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Many development advocates are pinning their hopes on Germany to heroically step up and save international assistance. Indeed, the country just released a major overhaul of its aid strategy. But this isn’t a fairytale, and there may be a few chinks in Germany’s shining armor.
Also in today’s edition: African and Arab states grow closer together, but will billions of dollars in promised funds materialize? Plus, are African countries selling out their citizens’ data to get money from the U.S.? And a Pro upgrade for the lucky winner of our year-end quiz!
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Long the world’s number one aid donor, the United States naturally got a lot of attention. Sitting at number two is Germany, which is now getting a whole lot of attention as the U.S. retrenches from the top spot.
And many are encouraged by the reforms recently unveiled by German Development Minister Reem Alabali Radovan to overhaul the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, or BMZ.
Those reforms focus on least developed countries, or LDCs, offering loans rather than grants depending on the countries’ income level, and making a commitment to work with local partners.
“They made a very clear statement that they want to focus foreign assistance on those countries where it has the highest impact, where it's most needed,” Heiner Janus of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability tells my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitiz.
“A euro of foreign assistance in a least developed country has a much higher potential impact than if you spend that same money in a middle-income country,” he adds, though he warns that implementation remains vague, with scant details on how the agenda will be delivered, especially in the context of Germany’s own sizable aid cuts.
“There is a risk that ambition and resources will not match,” says Anita Käppeli of the Center of Global Development.
The new strategy is also peppered with contradictions. For example, Janus says that while there’s a big emphasis on including German companies, there aren’t exactly a ton of them operating in LDCs.
Those aren’t the only warning signs. The rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, coupled with a declining domestic economy and pressure from the U.S. to boost defense spending, has left the current German government walking a fine line between appeasing voters and funding development.
Read: Germany charts a new course for global aid
+ Listen: The U.S. may be down when it comes to foreign assistance spending, but it’s far from out — at least if Congress has anything to say about it. Check out the latest episode of our podcast, This Week in Global Development, as our reporters dissect the $50 billion foreign assistance bill that defies President Donald Trump’s requested 47.7% gutting of the budget. From its ripple effects across the global health sector to the implications for the African Growth and Opportunity Act extension, we analyze the bill’s core priorities and its long-term impact on the global development landscape.
The African Development Bank and the Arab Coordination Group are firming up ties, having just wrapped up meetings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, that marked the first time the bloc of Arab development finance institutions convened at AfDB’s headquarters.
“This high-level consultation marks a deliberate shift from cooperation to co-investment, from parallel efforts to coordinated impact, and from ad-hoc transaction to programmatic engagement and strategic alignment,” said AfDB President Sidi Ould Tah, who has positioned the bank as a bridge between Africa and new sources of capital, particularly from the Gulf.
The fuzzy feelings seem mutual. “Africa is a priority of priorities for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” said Sultan Al-Marshad, CEO of the Saudi Fund for Development.
In fact, the Arab Coordination Group, which just celebrated its 50th anniversary, said in 2023 that it aims to channel up to $50 billion into Africa, with a focus on energy, trade, food security, private sector financing, youth and women’s economic inclusion, and support for fragile states.
The Abidjan meetings did not produce a headline investment figure, however. Instead, the main outcome was a joint declaration outlining how AfDB and the Arab Coordination Group plan to work more closely together, my colleague Ayenat Mersie writes.
It’s a reflection of the close ties that Tah has forged with the Gulf — which were a major reason he won the AfDB presidential election last year. That background was on display in Abidjan, where Tah opened his remarks in Arabic.
“Let this meeting in Abidjan be remembered as a turning point when Africa and the Arab world choose to deepen an already strong partnership, not out of nostalgia for the past, but out of responsibility for the future,” he said.
Read: AfDB and Arab financiers move toward closer cooperation
“Radical simplicity.” That’s how Dr. Sania Nishtar, CEO of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance described the organization’s reforms during a recent Devex Pro Briefing.
She seems to have the figures to back her up. Gavi will now support countries through the use of two funding levers instead of 30, and slash the number of contracts from 700 to around 60. It has also digitized its grant processes to reduce the bureaucratic burden on countries.
Countries — and putting them in the lead — are in fact at the heart of Gavi’s reforms.
“When I came in in March 2024, the ministers of health told us, we want more agency. We want more control on our resources. We want you to reduce the administrative costs. We want you to make processes simple. So I came back, and that is what the Gavi Leap for reform was predicated on,” Nishtar said.
While those reforms have cut the organization’s operating costs by 40%, they’ve also come at a cost — the loss of 33% of its staff.
Still, Nishtar hopes the reforms Gavi underwent contribute to conversations on revamping the global health architecture — and turn generalized talk into actionable specifics.
“Every paper will tell you sovereignty matters and that countries should transition. But the devil is in the detail. How is that going to happen? You have to make those nuts and bolts implementation choices that will put countries in the driving seat. You have to actively demonstrate what a graduation looks like,” she said. “There are many conversations happening, but we now need to get down to the specifics.”
Read more: Gavi reforms put countries in the driver’s seat, says Sania Nishtar (Pro)
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Speaking of details, the Trump administration has been putting flesh on the bone of its global health strategy by inking a series of rapid-fire bilateral health compacts with various African countries.
But again, the devil is in the details — and there’s one in Kenya’s $2.5 billion health deal that’s not sitting well with critics: The sharing of personal data with the U.S. in return for funding.
“Citizens in Kenya and other countries targeted by the ‘America First’ global health strategy risk losing control over one of their most valuable assets: their own health data. When that control is lost, the benefits generated from data no longer flow back to the people who produce it, while the risks, from misuse to exclusion, remain with them,” write Jesse Willem d’Anjou and Nicole Spieker of PharmAccess and Femke Heddema of the PharmAccess Foundation in a Devex opinion piece.
They argue that in this “emerging transactional and asymmetric geopolitical order, even health data becomes strategic currency.”
“Even when anonymized, health data can be repurposed, combined, and exploited at scale, particularly in the age of AI,” they warn. “Over time, this dynamic erodes a fundamental pillar of the digital era: data sovereignty, and with it, the individual and collective agency of people over how their health information is used, governed, and monetized.”
Opinion: Citizens will pay the price of health data as a bargaining chip in Africa
After months of delay, the U.S. is sending a $3 million humanitarian aid package to hurricane-hit Cuba, with the State Department warning Cuban authorities to not obstruct its distribution amid geopolitical tensions in the region. [Reuters]
A Greek court has acquitted 24 former aid workers accused of human trafficking after rescuing migrants on Lesbos, ending a years-long case that was widely criticized as an attempt to criminalize humanitarian assistance in Europe. [BBC]
A $1.6 million U.S.-funded hepatitis B vaccine study in Guinea-Bissau has been canceled after widespread criticism over ethical concerns that it would withhold a proven, lifesaving vaccine from newborns. [The Guardian]
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