Top Posts
GiveWell - Are our Top Charities saving the same lives each year?
Gavi unveils plans for next 5-year period, and a $9 billion replenishment target
Launching the Global Health Funding Circle - Apply by July 9th (Registered non-profits that achieved early success and have a plan to scale)
When growth does, and does not, reduce poverty - Growth fails to reduce poverty when the economic linkages to the lives of the poor are weak, and governments fail to use the proceeds to encourage the spread of economic activity or for anti-poverty programmes
Nick Laing - Is Nigerian nurse emigration really a "win-win"? Critique of a CGD article
Kevin Starr - the difference between growth and scale
Events
5th-7th July - EAGxUtrecht
16-18th August - EAGxToronto
6-7th September - EA Nigeria Summit
13-15th September - EAGxBerlin
1st-3rd November - EAG Boston
22nd-24th November - EAGxAustralasia
Jobs
Happier Lives Institute - Board Member
Fortify Health - Strategic Initiatives (Senior) Manager
GiveWell
Magnify Mentoring - applications are open for new mentees until July 10th
Development Finance
ODI - Trillions or billions? Reassessing the potential for European institutional investment in emerging markets and developing economies
The heads of the African and Inter-American Development banks are aiming to secure $20 billion of IMF reserve assets which they want to turn into $80 billion of climate financing
Nigeria bets on a new $2.25 billion World Bank loan to support reforms
IMF approves $570 million Zambia payout, increases loan to $1.7 billion
World bank approves $700 million to boost Jordan's education, health and social care
What the Global Emerging Markets database does and doesn’t mean for private investors
Countries face record interest payments as rates rise
IDB Invest bets on synthetic securitisation to boost lending
BII - How does development finance help to eradicate poverty?
Startups & Business
Ken Opalo - Why exactly are major international firms leaving the Nigerian market?
Robin Butler - How VCs can beat currency depreciation
Hassan Bourgi - Djamo: banking francophone Africa
Kyle Chan - "Managed competition" in China's state firms
Maryanne Ochola & Michele Waniku - Why We’re Optimistic About the Future of VC in Africa
Everett Randle - Wave - Building a Cashless Africa
Semafor - Ethiopia says it’s ready for foreign firms but investors seem reluctant
Oliver Kim - What is it like to work in an Ethiopian factory?
Economic Growth
Kartik Akileswaran & Jonathan Mazumdar - When It Comes to Promoting Prosperity, Production Beats Consumption
Shruti Rajagopalan in conversation with Anne Krueger on 50 Years of Rent-Seeking, Trade, and Economic Development
Paul Collier - Left behind: a new economics for neglected places
Energy for Growth Hub - How We’re Going to Track the Modern Energy Minimum
Recordings and slides are available for a virtual course by STEG on "Data in Macro Development"
We should value income doublings equally across time and place
AI, Data & Development
Frontier Tech Hub - AI as a tool for International Development professionals
Rose Mutiso - Three Steps to Unlock the Potential of AI in Africa
Rice Farming gets an AI upgrade
Chiara Negrello - drones are transforming farming in the Mekong River delta Mathematical optimisation for cargo ships - Shipping Network Design API is able to double the profit of a container shipper, deliver 13% more containers with 15% fewer vessels
Digital Future for Africa: ADB and Intel to Train Millions in AI
Awarri has been tapped to help increase the representation of Nigerian languages in AI
The UN adopted a resolution urging wealthy nations to close the gap with poorer countries and ensure that they have equal opportunities to benefit from AI
WEF - Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education
Sierra Leone is seeking to raise up to $150 million to roll out a digital innovation strategy led by a new Tech City hub
Foreign Aid
Why Is There So Little Contractually Contingent Financing?
Devex Pro - Emerging donors - and where they spend their aid
US to provide over $315 million in additional aid for Sudan
Energy
South Africa’s decision to significantly raise the private power generation cap [from 1MW to 100MW] is set to be a “game changer” for the economy
Todd Moss - Time to end the World Bank’s nuclear blind spot
Katie Auth - Ten Takeaways for Global Energy Poverty from the IEA’s 2024 World Energy Investment Report
Renewable Hydrogen in Africa: Goldilocks and the Six Facts
India
EU’s carbon border tax plans trigger alarm in India
The Economist - Why India should create dozens of new states
Alex Tabarrok - Accelerating India’s Development
Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton decode India’s changing economic landscape
Pandemics & Biosecurity
The EU will contribute over €750 million to the African Vaccines Manufacturing Accelerator
Gavi announces launch of preventive Ebola, routine multivalent meningitis, human rabies, and hepatitis B birth dose vaccination programmes
The public health impact and cost-effectiveness of the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine: a mathematical modelling study
GMO mosquitoes released in Djibouti to fight malaria
UNAIDS funding shortfall disrupts work
Enhancing FDA Information Sharing for Neglected Tropical Diseases
How can I donate to biorisk prevention?
New mpox strain in DR Congo. There have been nearly 8,000 cases this year including 384 deaths
The Novo Nordisk Foundation is providing funding for exploratory research projects within pathogenic fungi, novel AMR tools and harnessing innate immunity
Scientists find evidence that climate change could make fungi more dangerous
Jeff Kaufman - Detecting Genetically Engineered Viruses With Metagenomic Sequencing
The rising global economic costs of invasive Aedes mosquitoes and Aedes-borne diseases (Dengue, Zika and chikungunya)
Alastair Fraser-Urquhart - Making the UK the Global Centre for Challenge Trials
Martin Rees - Why challenge prizes can solve our most pressing issues
Effective Giving
Julia Wise - Still donating half
GWWC - The general population cares more about effective giving than you might think: Results from a 2024 study in Australia
The Life You Can Save podcast with Joshua Ross and Adam McCurdie of Humanitix (who recently donated $4m AUD to TLYCS)
Maggie Lloydhauser - The hardest part about fundraising for GiveWell
Maximum Impact has launched in Israel to support effective giving
Kaleem - On Estimates of how much Zakat there is
Do the GiveWell charities need money currently?
YouTube’s biggest creator has teamed up with GiveDirectly to give $300k to a Ugandan village
Evidence & Policy
Eva Vivalt
Rose Mutiso - Afrofuturism for Policy Wonks
Researcher spotlight: Erin Crossett, GiveWell Program Officer
Mikolaj Kniejski - Charity Entrepreneurship Is Overestimating the Value of Saving Lives by 10%
Andrew Leigh MP (Australia) - Randomised trials are our path to effective spending
Inside the World Bank’s new inequality indicator: The number of countries with high inequality - under this measure, the number of highly unequal countries has dropped from 77 in 2000 to 52 in 2022
Alix Bonargent - Boosting policy impact in development economics: Key insights from a decade of research
Agriculture
Agricultural Transitions Lab for African Solutions launches at Paris Peace Forum
In the subset of 64 countries with trend data, there was minimal change in the percentage of children living in severe child food poverty during the last decade (34 percent in 2012 to 31 percent in 2022)
Robots, Drones and Driverless Tractors Usher In New Age of Farming
Health
Podcast with Nicolas Laing: Tackling Healthcare “Black Holes” in Rural Uganda
Gregory Rockson - African healthcare needs markets, not philanthropy
Project EmpatIA: Enabling Healthcare Transformation in Peru
The Studies Show - Lead and IQ
Structured expert judgement approach of the health impact of various chemicals - Lead surpasses the others by a large margin, with an estimated median value of 1.7 million deaths annually
The foundation bringing in private sector finance to WHO
Saloni Dattani - Trachoma: how a common cause of blindness can be prevented worldwide
Podcast with Felix Brooks-church from Sanku, hoping to end micronutrient deficiency
Environment
Casey Handmer - 18 industrial applications of cheap energy
Bezos Earth Fund - AI for Climate and Nature
Denmark to charge farmers €100 a cow in first carbon tax on agriculture
How important are emissions in emerging economies?
Harmful gases destroying ozone layer falling faster than expected
Innovation & Metascience
Cate Hall - AI is about to change everything & Astera is on a mission to rebuild the machinery of science... We’re hiring a visionary team to help leverage our $2.5B endowment to make science better, faster, cheaper & more widely shared
Nan Ransohoff - How to start an advance market commitment
The Bottlenecks Summit is an unconference bringing together thinkers, builders, creators and policy entrepreneurs working to overcome bottlenecks to human progress and abundance - California, September 6th
Nature - Is science’s dominant funding model broken?
Macroscience is starting a new podcast - interviewing researchers, scientists, policymakers and entrepreneurs working in metascience
Stuart Buck - Four exciting metascience developments, with huge potential for improving science and medicine at NIH and elsewhere
Matt Clancy - Twitter and the Spread of Academic Knowledge
Jacob Trefethen - FDA, ARPA-H, & CDC – policy ideas part 2
The Up Wing has launched, covering progress related news
Biotech
Devex - How CRISPR gene-editing technology could change the way we eat
Low-cost CRISPR-based paper strip test offers rapid influenza diagnosis
Genome Design: The Bridge to Our Biological Future
New AI detects 13 cancers with 98% accuracy from tissue samples
Novo Nordisk weight loss drug Wegovy approved in China (where 50%+ of the adult population is overweight)
Migration & Displacement
Vox - Already the world’s worst displacement crisis, new battlefronts in Sudan could unleash ethnic violence and genocide
Worldwide levels of forced displacement hit historic high - 120 million people
Higher EU visa costs are set to increase losses for rejected Africans
Fiji fights for brain gain amid wave of emigration
Foundations
Warren Buffett, who owns nearly $130 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock, will direct his fortune into a new charitable trust overseen by his children, instead of the Gate Foundation
Kevin Starr - We need big bet philanthropy. We also need it to change.
Why isn’t all philanthropy trust-based philanthropy?
Grants
Open Philanthropy have made several grants recently worth $13.7m
GiveWell Charities
$4.3m - Evidence Action - Deworm the World Initiative
Global Health R&D
$2.8m - Harvard - Antimalarial Bednet Development and Evaluation
$210 - Bouisson-Bertrand Institute - Loiasis (African Eye Worm) Impact Study
$190k - Pahle India Foundation - Lead Policy Research
$100k - Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine - Malaria Chemoprevention in School-Aged Children
Human Health and Wellbeing
$2.6m - University of Pennsylvania - Human Germ Cell Research
$500k - UC Davis - Insectary for Malaria Gene Drive Research
Aid Policy
$900k - Kyle House Group - Aid Policy Strategy
$660k - Fund for the Global Fund - Global Fund Awareness in Japan
$40k - Government Relations Group - Japanese Support for NTD Elimination
$20k - Big Picture - Global Health Aid Advocacy in Japan
EA & Global Development
$940k - Gi Effektivt
$250k - Probably Good
Mulago Foundation
Suvita received a $500k grant
$350k - Cassvita - Extends cassava’s shelf life to 18 months
$350k - Shamiri Institute - High schooler mental health in Africa
Other Links & Causes
Rachel Abbott - Kaya Guides pilot results
AI and satellite imager can spot fires 500x faster than on-ground
2Africa has landed, the world’s largest subsea cable system. It will bring more reliable internet connections to billions of people
Ken Opalo - The potent powerlessness of Leftist politics in African states
Introduction to the Handbook of Aid and Development, by Raj M. Desai, Shantayanan Devarajan and Jennifer L. Tobin
Gallup’s 2024 Global Emotions Report
Our World in Data - Is the number of natural disasters increasing?
Our World in Data - How much progress has been made in protecting the rights of LGBT+ people?
The Impact & Value of Hurricane Forecasts
Effective Altruism
Alexander Berger - An update from Good Ventures (Cari and Dustin’s philanthropy) - “we have decided to exit a handful of sub-causes (amounting to less than 5% of our annual grantmaking), and we are no longer planning to expand into new causes in the near term by default.” - includes comments from Dustin Moskovitz
Elliot - Maybe let the non-EA world train you
Asterisk - Progress Studies vs Effective Altruism
Good News
From 1990 to 2022, the under-five child mortality rate declined by 72 per cent in Southern Asia
HIV trial shows injectable prevents 100% infection in women and girls
Deaths from tetanus have been reduced massively
