Jobs and energy are topping the agenda at this year’s World Bank Spring Meetings — but not without controversy. From Ajay Banga’s push to make employment the bank’s new “north star” to a quietly shifting stance on nuclear energy, the tone feels more pragmatic than bold. Here’s what we’re hearing on both fronts.
This is a preview of Newswire
Sign up to this newsletter for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development, in your inbox daily.
Also in today’s edition: We look at how climate is being tackled at the World Bank Spring Meetings, African leaders call for a new economic playbook, and the U.S. State Department releases its “America First” plan.
+ Devex is officially on Telegram and WhatsApp! Join our channels to receive updates on the latest globaldev news directly to your mobile device.
Ambitious, urgent, unfinished
At the Spring Meetings, the big theme is jobs — and not just any jobs, but ones that can lift people out of poverty. World Bank President Ajay Banga is pitching employment as the bank’s “north star,” something it should understand, internalize, and care about. But while the ambition is clear, the path forward is still murky.
There are no big goals or headline announcements yet — and to some observers, not even clear definitions. That’s a red flag for critics such as Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund, who tells Devex: “They need to figure out how they’re going to mark their homework.” For now, the emphasis is on process: diagnostics, frameworks, and a lot of internal coordination, Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger writes.
Still, the urgency is real. The bank sees a looming “jobs emergency” with 1.2 billion young people entering the labor force over the next decade and just 400 million jobs expected. “That gap is not just an economic issue,” Banga says. “It’s a global risk.” The plan is to embed job creation across the bank — from infrastructure to investment — and make it part of its institutional DNA.
On the public side, the bank will support governments to build economic foundations: infrastructure, health care, education, and better regulations. On the private side, it’ll work to de-risk early-stage investments, especially in sectors such as energy, agriculture, health care, and tourism — the kinds of industries the bank says are key to sustainable job creation.
What’s missing so far is data: how jobs will be counted, what qualifies, and how long they last. “We don’t want to get this one wrong,” says Arturo Franco, director of the World Bank Group’s strategy office, explaining why the bank is still fine-tuning its metrics. An updated definition is coming, but not this week — and likely not next either.
Read: The World Bank is focused on jobs. What does that mean?
+ Happening today at 10:40 a.m. ET: How can we source critical raw materials for the energy transition more sustainably and equitably? Join Devex, Open Society Foundations, and policy, advocacy, academia, and industry leaders to explore civil society's pivotal role and solutions. Register to join the livestream.
Whispering climate
Climate talks at this year’s World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings are already feeling a lot more muted than last time, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz tells me. There are noticeably fewer events focused on the issue, and the one official session that did happen zeroed in on private sector investment and — notably — nuclear energy.
Eric Pelofsky, vice president for global economic recovery at The Rockefeller Foundation, pointed to the World Bank’s Mission 300 — a drive to get electricity to 300 million people in Africa by 2030 — as “technology agnostic.”
“The World Bank President has said that he wants to adopt an all-of-the-above approach,” Pelofsky says, “meaning energy products from wind, from solar, from geothermal, from hydro and natural gas, and nuclear. From a technology standpoint, I think we're very, very open.”
Later that day, during a side event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mario Loyola of The Heritage Foundation took aim at the Inflation Reduction Act, arguing its subsidies for wind and solar “are having a toxic impact on the electricity grid” and “stifling investment in other sources like natural gas and nuclear that you need to maintain stability.”
Loyola also touched on a rare point of overlap between the Trump administration and some low-income countries — that expecting them to leap straight into clean energy development is a tough ask.
Experts tell Devex that this framing — which casts fossil fuels as a necessary stepping stone — could be a strategic way to attract support from low-income countries for potential new energy policies at the World Bank in the months ahead.
ICYMI: Is this the moment for nuclear energy at the World Bank?
Related reading: Half of Africans don’t have electricity. Can Mission 300 change that? (Pro)
+ Not yet a Devex Pro member? Start your 15-day free trial today to access all our expert analyses, insider insights, funding data, events, and more. Check out all the exclusive content available to you.
Diplomats in, experts out
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has dropped a sweeping plan to revamp the State Department into an “America First State Department” that will “make the State Department Great Again.” The reorganization cuts 17% of offices, shuffles leadership, and sidelines what’s left of USAID.
The biggest shake-up? A new Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance, aka F bureau, to coordinate foreign aid, but most funding decisions would shift to regional bureaus. Critics say that will gut development expertise. “We will have diplomats making deals and signing checks,” says former USAID official Rob Jenkins.
The plan also folds or ditches offices focused on conflict prevention, criminal justice, and civil society. “From a foreign assistance point of view, it is an abomination,” Jenkins adds.
Rubio insists this is about trimming “bloat and bureaucracy,” posting on the social media platform X: “Today is the day... we are reversing decades of bloat.” But the restructuring also draws fire for potentially sidelining humanitarian priorities. Former staff warn that the Bureau of Population, Refugee and Migration, or PRM, — which may take on much of USAID’s role — lacks the capacity. “They aren’t technical specialists,” Jenkins says.
Rubio criticized bureaus like PRM and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for promoting “radical causes” and promised they’ll be brought “back to their original mission.”
Senator Jeanne Shaheen vowed to scrutinize the changes: “I will hold Secretary Rubio to his pledge to appear before our Committee.”
Read: State Department releases new ‘America First’ reorganization plan
View from inside
Still, Owen Kirby — who led USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, or OTI, during the first Trump administration and has held senior posts in the Obama and Bush administrations as well — has a warning for Rubio and the White House: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. While Kirby readily admits that the foreign assistance system is “opaque” to many Americans, and that cuts in foreign aid will free up money that can be redirected to American communities, he knows from experience that the government machinery that has recently been gutted was key to dealing with crisis such as 9/11 and the rise of ISIS.
“When confronted with the inevitable national security curveballs that every administration is eventually thrown,” he writes, “the current one will find some of the most capable, proven, and cost-effective foreign policy tools of the U.S. are no longer at its disposal.”
The “capability gap,” he notes, was also relatively cost effective: “OTI’s 2024 annual cost to the American taxpayer was less than just one F-22 Raptor, but able to go at the commander-in-chief’s command where an F-22 could not.”
Opinion: What the US administration may not know about foreign aid
Glass half full
When USAID collapsed, countries across the world were left reeling. But for many nations, it was just the latest shock of many — from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the rollout of new tariffs just this month.
It’s been layer after layer of economic challenges, according to Denny Kalyalya, the governor of Zambia’s central bank — all while countries have continued to confront ever-mounting debt.
“When there is a change of the magnitude that we are seeing, most of our countries are on the receiving end,” said Kalyalya, speaking at an event hosted by the Center for Global Development yesterday. My colleague Elissa Miolene was there.
Even so, Kalyalya — and the panelists that followed him — spoke of the opportunities. Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi, the president of the African Center for Economic Transformation, pushed leaders to broaden their tax bases, improve tax regulations, and crack down on tax avoidance to generate domestic resources.
Abdoul Salam Bello, a U.N. expert on policy development, coordination, and monitoring, highlighted concessional climate financing and how to bring transparency into public spending.
And Abdourahmane Cissé, a senior adviser at asset management firm Lazard, said that aid is not a strategy — whereas investment can be.
“The shift is real, and it’s likely going to be permanent — so we need to be innovative,” said Cissé, who is also Côte d’Ivoire’s former minister of budget. “There is a huge untapped potential for the private sector, and there’s $1 trillion of assets from pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and insurance.”
Cissé described how African nations should be using concessional finance differently — using small amounts of such funding to complement larger projects, instead of fully funding programs with just concessional dollars. For example, he said, “Why don’t we use the carbon credit that we actually emit to pay back the debt we owe to [multilateral development banks]?”
In other news
Envoys from the U.S., Ukraine, and Europe met in London after Russian strikes shattered an Easter truce with reports that Trump may recognize Crimea as Russian territory. [France 24]
A staggering 84% of the world’s coral reefs are affected by harmful bleaching, driven by soaring ocean temperatures linked to human-induced climate change. [DW]
A new U.N. report found that the climate crisis is leading to an increase in cases of gender-based violence worldwide. [UN News]
Sign up to Newswire for an inside look at the biggest stories in global development.
About the author
Helen Murphy
Helen is an award-winning journalist and Senior Editor at Devex, where she edits coverage on global development in the Americas. Based in Colombia, she previously covered war, politics, financial markets, and general news for Reuters, where she headed the bureau, and for Bloomberg in Colombia and Argentina, where she witnessed the financial meltdown. She started her career in London as a reporter for Euromoney Publications before moving to Hong Kong to work for a daily newspaper.
