Devex Newswire: America’s humanitarian-in-chief passes on

For most people, becoming president of the United States would be the pinnacle of a public service career. For Jimmy Carter, it was just one chapter.

Also in today’s edition: It’s easy to look back at 2024 and feel defeated by everything that went wrong — while bracing ourselves for 2025 — but first, let’s reflect on what went right.

Save the date: On Jan. 8, join us for an ask-me-anything discussion with our President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar on what to expect in global development this year — from the impact of the incoming Trump administration to aid budget cuts and the numerous humanitarian crises. Save your spot now.

A towering humanitarian figure

Jimmy Carter — the 39th U.S. president, who died at the age of 100 on Sunday — set the path for presidents to continue being a force for good long after leaving office. But he didn’t just serve as  a role model for former occupants of the White House: His decades of humanitarian work served as an inspiration to all kinds of people, including those who occupied the homes he helped build as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, one of many charitable endeavors that would reshape his post-presidential legacy.

That legacy — from its successes to its more well-known failures — will, understandably, be dissected in the weeks to come. But let’s focus not on what happened during those four years, but during the four decades afterward when he founded The Carter Center in Atlanta with the aim of “Waging peace. Fighting disease. Building hope.”

Carter and his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, went from their fabled humble home in Plains, Georgia, to Ghana, Panama, and all around the globe to house the poor, eliminate neglected but lethal diseases, and pursue the cause of democracy — earning him a Nobel Peace Prize along the way.

Perhaps what’s most fascinating to our community — something that is often mentioned as an afterthought in his many obituaries — was his quest to rid the planet of a disease without a vaccine or medicine: Guinea worm.

“I knew him best as a global health advocate and deeply admired his dedication to taking on diseases that impact the world’s poorest people, like Guinea worm disease,” philanthropist Melinda French Gates wrote on X. “He believed in removing the barriers that separated a man like him — a former President and Nobel Prize winner — from people living with the realities of poverty and disease.”

USAID Administrator Samantha Power also touted his post-presidential achievements in a New York Times opinion piece.

“Beyond his tireless volunteering, working to build affordable homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s, the Carter Center — his passion for the past 42 years — has worked with U.S.A.I.D. and others to nearly eliminate river blindness in the Western Hemisphere and to decrease the number of reported Guinea worm cases from more than three million per year in the mid-1980s to just 14 in 2023,” she wrote.

Power also praised the lifelong farmer and Sunday school teacher for his pioneering work, such as dispatching observers to monitor elections in 40 countries, defusing tensions in places like Liberia, being ahead of his time on environmental sustainability, and elevating the cause of human rights abroad and civil rights at home — including at USAID.

“When he assumed office, U.S.A.I.D. had nearly twice as many staff members in Washington as in the field — an imbalance his administration corrected, in addition to significantly expanding the agency’s presence in sub-Saharan Africa. He named an outspoken civil rights activist as the first assistant secretary for human rights and humanitarian affairs in the State Department and significantly increased the number of staff members dedicated solely to human rights issues,” she wrote.

She concluded: “As we mourn the loss of Jimmy Carter, we should remember that in doing something so radical for his time — elevating attention to the plight and dignity of individuals in U.S. foreign policy and then living those values until his final days — he changed our world for good.”

From the archives: 9 memorable quotes by Jimmy Carter

Following the ‘North Star’

In setting up The Carter Center, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter contributed to turning the Atlanta area into the global health and development hub that it is today. Atlanta is also home to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Emory University, Habitat for Humanity, The Task Force for Global Health, and CARE USA.

“I think the Carter Center helped build that over the last 40 years,” Paige Alexander, chief executive officer of the center, tells my colleague Sara Jerving. She said Carter’s time in Atlanta as governor helped him see the city as a hub for “social good deeds.”

In light of his passing, Alexander said there won’t be changes with how the center operates because Jimmy and Rosalynn were very intentional with their plans for when this day would come. This included hiring Alexander in 2020, who would visit the two of them every few months, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, to discuss the transition.

“Then in about 2023, President Carter said: ‘I think this is good. You’ve got this,’” Alexander recalls. “That was truly when he fully retired and that allowed the organization to understand that it was going to be fine without him. … He and Mrs. Carter had set the North Star for what they wanted us to continue doing.”

The public can pay final respects to Carter as his casket moves from Plains to Atlanta to Washington, D.C. People can also share their memories of him online to celebrate “a life well lived,” Alexander says.

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Accentuate the positive

We’ve hurtled into 2025 but the ghosts of 2024 hitched a ride. Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, Haiti, climate disasters, debt, hunger, and a litany of crises await humanity in the new year. And if you read the news to stay on top of these crises, on the bright side, it shows you care, but on the darker side, it can emotionally drain you.

So before we dive into the bad, let’s take a moment to appreciate the good. And while it may not seem like it, 2024 had plenty to be grateful for. Here are a few highlights:  

One of the biggest development stories of the year was aid cuts by a wide swath of donors — with further belt-tightening likely in 2025. But some countries bucked the trend. Devex Pro Editor Jessica Abrahams writes that Japan’s official development assistance, or ODA, continues to soar, although it’s largely made up of concessional loans. Norway, already the world’s most generous donor as a proportion of its income, increased its ODA spending by nearly 19% compared to 2023, while Ireland upped its aid budget by around 8%.

Meanwhile, terrifying infectious diseases cropped up in 2024, mostly in Africa. But there was headway on other more common though no less deadly diseases, especially malaria. Egypt was certified malaria-free after a 100-year push, and the first malaria vaccines were added to the routine immunization programs of several African countries following successful pilots. Promising research also emerged about an injectable that could be even more effective than those vaccines.

Let’s just hope these desperately needed slivers of hope grow brighter in 2025.

Read: 6 good news stories from 2024

Disturbing data

We’ve offered a snapshot of the good, but our annual year in data report reminds us that there’s ample room for improvement. Here are a few striking numbers compiled by my colleague David Ainsworth:

$8.8 trillion: The total debt saddling low- and middle-income countries. The result? Debt servicing is sucking country budgets dry, leaving scraps for development needs like health care and education.

40%: The amount by which USAID’s budget should be cut, according to Project 2025, the conservative policy Bible developed by The Heritage Foundation. While candidate Donald Trump disavowed the playbook, President Trump may change his mind.

283: The number of aid workers killed in 2024. Of those deaths, 178 were in the occupied Palestinian territories — around 63% of all fatalities. Of those, the vast majority was in Gaza.

Read: The year in data — 10 numbers that defined development in 2024 (Pro)

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In other news

The Bank of America and Citigroup are the latest to pull out of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, the world’s largest climate alliance for banks, following Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo. [Financial Times]

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus revealed he and colleagues narrowly escaped death when they were caught in an Israeli air strike in Sanaa, Yemen, during a visit to the country. [BBC]

Côte d’Ivoire announced Tuesday it has asked French troops to leave the country, the latest African country to do so. [AP]

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