May 2025
Tariffs, Trade & USAID replacements
Top Posts
IMF - World Economic Outlook April 2025 - Global growth is expected to decline and downside risks to intensify as major policy shifts unfold
Tariff announcements by the US and countermeasures by other countries reduces global growth forecast to 2.8% and 3% this year and next, a cumulative downgrade of about 0.8 percentage point relative to January forecasts
Rachel Glennerster & Siddhartha Haria - Radical Simplification: A Practical Way to Get More Out of Limited Foreign Assistance Budgets
Global official development assistance dropped 7.1% in 2024 as donor countries scaled back funding for Ukraine, humanitarian crises and refugee costs
A $40 billion Africa Energy Fund aims to provide 300 million people with access to cleaner, more reliable energy by 2030
Yaw - How Global Trade Works In Practice: Examining Modern Trade Disputes
Alex Cohen - “Disease burden is a crucial input in GiveWell’s cost effectiveness analyses. We've recently started scrutinizing these numbers more carefully, and this has already led to >$25 million in grants we wouldn't have made otherwise.”
For burden, we've relied on IHME's Global Burden of Disease study. But we've recently noticed surprising patterns
- UN estimates of malaria deaths in Chad are 2.5x higher than IHME
- Maternal mortality in Nigeria is estimated 3.5x higher by UN than IHME
Going forward, we plan to treat burden data like we do other parts of our analysis - triangulating against other sources
The Beginnings Fund aims to prevent over 300,000 avoidable deaths by expanding access to quality care for mothers and babies in sub-Saharan Africa - The establishment of the Beginnings Fund is part of a joint philanthropic commitment of ~$600 million for maternal and newborn survival, including $100 million in direct funding for initiatives that further the Beginnings Fund's mission
I’ve released the next three weeks of my development discussions series
Ken Opalo - Straight talk on African elites’ complacency: the case of Kenya
Jobs
Lead Exposure Elimination Project - Program Consultant (India)
Talent Acquisition Specialist - Research
Researcher
Manager, Gift Processing
Wellcome Foundation - Head of Innovation in Mental Health
Gates Foundation - Senior Officer, Polio Eradication
Probably Good Job Board
Events
6-7th May - Data on Purpose - Virtual summit exploring the role of AI in social innovation
12th May - The Future of Foreign Aid - Rachel Glennerster and Stefan Dercon
15th May - Electricity Infrastructure: A VoxDevLit Launch Event
3-4th June - First Annual Research Conference on Global Lead Exposure
September - Abundance
If you’re in London I’m also running some in person discussion groups based on the Impact in Global Development discussion series.
6th May - Economic Growth
20th May - Innovation & Science
28th May - AI, Data and the Future of Development
USAID
Zainab Usman - USAID’s demise is an opportunity to prioritise industrialisation over charity
Open Philanthropy and GiveWell commissioned a Superforecaster
report on how US global health spending in ‘26 will compare to ‘24
Median forecast: a 35% reduction in total US global health spending, including a 33% reduction for PEPFAR and a 44% reduction for malaria spending
Funding R&D in Developing Countries - The Impact of US Cuts
Todd Moss & Katie Auth - The Future of American Foreign Aid
Project Resource Optimization is a continually updated list of high-impact, cost-effective and mid-implementation aid programs
Zubaida Baba-Ibrahim - International aid cuts are not only hitting relief programmes worldwide, but they’re also taking their toll on the local economies that support those humanitarian efforts
The USAID cut could push 5.7 million more Africans into extreme poverty next year
Charles Kenny - The Impact of Shuttering the Millennium Challenge Corporation
IDinsight - Where development funding is most needed after USAID cuts
Foreign Aid
Kellogg Insight - Why Well-Meaning NGOs Sometimes Do More Harm than Good
How Sierra Leone lost faith in foreign aid
Boom-and-bust cycle of foreign aid creates significant challenges for developing sustainable healthcare systems
The Agency Fund - Q&A with Dean Karlan on evidence, technology and the RCT movement’s next frontiers
How citizens from 7 large recipient countries prefer their aid1
From multilaterals over bilaterals
For humanitarian goals over ‘production’ (agriculture & industry)
Alexandra Pittman with a roundup of funders committing to increased funding
SSIR - Diaspora Philanthropy 3.0 - How and why funders must move beyond traditional giving
Magatte Wade - How Mr Beast is Keeping Africa Poor
Most of the world’s foreign aid comes from governments, not philanthropic foundations
OWID - What is foreign aid? How ODA is measured
Growth
World Bank - Regional Economic Updates
Africa - Growth at 3.5% in 2025, accelerating to 4.3% in 2026-27. Resource-rich and conflict-affected countries lag behind
East Asia & Pacific - Slowing to 4% in 2025 from 5% in 2024
Europe & Central Asia - Slowing to 2.5% in 2025-26
Latin America & Caribbean - Slowest growing region in 2025 at 2.1%
Middle East & North Africa - Modest 1.9% growth in 2024
South Asia - Slowing to 5.8% in 2025
Africa in Brief has a good weekly roundup of relevant news
The African Continental Free Trade Area implementation could transform Africa's economy with projected 10% GDP growth by 2043, lifting 32 million people from extreme poverty
Houthi attacks have reduced shipping traffic by two-thirds in 2024
At the first Global AI Summit held in Kigali, 2,000+ leaders from over 100 countries signed the Africa Declaration on AI
(I’m generally sceptical of vague declarations, but it may be useful to be aware this event happened)
Twelve of the world's 20 fastest-growing economies are in Africa
Egypt and Qatar have agreed to a $7.5B investment package to support Egypt's economic recovery
Somalia will begin voter registration this week for its first one-person, one-vote local election in nearly 60 years
World Bank - Financing Firm Growth: The Role of Capital Markets in LMICs
Global Prosperity Institute - Simply following the well-trodden path of mid-century industrialisers no longer guarantees development
China reduced extreme poverty rapidly, but Indonesia hasn't been far behind
Governance & Policy
Why tax matters in fragile states and how donors can support it
Judd Devermont - I wrote President Biden's Africa Strategy. What went wrong?
Ahmed Askary - Syria must learn the best practices of 'state capitalism' to achieve economic development in the 21st century
Ivory Coast cocoa farmers remain concerned over comparatively low crop payments (set by the government, at under half the market value)
Four countries that have reversed democratic decline in recent years
VoxDev
Mobile money in Zambia: Opportunities, challenges & current policy debates
Guaranteed employment in India reduced female labour force participation
The UAE’s rising influence in Africa
Constructing a tax culture: why Lagos State’s elites chose taxes over transfers
Brazil's government vocational program boosts employment, with women experiencing 13% more months of employment
Frances Brown - The Four Big Questions Shaping Democracy in Africa
Transfer mispricing (multinationals shift profits to subsidiaries in tax havens) disproportionately harms LMICs
What tools can low-capacity governments use to identify these cases of tax evasion?
How can global corporate tax policies help curb evasion?
VoxDev - The unintended consequences of digitalising bureaucracies in Pakistan
Claiming the city: Citizenship and political connections in African neighborhoods
Poor neighborhoods rely on voting blocs, concerned youth associations and political clientelism
Wealthy neighborhoods bypass government to leverage connections with politicians
Social protection coverage has reached 4.7 billion people in LMICs, although 2 billion people remain inadequately covered
Chris O. Ogunmodede - How has Faye fared in his first year as Senegal's president?
Ghana’s gold regulator orders foreign players to leave market
Ghana's LEAP 1000 programme, which provides both cash transfers and health insurance to low-income families, demonstrates that a combined ‘cash-plus’ approach leads to stronger productive investments, greater savings and increased wage employment compared to cash-only interventions
Trade
Nigeria braces for revenue hit from oil price slump
CGD - Rich Countries Are Exporting Thousands of Tons of Toxic Paint Pigment to Poor Countries
Charles Kenny - A Proposal to Limit the Harm of US Tariffs on the World’s Poorest Countries
Ken Opalo - America’s tariff wars present no upside opportunities for African economies
Mercosur countries have decided to relax common external tariffs on 50 products of the choice of each of its members, giving them more flexibility to negotiate deals
VoxDev - How Uruguay’s beef exports to China reshaped its economy
Kenya and the EU have reaffirmed their commitment to fast-tracking the implementation of the Kenya-EU Economic Partnership Agreement
Grieve Chelwa - Africa's membership to the World Trade Organization has been a disaster
US-Africa trade in goods
Development Finance
How the World Bank Group is more focused on outcomes
Looking at progress the World Bank Group has made since it set up an Outcomes Department five months ago2
US Treasury Secretary: US will stay engaged with World Bank, IMF
Grieve Chelwa - Making sense of Scott Bessent's critique of the IMF and World Bank
DevEx - BII’s new CEO plans for ‘laboratory of ideas’
Fitch Upgrades Nigeria to 'B' - Outlook Stable
Nigeria Records $6.83 Billion Balance of Payments Surplus
Net financing flows to developing countries remain precariously low
Tim Hirschel-Burns with an X list on what you may have missed from the pre-world bank/IMF spring meetings releases
Do the Most Climate-Vulnerable Countries Get More Adaptation Finance from the World Bank? (no)
SSIR - With impact investment assets under management approaching $1.6 trillion, the industry needs to build better analytical methods to make the most of every penny
Inside the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development
The World Bank’s private investment arm plans to ‘significantly’ increase its equity stakes in Africa over the next five years to drive businesses’ growth
OPEC Fund approves $600 million in new financing to strengthen connectivity, human capital and economic resilience
The African Development Bank has a new strategy paper for Nigeria, committing ~$650 million annually to drive economic transformation
W. Gyude Moore - How to reform Africa’s top development bank
Development Finance Needs an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Cameroon: a loan of EUR 330 million from the African Development Bank to improve the performance of the Douala-Ndjamena economic corridor
AI, Data & Development
Turn.io looking at how chat and AI has been used to achieve impact in 2024
Foresight Institute has a new online course looking at Worldbuilding AI Futures
Medical and AI experts built a benchmark for evaluation of LLMs grounded in real-world healthcare needs
Kenyan teachers and edtech companies say AI tools help save time, but without widespread internet connectivity, the impact is uneven
VoxDev
Using machine learning to detect corruption
Using machine learning to map local state presence
Stanford Medicine - Can generative AI tackle global health problems?
PROMPTS is a two-way SMS-based maternal health service that provides AI-generated responses to questions from pregnant and postpartum patients
The system has improved response times, from hours/days to minutes and has reached over 500,000 users in 2024
Agency Fund - An AI Evaluation Framework for the Development Sector
Cassava Technologies’ plan to build Africa’s first AI factory could cost up to $720 million
Rest of World with more info
Google - AI-powered weather forecasts are launching in Africa
AI Discovers New Uses for Old Drugs
Frontier Tech Hub - How Malawians Are Championing AI to Revolutionise the Legal Sector
The 2025 AI Index Report
Startups & Business
TechSafari - Weekly roundups of tech & startups in Africa
Startups
Ghana turns to Zipline following disruptions to USAID supply chains
South Africa’s hearX merges with Eargo to tackle global hearing loss with $100m boost
Ryan Oksenhorn - “Over the last year, Zipline has made 3,556 emergency deliveries of snake antivenom. This use case is estimated to have saved 1,100 lives last year”
VoxDev - Improving worker well-being: Good for workers, good for business
Nigerian fintech bets on UK diaspora with remittance push
Semafor - Africa’s startup ecosystem needs ‘big exits’ to grow
Start-ups in Africa raise $460m in Q1, despite a promising January
Comparing start-up investments with GDP (PPP) per capita in Africa
2024 Venture Capital in Africa Report
Infrastructure
Salim Jeridi - Tunisia's president embarks on a radical development programme to reform the country's political economy
India’s National Highways see 60% growth in a decade, becoming world’s second largest network
Alex Cohen - Why are prices for key inputs like cement higher in Africa?
New AEJ paper says that may be less about high entry barriers or anticompetitive behavior (eg cartels) and more about small national markets. Regional integration or better roads could help
MTN makes Africa’s first satellite call with smartphone
Sub-Saharan Africa drove the vast majority of growth in the global mobile money sector in 2024
Morocco launches bid for Africa’s largest shipyard in Casablanca
Starlink is set to become Nigeria's top internet service provider
Equinix to invest $140 million to expand internet access in Southern Nigeria
Every global region has seen a steep rise in mobile phone subscriptions
Health
Mali becomes the 20th African country to introduce the malaria vaccine
Malaria vaccination sees child deaths drop in Kenya’s lake region
Open Philanthropy - How a low-cost, no-electricity device is expanding access to clean water
A flu strain has likely gone extinct since 2020 (influenza B Yamagata)
Semafor - Africa needs innovative financing solutions to prevent health systems from collapsing
Francisca Mutapi - Africa relies too heavily on foreign aid for health - 4 ways to fix this
VoxDev - Patent pools can promote the diffusion of life-saving drugs in developing countries
Rethink Priorities - Shallow investigation into Health Systems Strengthening
Nick Laing - The Best Health Systems Strengthening Interventions barely qualify as HSS
Novo preparing for early launch of weight-loss drug Wegovy in India
Deena Mousa - Three health interventions that deserve a closer look
A mixed method impact assessment of the use of aerial logistics to improve maternal health and emergencies outcomes in the Ashanti Region of Ghana
Africa CDC has a new strategic vision for sustainable health financing
How the war on drunk driving was won
Africa Health Ventures with a roundup of healthcare business deals and news
Safaricom M-PESA Ethiopia partnered with Ethiopia's Health Ministry to roll out digital payments
M-KOPA and Turaco's partnership insured over 1 million Kenyans in a single year by bundling hospital cash insurance with smartphone purchases
Turn.io secured ~$3 million to scale its chat-based platform
The Lancet - Global, regional and national prevalence of adult overweight and obesity, 1990–2021, with forecasts to 2050
From 2021 to 2050, the total number of adults overweight or obese is projected to increase from 2.11 billion to 3.8 billion
Energy & Climate
Kenya is on track to achieve universal electricity access by 2030
How Namibia raced ahead with low-cost solar
In 2015, there was no private power generation in Namibia
By 2022, 40% of all electricity came from privately generated utility-scale solar
EVs are starting to overtake gas-powered cars in Ethiopia after the import of gas-powered passenger vehicles was banned. (EVs are nearly 10% of all vehicles)
US with a $4.7 billion loan for Mozambique gas project
Nigeria is pioneering the development of small, off-grid solar panel installations
Nigeria cuts electricity subsidies by 35% after tariff hike
Kenya Power triples electricity sales to Tanzania
In Nepal, EVs have seen increased use with 70% of four-wheeled passenger vehicles imported in 2024 being electric, helping to start address air pollution that accounts for nearly 19% of all deaths in the country
More than half of all EVs in India’s capital are three-wheelers, but there is little official support for these vehicles
Agriculture
World Bank - Food Security Update
Conflicts continue to drive food insecurity in East and Central Africa, with more than 50 million people facing high levels of acute food insecurity
79% of low-income countries have food price inflation higher than 5%
Ghana’s first genetically modified crop: why we created a new cowpea variety, how we tested it and what we found
AidData - Mapping the future of climate-smart agriculture with geospatial impact evaluations
Europe's single-use paper packaging boom has driven Portuguese companies to establish vast eucalyptus plantations in Mozambique, creating environmental damage and unfulfilled promises for locals
World Bank study on how to improve Brazil's agrifood sector
The agricultural sector accounts for ~8.4% of Brazil's GDP, 16.2% of total employment and 40% of total exports
Education
VoxDev - Are vocational training programmes effective?
Can Better Test Scores Lift Kids Out of Poverty? The Case for Long-Term Tracking of Education RCTs
With Less Education Aid Available, Should Donors Focus on Helping Governments Spend Better?
Conflict, Corruption & Crime
Alice Evans - Why are So Many Latin American Women Beaten & Murdered?
The historical roots of a conflict indicator
Is War Between Ethiopia, Eritrea Brewing In Tigray?
Two Years On, Sudan’s War is Spreading
The Sahel now accounts for over half of all deaths from terrorism
Ethiopia’s Red Sea Politics: Corridors, ports and security in the Horn of Africa
Twice as many young Brazilians die from homicide than road injuries
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed an agreement fixing the border where their countries meet
80,000 Hours - AI-enabled power grabs
SSIR - Multilateral development banks and humanitarian non-governmental organisations have mostly ignored each other while working to improve lives. But with poverty increasingly concentrated in conflict-affected countries, changes are needed to provide a better collective response
Myanmar’s internet blackout is costing lives in earthquake-hit areas
Book - Fragile Aid - Development Cooperation in Weak States and Conflict Contexts
Migration
Maya Misikir - Why are Ethiopians leaving Ethiopia?
The skill-trade migration opportunity
Todd Moss - Beware the trap of ‘Energy access will stop migration’
Burundi sees its largest number of refugees arriving in decades during Congo’s fighting (doubled to over 120,000 since January)
Migrant deaths in Asia hit record high in 2024 with ~2500 lives lost
Evidence & Data
Mark Essien - The real population of Nigeria (estimating between 100-150 million)
440 million Africans lack a formal address
Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico account for 59% of people living in poverty in Latin America
Oliver Hanney
Common misperceptions: What people get wrong about the world and why it matters
Important null results in development economics
Improving parenting practices: Cheap alternative? Null at scale
Free contraception: Popular hypothesis meets precise null
Laptops: 10 years on, still a null
The effects of social media abstinence on affective well-being and life satisfaction: a systematic review and meta-analysis
The analyses revealed no significant effects of social media abstinence interventions on positive affect, negative affect or life satisfaction
The Gambia's population pyramid suggests an overall stabilisation in births since around 2010, with a slight decline since 2015
Innovation & Metascience
Amazon launches Project Kuiper satellites designed to compete with Starlink
The Navigation Fund invites a 2-page letter of intent for highly focused working meetings that will identify the most critical challenges in one or more areas of open science
ARIA has a second cohort of programme directors with initial ideas to explore
Cochrane announces new scientific strategy
Saloni Dattani & Niko McCarty - What's new in biology
The Magic of Fast Feedback Loops
Wellcome is partnering with the UK Government to establish a new ~£600 million health data research service
80,000 Hours Podcast - Ian Dunt on why governments in Britain and elsewhere can't get anything done, and how to fix it
October - Progress Conference 2025
Invasion of the ‘journal snatchers’ - the firms that buy science publications and turn them rogue
Underhyped Tech - Our process for identifying nine underhyped technologies for development
Nonprofits & Foundations
The Agency Fund open call window closes on the 9th of May
Joey Savoie - Why Does Philanthropy Not Have Clear Stages of Investment?
Happier Lives Institute - Why household name NGOs are unlikely to offer the best value for money
Devex - 6 things we learned at the Skoll World Forum
Access to Medicines Initiative's cost-effectiveness and lives saved at the one year mark
Other Links
Probably Good - Broad Societal Improvements: An Impact-Focused Overview
Saloni Dattani - The decline in cancer mortality is about much more than smoking
The Rebirth of the Global South
Despite growing prominence in global policy debates, its meaning remains contested. This article discusses five distinct interpretations
'Unparalleled' snake antivenom made from man bitten 200 times
Road risk in India
Good News
Between 2008 and 2023, multidimensional poverty in Latin America fell significantly, from 45.8% to 25.4%
A remarkable decline in poverty across India in the last 12 years
In rural areas, poverty declined from 30.4% to 3.9%
In urban areas, it declined from 26.4% to 3.9%
Burundi’s under-five mortality rates have significantly declined, from 143 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2002, to 50 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2022
In most rich countries, child mortality has more than halved in the last thirty years
For more good news check out Fix The News & Human Progress
Via Lee Crawfurd
I would have hoped they would have had a focus on outcomes before five months ago, but it’s still a positive sign