October 2025
New State Department strategy, governments can't count, and safety at night
Top Posts
The US State Department has released a new global health strategy
Shifting to bilateral agreements with enforceable terms
Countries contribute their own funding and must meet performance benchmarks to continue receiving aid
Supporting US friendly countries more
Frames aid as protecting US from global disease outbreaks and promoting American health innovation
Ken Opalo
Electrifying African firms for growth and development - On the urgent need to rethink the core goals of Mission 300
The most unlikely degrowthers - Why the World Bank and other multilaterals should recalibrate their climate projects in low-income countries
Adam Salisbury - Why governments can’t count
Looking into why we don’t know how many people there are
A new HIV prevention drug will be made available at a lower cost (around 0.1% of the original cost) in over 100 LMICs within two years
Gates Foundation pledged $912m to the Global Fund’s 2026-2028 replenishment whilst global development assistance for health fell 21% in 2025 to a 15-year low
How AI might cause GDP and well-being to (further) decouple
We should care less about “How much will AI grow the economy?” and more about “How will the economy change, and who will benefit from those changes?
Obesity surpassed being underweight as the more prevalent form of malnutrition, affecting 10% (188 million) 5 to 19-year-olds globally
Global safety perceptions hit record high with 73% feeling safe walking alone at night - From interviews with ~145k adults in 144 countries
Jobs
Open Philanthropy - Program Associate, Global Aid Policy
Tija.ai - How AI can make SME consulting more scalable and cost-effective in sub-Saharan Africa
Looking for technical/product early hires or a potential co-founder
CGD - Senior Policy Analyst (Global Health)
Acumen - Director of Philanthropy
Ambitious Impact - Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program
Including a new cohort focused on increasing the effectiveness of the philanthropic sector
Probably Good Job Board
Mainly NGO roles
Aid
Japan pledges $550m to Gavi
Science - US will fulfil Biden-era pledge to provide HIV prevention breakthrough
Rethink Priorities - A framework for navigating USAID cuts
Charles Kenny - US funding of international organisations has collapsed
International organisations account, outlays by calendar year quarter ($m) Founders Pledge & TLYCS have launched the “GHD Catalytic Impact Fund” in response to aid cuts
GiveWell podcast - A frontline view of foreign aid cuts with CHAI’s CEO
CGD - Foundations in a world of falling aid flows
Global ODA fell by about $15b in 2024 - twice the Gates Foundation’s entire yearly budget
GWWC - Updates on the effective giving ecosystem
Grew by ~10% between 2023 and 2024, from ~$1.1 billion to ~$1.2 billion money moved
Overall money moved is still largely dependent on Open Philanthropy (~650m) and GiveWell (~240m), but getting less so every year
~50% to global development
CGD - Analysing USAID Program Disruptions: Implications for PEPFAR programming and beneficiaries
Growth
VoxDev - When special economic zones fail: Lessons from Indonesia
Zimbabwe’s digital finance sector sees high growth
Digital retail transactions climbed to ~$6b in Q2 of 2025, a 34% increase from $4.4b recorded in Q1
Book Summary: How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
If you haven’t read the book I recommend this summary
Oliver Kim - GDP: we really don’t know how good we have it
Everyone loves the hockey stick graph of long-run economic growth. For some, it’s the basis of an entire worldview. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t add up
Since 2019, Rwanda’s ‘Global Business Services’ sector increased from 2 firms employing 100 people to 38 companies with ~4,000 workers
Rohit Shinde - India’s productivity crisis
Tomas Pueyo - Why warm countries are poorer
Suggests that equatorial populations live in mountains to escape lowland heat and humidity, where productivity drops 4% per degree above 27°C
Mountainous settlements creates higher transportation costs reducing trade and causing tribal balkanisation and associated conflict
Governance & Policy
Nigeria’s surge in data usage has become one of the government’s more consistent income streams (~$400m in 2024, a 122% rise from 2022)
How Kenya collects more taxes than Nigeria with a $57b smaller economy and a quarter of the population1
Integration with M-Pesa, social media monitoring and paramilitary-trained tax agents (and a higher GDP per capita)
In a 2024 crackdown, more than 460 wealthy individuals were flagged for living large while paying little
VoxDev
Reforming India’s housing market: How disclosure laws boosted efficiency
Why closing a business is so difficult in India - and the costs of staying open
India lacks a well-defined bankruptcy framework
The Industrial Disputes Act requires government approval for firms in manufacturing, mines and plantations with 100+ workers to fire anyone
Indian tax reforms aim to:
Simplify compliance
Ease the tax burden on micro, small and medium enterprises
Cut levies on essential goods
Modernise the GST framework to make it more growth-oriented
Trade
China has cut import duty on Indian pharma products to zero from 30%, days after US imposed a 100% tariff on non-generic pharma imports
Mercosur and EFTA(Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) sign free-trade deal
China’s exports to Africa are up 25% to $122b as tariffs redirect trade flows
Africa’s largest oil refinery (in Nigeria) has exported its first shipments of gasoline to the United States
The Intra-African Trade Fair ended with $48b in trade and investment deals signed
Lesotho - the U.S. plans to extend duty-free Africa trade pact by one year, preserving garment jobs
Semafor - Intra-African trade was just 14% of total African trade in 2024, compared to roughly 60% intra-regional trade for both Asia and Europe
India-Africa trade crossed $100b in 2024-25
Development Finance
Africa will be allocated 70% of the $100b that the World Bank has mobilised to provide affordable financing to the world’s poorest nations
Pakistan signs $8.5b in investment deals with China
CGD - The World Bank’s new local labour procurement rule: mostly ineffective, marginally harmful and considerably craven
Iraq signs $1b worth of energy, agriculture and finance investment deals with IFC
IFC and BTG Pactual to invest $1b in sustainability and development in Latin America
IDB Group launched ReInvest+ to convert performing local climate project loans (estimated $500b in Latin America, part of $3T global pool) into investment-grade hard-currency securities via portfolio insurance for political/FX risks
Islamic Development Bank mobilised $5b cumulative support to Uzbekistan with $523m committed in 2025
7.5 million people have been lifted out of poverty since 2016
World Bank approves $212m SHORE Project for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to protect 30,000 hectares of coastal ecosystems and create jobs for 100k people
Semafor - Africa’s secondary market for equities lags other regions
Kenya aims to carry out a $1b debt-for-food security swap
It would likely allow Kenya to replace costly debt with lower-cost financing on condition it channelled the savings towards food security
BII - Finance institutions should actively support sub-Saharan companies in accessing international corporate bond markets
Large companies are important for economic development. The limited capacity of local banks and capital markets can constrain companies from growing beyond a certain size
DevEx - How the US is pushing its ‘America First’ vision at World Bank, IMF
European DFI Association launches dashboard covering €52.6b in investments
Emerging Tech & Development
Deena Mousa - AI isn’t replacing radiologists
India’s agriculture ministry sent AI-powered monsoon forecasts to 38 million farmers predicting rainy season arrival up to 30 days in advance
AI is helping judges in Brazil to quickly close cases, and lawyers to quickly open them
OWID - Californians now travel millions of miles each month in driverless taxis
World Bank - Can AI give small scale producers the right advice?
Migration
Measuring global migration flows using online data
Drawing on data from more than 3 billion Facebook users, their estimates closely match high-quality measures of migration but can be produced for more places and with less delay
World Bank - International migration as a structural transformation policy
What happens when you send Ugandan students to Germany?
Nature - Using ML to forecast conflict events for use in forced migration models
Startups & Business
Building Back Home is a new fellowship for African diaspora to turn ideas into high-impact ventures
IFC - Business upgrading programs could increase firm sales, profits and survival rates by 5-12%
ARISE IIP secures $700m to fast track industrial expansion in Africa
PayPal commits $100m to MENA and Africa expansion
Realistic Optimist
Dissecting Algeria’s discreet startup scene
Africa Eats: Berkshire Hathaway, for African SMEs
Gigmile: vehicle financing for African gig workers
Itana: Africa’s special economic zone, for tech
Finflow: an AI-CFO for Central Asian SMEs
Mbay Mobility: EV financing in Senegal
Barikoi: accurate maps for Bangladesh
Syria’s quest to build its own Silicon Valley
Infrastructure
GSMA - State of Mobile Internet Connectivity report 2025
4.7 billion people, (58% of the world), now use mobile internet services on their own device
An increase of 200 million in the last year
3.4 billion people remained unconnected to mobile internet services in 2024 – a combination of the Usage Gap and the Coverage Gap
96% live in areas with available coverage but they remain unable or unwilling to use mobile internet (price, skills, trust)
4% (300 million) lack any available mobile internet connectivity
Although they use UN population projections which may not be that accurate and lead to worse estimates of coverage
DR Congo backs $400m satellite deal to tackle digital deficit
African internet use rose from 25% (2019) to 38% (2024) versus 68% globally, with 527m mobile subscribers
Chinese dams will hold billions of people downstream to ransom. Could solar-powered desalination make them irrelevant?
ASEAN Express rail service connecting Malaysia to China via Thailand and Laos cuts logistics costs by 30%
World Bank Container Port Performance Index shows global port efficiency declined 2020-2024 due to Red Sea and Panama Canal challenges
Notable improvements at ports in Senegal, India, Türkiye, Egypt and Ecuador
W. Gyude Moore - African Infrastructure Moves Q3
South Africa opening 41 freight routes to private operators
Nigeria secured $747m loan for 700km coastal highway
577 new hotels under construction across sub-Saharan Africa adding ~100k+ rooms, 13.3% growth rate exceeding global average
Uganda negotiating loans for 272km electric rail line from Kampala to Malaba border (first section of planned 1,700km network)
Slow progress on piped water in urban India
Agriculture & Food
Zero growth in farm productivity across 55k smallholder farms across 6 African countries in 2008-2019, despite substantial investments
Why are banks, MFIs and value-chain financiers more active in agriculture investments than other emerging market segments?
Somalia’s federal government has launched an agricultural reform agenda to cut food imports and strengthen resilience
China’s use of fertilisers peaked a decade ago
FAO estimates Syria will face a wheat shortfall of 2.73m tonnes this year due to drought
Rohit Shinde - Why India needs to embrace GMO crops
Ag Safari
How to build a better cow - What if farmers could track their milk sales through WhatsApp?
Liberia has a $900m plan to rebuild its farms
Why half of Africa’s harvest never makes it to the dinner table - only 5% of perishable food in Africa is kept cold
Processing is Africa’s missing link
Hannah Ritchie - The world is on track for record harvests this year
Health
Melinda Gates announces $100m investment in women’s health research
WHO updates list of essential medicines to include key cancer and diabetes treatments (and GLP-1 drugs)
The Mexican government expects to collect $2.2b from a sugary drink tax in 2026, and the money will be allocated to the health budget
Africa Health Ventures with news and deals as well as opportunities relevant for healthcare founders and investors
DeepEcho secured an investment from AAIC. The Morocco-based company has developed an AI-powered ultrasound analysis platform
The Ministry of Health in Kenya is planning a $250m vaccine manufacturing facility
Chinese companies are in talks with Nigeria to build Africa’s first local insulin production facility
Togo launches the R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, aiming to protect 269k children
Hannah Ritchie - How Wolbachia bacteria could help us tackle some of the world’s most neglected tropical diseases
Africa CDC unveils $3.2b financing package to boost local drug & vaccine manufacturing
Works in Progress - We disinfect water before we drink it. Germicidal ultraviolet could make airborne disease as rare as those carried by water
Sonia - Health tech companies in SSA you should know about
VitruvianMD - how limited data can be turned into an AI diagnostic assistance tool
A-Lite Uganda - building a low-cost vein detector
Energy & Climate
World Nuclear Performance Report
Nuclear power set 2024 generation record at 2,667 TWh at 83% capacity, with expansion in Asia accounting for 56 of 68 reactors built in the past decade
Todd Moss - Africa needs solar farms, not just solar islands
Congo signs $23b hydrocarbon deal with China’s Wing Wah, targeting 200k barrels per day by 2030 and cumulative production of 1.3 billion barrels by 2050
CGD - The World Bank and climate projects: A matter of definition
Ethiopia opens Africa’s largest hydro-electric dam
EU commits $638m to scale up renewables in nine African countries
Azule Energy to invest $5b in Angola on oil and gas projects
Beyond the Carbon Hype: Navigating the real costs and opportunities of voluntary and compliance carbon markets in the Sahel
Giving Green - Where to give for climate impact in 2025. New options include:
Unleashing clean energy
Decarbonising aviation
Decarbonising maritime shipping
W. Gyude Moore - African energy infrastructure moves Q3
EU commits €360m to Cote d’Ivoire transmission project
Uganda plans to borrow $358m to finance projects, including a power grid interconnection with South Sudan
Mozambique to restart a $20b LNG project
IAEA to support Africa’s transition to nuclear energy
Burundi commissions phase I of $320m hydropower project
Solar’s share of generation in Pakistan has gone up from 4% to 14% in three years
Education
World bank announces new education project to benefit over four million children in Pakistan
How personalised adaptive learning (PAL) software can sharply improve learning outcomes at scale
‘Moonshot’ education finance facility aims to turn $1 into $7 in LMICs
VoxDev - Doing more with less: Why foreign aid should prioritise foundational learning now
Conflict, Corruption & Crime
OWID with an updated overview of corruption
UNU Wider - How to make aid work in fragile states
UN - In Nigeria, the number of people facing acute hunger has reached nearly 31 million
Crime reduction as a potential EA cause area
VoxDev
A lit review on organised crime, with root causes, consequences and policy responses
More than one billion people reside in economies mired in fragility and conflict
UN - 850,000 Syrian refugees have returned home since Assad’s fall
Sudan conflict situation report - Sudan remains the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than 30.4 million people in need of assistance
James Tuttle - The smartphone-induced teen crime decline (in US)
US data
Evidence & Data
Nature Communications - Subnational variations in the quality of household survey data in sub-Saharan Africa
Massive subnational variation in DHS data quality
Incomplete age, age heaping (ages ending in 0 or 5), missing or implausible child height data
Extreme within-country variation
Nigeria’s age heaping ranged from 25% to over 60% across districts
In Chad, missing age data varied from 8% to over 90% between regions
Data quality deteriorates sharply with distance from settlements
VoxDev
Ethiopia’s 1997-2014 road expansion programme cut travel times, boosting agricultural productivity by 23.4%
New evidence from Indonesia suggests that ride-hailing services significantly improve MRT systems’ ability to attract customers by boosting first/last-mile connectivity
CGD - Four investments funders can make to raise the bar on AI evaluation
Lauren Gilbert - R³: Randomised Replication Residency - a proposal to determine the reliability of federally funded science while building out replication capacity
The latest World Bank data counts 125 million more people as living in extreme poverty, but the world has not gotten poorer
Innovation & Metascience
Forecasters expect steady NIH and NSF funding
Both NIH and NSF are expected to avoid the deep cuts proposed, with appropriations and obligations staying broadly stable.
NSF faces greater near-term risk in FY2026 due to a $2b gap between House and Senate proposals, but outcomes are expected to align more closely with the Senate’s status quo position
NIH is seen as more protected, with bipartisan support for biomedical research buffering against freezes and political pressures
“What If NIH Had Been 40% Smaller?”
Stuart Buck - Metascience and House Appropriations
RoRI - Democratising funding evaluation can slash the time it takes to deliver a final decision by over 50%
Works in Progress - Why science needs outsiders
STAT - After lagging behind, NIH now seems on pace to spend its entire $47b budget by October
Charities & Foundations
AMA with Ambitious Impact’s Co-founder & CEO Joey Savoie
GiveWell podcast - Beyond the Spreadsheets: Malawi site visit day 1
SSIR - The nonprofit sector has an RCT problem
Other Links
Tech Safari - Quite a number of Africans spend more time on their phones than anyone else in the world. The global average is four hours a day
South Africans, however, spend over 9 hours a day
In Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya the average is around 6 hours
OWID - Bans on highly toxic pesticides could be an effective way to save lives from suicide
Works in Progress - Magical systems thinking
“Systems thinkers fail because they ignore that…systems fight back”
VoxDev - Where to find development economics resources: Newsletters, articles, podcasts & videos
Saloni Dattani and Niko McCarty - What’s new in biology: September 2025
Gene therapy, parasites, narcolepsy drugs, protein nanoparticles, the 3D structure of genomes
Brookings - Why is democracy succeeding in Ghana?
Africa in Brief with several good links
Southern Africa holds ~30% of critical mineral reserves but attracts less than 10% of exploration investment
Africa’s exports remain 3.3% of global trade
In 2024, 7.3% of Africa’s landmass burned, compared to 0.6% in Europe and the US
African wildfires emit 2.4 billion tons of CO₂, more than the continent’s fossil fuel output
Container ship calls to African ports rose 20% and tanker calls 38% since 2018
Good News
Global maternal mortality rates have fallen by almost 60% since 1985
Denmark close to wiping out leading cancer-causing HPV strains
Cancer and heart disease death rates have declined in 150 countries since 2010
Vietnam makes strong gains in child nutrition
For more good news check out Fix The News & Human Progress
Or maybe more than a quarter
Thanks - very useful as always