research Conference on Global Lead Exposure (DC/Online)
Foreign Aid & Remittances
The number of people needing aid has declined from a peak of 363 million in 2023 - Although still higher than 130 million in 2016
CGD - What Would Taking Economic Growth Seriously Look Like for the FCDO?
Between 1990 and 2022, the share of European Commission aid going to LDCs dropped from 52% to 19%
The Central Bank of Nigeria has revealed a 64% increase in international money transfer operator inflows for the first nine months of 2024 - From $2.3b to $3.8b
Energy projects dominate new EU Global Gateway ‘flagships’ list - Slimmed-down priority choices shun human development work in favour of investments with benefits for Europe
Economic Growth
Yaw
Stealing Success: How IP Theft Built Nations
The Similarities and Differences in China’s Growth Strategy Compared to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan
The Economist - In 2025, nine of the world’s 20 fastest-growing economies will be in Africa
The Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone and how it might drive economic growth in Malaysia
Paper finding cost-effective impact of a $7B government R&D program in South Korea, with impacts on exports taking 5-15 years to materialise
Economic growth in African economies
Governance & Democracy
Indonesia joins BRICS bloc as full member
Open Philanthropy are hiring a Director of Government Relations (Washington D.C.)
APSR - What Can We Learn about the Effects of Democracy Using Cross-National Data?
Ghana becomes record fifth African nation to see opposition victory this year
Development Finance
The role of evidence at Development Finance Institutions (podcast with Chris Woodruff from BII)
In a reversal, the World Bank is backing mega dams again
Ethiopia opens a new stock market
Inside the African Development Bank’s new 10-year strategy
Madagascar: African Development Bank grants a $165m loan to develop roads and facilitate trade
World Bank calls IDA pledges a win. Critics aren’t so sure
World Bank - Blueprint for Change: Ending Poverty on a livable planet is possible
Looking at the last 5 years of the Development Finance Corporation, over which time they have invested nearly $50b
The Millennium Challenge Corporation has a bill nearing approval in the U.S. Congress. The new law would enable 33 additional countries to meet MCC’s financial eligibility criteria
Startups & Business
How WhatsApp is being used by businesses around the world
“Point-and-Kill” catfish can’t swim against the business tide - The limitations of intra-market integration in Ghana
Small-scale investors are building Vietnam’s EV charging network
Start-ups in Africa raised $2.2b in 2024, representing a 25% drop compared to 2023
AI, Data & Development
Global South Countries Have No Choice but to Care About Advanced AI
How AI helps with diagnosing TB
Introducing the grantees of the GSMA Innovation Fund for Humanitarian Challenges (solutions that leverage mobile and digital technology in LMICs)
Mexico is using an AI-powered app to prevent suicides - the government claims the app had contributed to a 9% reduction in the suicide rate statewide
How AI is driving India’s next agricultural revolution
Law podcast on different options to share AI's benefits at the international level
OECD - Miracle or Myth? Assessing the macroeconomic productivity gains from AI - (estimates for annual aggregate total-factor productivity growth due to AI range between 0.25-0.6 percentage points)
Charities
GiveWell - What We Learned From Red Teaming Our Top Charities
Rahi Impact is a new CE charity - Aiming to make labour migration affordable, accessible and safe
Lafiya Nigeria awarded grant from the Gates Foundation to expand family planning access in Kano state
Infrastructure
Following a period of stagnation, the number of people without access to electricity declined from over 760 million in 2022 to below 750 million in 2023
Chinese cement manufacturers pour into Africa
Can the railway and planned economic corridor connecting the DRC, Zambia, and Angola deliver a new model of U.S. infrastructure development, go beyond extractives, and compete with China?
Demand for Starlink in Zimbabwe is overwhelming capacity
Chinese bank approves $255m loan for Kano-Kaduna railway
Senegal and Mauritania have become gas producers
India
The pilot of the Indian Community Development Program was a resounding success. Why did it fail to scale?
The Nudge Institute/Meta - Receive grants up to INR 150 lakhs to integrate AI into your solutions
Pravin Krishna on the Political Economy of Multilateral and Preferential Trade Agreements, Trade Liberalisation, and the Future of Global Trade
India’s poverty rate does not measure what you think it does
Can startups solve India’s waste problem?
India has removed restrictions on WhatsApp’s payments service
In 1998, India's Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) stood at 398 deaths per 100k live births. By 2020, the rate reduced to 97 maternal deaths per 100k live births
Malaria
CGD
Malaria Vaccines: Turning a Scientific Triumph into Millions of Lives Saved
Avoiding Another Lost Decade on Malaria Vaccines
CSIS - The New Tools Fighting a Longtime Public Health Threat
Health
USAID - Unlocking Africa's Health Innovation Potential: Navigating the Investment Readiness Landscape
The Africa CDC has unveiled a new platform that caters to member states’ differing technology needs - The Africa HealthTech Marketplace
Call for Papers: First Annual Research Conference on Global Lead Exposure
Cures Within Reach has expanded its partnership with Open Philanthropy. They identify and fund clinical trials testing approved therapies for unsolved diseases, to de-risk potential therapeutic options that address high disease burden for patients in LMICs
Scott Matafwali - Leadership Transitions at ZAMMSA: Implications for Zambia's Pharmaceutical Supply
The global health and economic burden of chikungunya from 2011 to 2020
Ghana becomes first river blindness-endemic country to approve moxidectin
IMF - How to Heal Health Financing
Our World in Data - Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance
Corruption & Conflict
How WhatsApp has transformed communication in conflict and crisis areas
How Ghana’s “digitalisation narrative” enabled crony enrichment - Often via the World Bank
Armed Conflict’s Hidden Costs: A Multidisciplinary Look at War's Impact on Human Development
Over $3.7 billion in corruption-linked African assets found hidden in wealthy nations - deep-dive analysis of 78 cases
Innovation & Metascience
Tom Kalil on Institutions for Innovation
Metascience 2025 conference - Call for Proposals
The Lancet - Randomised controlled trials evaluating AI in clinical practice: a scoping review
STAT - Is this the beginning of the AI-in-drug-discovery era, or the beginning of the end?
Saloni Dattani - Five medical breakthroughs in 2024
MetaResearch Open Review - A new platform designed to transform how meta research is reviewed and shared
Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation is a new collaboration between RoRI, the Innovation Growth Lab and others
First batch of recorded talks from Progress Conference 2024 are available now
Our World in Data, But For Biotech
Allegedly Does Not Replicate is a new podcast looking into the world of scientific research
Effective Giving
Julia Wise - Still donating half
AMA: 10 years of Earning To Give
How GiveDirectly increased donations by over $3m/year through experimentation
Giving What We Can
Community Celebrates their 15th Anniversary
2025 charity recommendations
Beyond the dichotomy: Perspectives on direct work and effective giving
Other Links
Ken Opalo
What sorts of reforms under Trump could reshape Africa-U.S. relations for the better?
Africa in 2025
How is the world really doing on the SDGs?
Life You Can Save podcast on the history and future of BRAC
Global push for cooperation as space traffic crowds Earth orbit
The Dignity Report 2024
Oliver Kim - The Rhetoric of Underdevelopment
In five years, Teaching at the Right Level Africa has reached 5.8 million children in 15 countries
Good News
India sees 79% drop In AIDS deaths, 44% decline in HIV infections since 2010
Between 2000 and 2020, access to safe water in China increased significantly from 46% to 91%
Latin America had a reduction of 4.7 percentage points in the regional poverty rate between 2021 and 2023
Eight countries pledge to ban corporal punishment
The Africa had a 42% drop in TB related deaths since 2015