Every week we break down the big headlines in global development and bring in top experts to help us do it. Hosted by Raj Kumar, President and Editor-in-Chief of Devex.

This Week in Global Development

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings have come to an end this weekend. A great sense of change was anticipated for this year’s event, as Devex wrote last week.

But what do we make of the talks now that they are over? That’s the question we asked our guests in the first episode of “This Week in Global Development,” a weekly podcast where we break down the big headlines in global development and bring in top experts to help us do it.

For this episode, I was joined by Rachel Kyte, the dean at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and Jeremy Hillman, senior vice president of external engagement at the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth.

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This Week in Global Dev: #1: What to make of this year’s World Bank Spring Meetings?

Seven years ago, the United Nations' World Humanitarian Summit proposed the "humanitarian-development nexus" to improve collaboration between the two ends of the aid sector.

Although it was initially a good idea to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, this framework has struggled to deliver amidst the increasing number of humanitarian disasters and prolonged crises.

Recently, Devex's Teresa Welsh discussed the cracks surfacing in the "humanitarian-development nexus."

This week, another global development topic made headlines when USAID Administrator Samantha Power informed the U.S. Congress that the agency would find it difficult to achieve its localization targets, as reported by Adva Saldinger on Devex.

To make sense of these and other significant news stories of the week, tune in to This Week in Global Development.

This weekly podcast analyzes the major headlines in global development and invites top experts to help us understand them. In this week's episode, I was joined by Nasra Ismail, policy adviser and ICAP Aspen fellow, and Anna Gawel, Devex managing editor.

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This Week in Global Dev: #2: The future of localization and the humanitarian-development nexus

French President Emmanuel Macron is hosting the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris this week, which aims to strike a new post-World War II pact between high-income nations and those most at risk from climate change and crippling debt.

However, with key players not attending, including U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, U.S. President Joe Biden, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, serious doubts remain over whether the decisions made during the summit will translate into meaningful action. There are also major disagreements between French organizers and participants over reforming international institutions, including multilateral development banks.

For this special episode, I talk to Devex Brussels Correspondent Vince Chadwick, who is connecting from the French capital, to get an insider perspective on the discussions happening at the summit.

The conversation also touches on Vince’s interview with Peter Sands, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who argues that innovative financial instruments and private sector mobilization should not be a “proxy” for giving money to help the world’s poorest.

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This Week in Global Dev: #3: An insider look at Macron's global financing summit

This week USAID released its long-awaited localization update. Despite the progress made, not least due to the success of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, the agency is yet to come close to reaching its target of spending 25% of funding on local organizations by 2025.

From the U.K. government reclaiming official development assistance via taxes to India’s renewable energy push threatening the country’s food security, the past week has been filled with controversies that have the potential to hinder the drive toward meaningful change.

Tune in to the latest episode of This Week in Development to hear our take on the issues.

For this episode, I was joined by Dr. Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health & HIV policy at KFF, as well as Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel to discuss the most important news from the past week in the global development sector.

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This Week in Global Dev: #4: USAID's localization update and controversy over UK aid

While usually during the summer, news is expected to slow down, that was certainly not the case for the first weeks in June. As the unexpected struggle to reauthorize PEPFAR, the U.S. global AIDS initiative, continues, and we mark the beginning of a new era at the World Bank with Ajay Banga’s presidency, the start of the month has most definitely been eventful.

From discussing what to expect out of Banga’s presidency to a deep dive into a two-month investigation concerning the new director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Jean Kaseya, we review the week’s top stories in the latest episode of This Week in Global Development.

For this episode,I was joined by Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel, as well as George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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This Week in Global Dev: #5: The unexpected struggle to reauthorize PEPFAR and a new World Bank era

This week we broke an exclusive story on the United States, the United Kingdom, and a handful of allied powers blocking an agreement on a draft declaration that advocates the need to accelerate progress on a set of critical development goals, throwing a spanner into high-level negotiations ahead of the United Nations General Assembly taking place next month.

In the United Kingdom, an inquiry has been told that development assistance rules are denying “vulnerable” small island developing states, or SIDS, the help they need to combat the climate emergency as they are classified as “too rich” to receive funding. The U.K. government also received strong criticism for its aid being used to fund the training of soccer referees and coaches across China, even as spending reductions are predicted to lead to thousands of deaths this year across Africa and Yemen.

However, the U.K. is not the only country planning aid cuts. Germany’s ruling coalition has proposed to reduce its aid budget by proposing a 5% cut for 2024, setting off alarm bells in development circles.

For the latest episode of the podcast, I was joined by University of Oxford professor Stefan Dercon and Devex Managing Editor Anna Gawel to discuss the past week’s important stories from global development.

Please note that we will not be recording an episode next week due to the Devex Summer Break. We will be back in two weeks’ time to continue bringing you the top stories from the sector.

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This Week in Global Dev: #12: U.S. and allies block key UN agreement and Germany's aid cuts

The Caribbean island of Jamaica is just one of many small island developing states under threat due to the impacts of climate change.

Devex sat down with Suzanne Stanley, CEO of the Jamaica Environment Trust, to find out more about the work of JET and why they see education as being key to combating climate impacts.

Episode 1: A local approach to climate change in Jamaica with Suzanne Stanley

Kiribati has one of the lowest carbon-emission footprints in the world. But, with the highest points of these 33 low-lying atolls rising to just a few meters above sea level, the country is also one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

In the second episode of the Turning the Tide: Climate Champions podcast, Devex speaks to Kiribati's former president, Anote Tong, about the sensitivities surrounding climate-change induced migration and the need for the global community to cooperate on solutions to the challenges posed by climate change.

Episode 2: The complexity of climate-change induced migration with Anote Tong

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This Week in Global Dev: #12: U.S. and allies block key UN agreement and Germany's aid cuts

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