Presented by the World Bank
Oxford scientists, who produced one of the world’s first COVID-19 jabs, say the United Kingdom could be "back to square one" for the next outbreak.
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Also in today’s edition: We look at the most important issues for development finance this year, the U.K. calls for urgent action to avert famine in Ethiopia, and the African Union will create a regional humanitarian agency.
+ Trivia question: Which Scandinavian country announced that more of its foreign aid will be channeled to its Investment Fund for Developing Countries? Scroll down for the answer.
It was an odd question for an international development minister to ask. Are we ready for the next pandemic? But Andrew Mitchell quizzed the leaders of Oxford University’s Pandemic Sciences Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group on whether they believe the U.K. is ready for “when the klaxon goes off” as he put it. Obviously not!
“If the Vaccine Taskforce had existed before the pandemic, we would have been able to move much faster. Now the task force is no longer working — so we are back to square one,” professor Sarah Gilbert told Mitchell when he visited her laboratory last month.
She recalled the desperate lack of public funding in January 2020, when her team began researching a vaccine to combat a strange new contagious disease striking down people in China.
Devex U.K. Correspondent Rob Merrick accompanied Mitchell to the lab where the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19 was developed.
The institute has since developed the second malaria vaccine and is researching jabs against the Nipah virus, the Middle East respiratory syndrome, and other pandemic threats. The work takes place, remarkably, in aging Second World War-era prefab buildings put up for U.S. troops back in the day.
But the vaccine task force was shut down in 2022 when much of its work was halted and its key recommendations ignored. The Oxford scientists vented their frustration, Rob writes.
During the meeting, professor Andrew Pollard, part of the AstraZeneca team, reminded Mitchell that the U.K. spends £45 billion a year on defense, telling him: “Biosecurity is just as much of a risk.” Pollard pointed out that he chairs the U.K.’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and yet “I have not been invited to the independent external committee advising the government on pandemics.”
After a tour of the labs, Rob asked Mitchell — who co-chairs an internal government committee on pandemic preparedness — if he was worried about what he had heard.
“The government will certainly look at that now, following what I’ve heard today,” the minister replied. “I will make sure that we do that. We will look at the arguments that have been put. … We have to make sure that financial constraints don’t hinder being on the front foot on day one, if and when — and, sadly, it probably is when — the next pandemic comes.”
Read: Minister promises to act as experts raise alarm over UK pandemic readiness
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Donors must “act fast and act now” to halt the slide toward famine in Ethiopia, Mitchell said this week during another visit, this time to a clinic in the war-torn northern Tigray region of the country, announcing £100 million ($125 million) of aid to tackle malnutrition and bolster health services.
“Food shortages are at a critical level,” he said, describing the situation as “a wake-up call to the world.”
“We have the power to stop it. But if we don't take the necessary action now, then there is every danger that a famine will engulf this war-torn country which has suffered so much already," Mitchell told the BBC.
The warning comes as fears grow of a repeat of the infamous Ethiopian famine of the 1980s — despite the signing, over 15 months ago, of an agreement between the Ethiopian government and Tigray intended to end a three-year conflict and relieve the suffering.
The £100 million will provide access to essential health services to more than three million Ethiopians, in particular children under the age of 5 and pregnant and post-natal women. Emergency funding will also help 75 health centers tackle malnutrition and other preventable causes of death such as malaria and cholera.
Read: UK urges world to ‘act now’ to avert Ethiopia famine, pledges $125M
Related op-ed: How targeting Tigray farmers has contributed to brink of famine
This year promises to be crucial for development finance, writes Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger. The World Bank is under the gun to overhaul its dated international financial system, a new climate finance framework must be agreed upon, and economic worries and geopolitical tensions are likely to pile pressure on indebted countries and make it harder to attract investment in cash-strapped nations.
“This is truly a historic year,” Kevin Gallagher, director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University, said at a recent Devex event.
“We need a major transformation of the development finance institutions to make them bigger, to make the policies better, and to make them more equal so that there’s more voice and representation for developing countries,” he said. “The key metric for me is can we bend down the cost of capital.”
Some questions to be tackled this year seem almost perennial — how to reduce heavy debt burdens, how to attract private capital into risky markets, and how to get the system of development finance institutions to work more efficiently and collaboratively.
But there are also developments to watch as World Bank reforms seek to modernize the institution, boost its lending, and adjust its focus, fresh climate finance targets are hammered out, and new instruments such as debt-for-nature swaps and guarantees are on the rise.
Adva gives a breakdown of the most important issues to keep tabs on.
Read: Development finance issues to watch in 2024 (Pro)
Watch: Development finance must adapt to meet new needs, experts say (Pro)
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Sub-Saharan Africa hosts about a quarter of the world’s refugees. To better serve this population, the African Union will establish a new African Humanitarian Agency. It will also choose a country to host it, Devex Senior Reporter Sara Jerving tells me.
Cessouma Minata Samaté, the AU’s commissioner for health, humanitarian affairs, and social development, said this week that there are frequent complaints that the union is not on the ground responding to humanitarian crises on the continent.
“We want to fill this gap to see Africans also doing the job and helping the victims of forced displacement in Africa,” she said during a press briefing, adding that the AU will look to the European Commission's Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department, or ECHO, for guidance as it sets up this new organization.
“I was in Brussels to learn from ECHO,” she said. “They are more experienced. I was there to visit to see how we can strengthen our office.”
The French government summoned Russia's ambassador over the deaths of two French aid workers due to Russian strikes in Ukraine. [AP]
Sri Lanka's president announced plans to implement a debt restructuring framework by the first half of 2024, expressing confidence in the nation’s financial recovery. [Reuters]
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Kyiv to discuss its steadfast support for Ukraine to address reforms as the country moves closer to EU membership. [VOA]
+ The answer to the trivia question is: Denmark! The country boosted its aid budget for 2024. Want more insights? Take our quiz to test your knowledge of some of the past month's biggest globaldev stories.
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