The U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office was targeted in a “serious cyber security incident” in January, but the only way you would know that is by poring over the text of an obscure $633,000 contract award notice they issued for “urgent business support.”
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After the International Committee of the Red Cross won plaudits for being open and transparent about a major hack of personal information on its servers, the U.K. government seems to be taking a rather different approach to a recent incident.
FCDO did not publicly announce the incident or provide any details about what was targeted or if anything was compromised. Instead, on Friday a notice appeared online that looked unremarkable, except for the fact that it was issued in response to “a serious cyber security incident, details of which cannot be disclosed.”
FCDO awarded the contract to BAE Systems Applied Intelligence without running a competitive bidding process due to the “extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable for the contracting authority.”
“We do not comment on security but have systems in place to detect and defend against potential cyber incidents,” an FCDO spokesperson tells my colleague Will Worley.
Read: UK's FCDO targeted in a 'serious cyber security incident' in January
+ Do you think development organizations are doing enough to protect sensitive data? Have you seen examples of what happens when they don’t? Let us know at newswire@devex.com.
Unrealized gains
The African Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development launched the 2022 Africa’s Development Dynamics report last week, which pointed to a big opportunity for intra-African trade to boost the continent’s economic recovery, Rumbi Chakamba reports.
One takeaway from Gerd Müller, director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization: “Exports of basic commodities and low-value products cannot be the future for Africa.”
Devex Pro: AU and OECD point to regional value chains as key to Africa’s rebound
Related: Pro subscribers can take a look inside the latest Europe-Africa summit deliverables — the most contentious of which, so far, is a plan to rely more on the EU's own border agency in Africa.
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Reshuffle
One of U.S. President Joe Biden’s top global health officials is leaving the administration. News broke Tuesday that Beth Cameron, the National Security Council senior director for global health security and biodefense, will step down this month. Cameron is one of the architects of the Global Health Security Agenda and a key adviser on global pandemic preparedness. She will reportedly be replaced by Raj Panjabi, currently the global health malaria coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The shake-up comes as the Biden administration is looking to secure funding from Congress for a major scale up of a USAID-led initiative to increase global vaccine uptake — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Across the pond, the U.K.’s FCDO is currently without a minister responsible for the Middle East and North Africa, after James Cleverly was appointed Minister for Europe last night. The department recently took responsibility for dealing with Brexit, which has also been increasingly taking up the time of Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Crop cash
Malawi’s government has invested heavily in a plan to subsidize farm inputs for subsistence farmers. Madalitso Kateta reports for Devex that a long list of problems have undermined the program, and the fact that 6 out of 10 Malawian families remain food insecure raises questions about its effectiveness. Some experts want to see the government follow South Africa’s model and invest in large-scale agriculture instead.
Malawi: Can an agricultural inputs program improve food security?
Meanwhile, in the Horn of Africa, three successive failed rainy seasons have devastated crops and caused “abnormally high” levels of livestock deaths, Sara Jerving reports. The conditions are the driest they’ve been since 1981.
Horn of Africa: Driest conditions in more than 40 years
More for Pro: The AU has declared 2022 as its year of nutrition. About 282 million people are still undernourished on the continent but the AU wants this number reduced to zero by 2025. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s Chimimba David Phiri says that “this theme will put nutrition and agri-food systems back on the agenda.”
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Learning curve
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a new director of global education. Benjamin Piper, previously the senior director for Africa education at RTI International, will lead that portfolio from the foundation’s Ethiopia office. The foundation has spent comparatively less on global education than other priority areas such as health, and it is unclear if that will change any time soon, Stephanie Beasley reports.
+ ICYMI, we have a deep dive into what the four new trustees of the Gates Foundation could mean for its governance. Pro subscribers can access the report.
Smog tax
Air and water pollution are costing the Middle East and North Africa 2% of gross domestic product each year, according to the World Bank.
The bank’s “Blue Skies, Blue Seas” report also found that "The Mediterranean is among the world’s most plastic-polluted seas, with as much plastic flowing into it each year as the volume of fish taken out from the two most commonly caught species.”
In other news
The Taliban delegation arrived in Switzerland on Sunday for a string of meetings to discuss human rights and humanitarian aid with the Swiss foreign ministry as well as ICRC and other NGOs. [Al Jazeera]
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be in Fiji on Saturday, following a visit to Australia, to engage Pacific island nation leaders on issues of security, climate crisis, and COVID-19. [VOA]
Overstating the amount it paid for donated vaccines allowed the U.K. government to cut its actual aid spending by around $232.23 million, according to a Center for Global Development analysis. [The Independent]
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
