The World Bank is pitching jobs as the fix for poverty and fragility. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, nuclear energy and funding gaps are stirring debate.
Also in today’s edition: We look at what the bank has in the funding pipeline.
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Spring Meetings, high stakes
The World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings kicked off under a cloud of Trump-era uncertainty, with a U.S.-mandated review hanging over future engagement. The official theme is job creation, but the real buzz is about shifting energy policies (hello, nuclear?), climate backpedaling, shaky donor commitments, and a whole lot of diplomatic tightrope-walking.
Day 1 was subdued, but my colleague Adva Saldinger tells me that today brings a flagship World Bank event on jobs, featuring young entrepreneurs, execs, and World Bank President Ajay Banga himself.
Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the IDA Forum is tackling the future of funding for the lowest-income countries — especially tricky with U.S. contributions up in the air as some worry that the U.S. could pull out of the bank altogether.
ICYMI: What to watch at the 2025 World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings
Fission quest
The World Bank is inching toward a major policy shift: lifting its long-standing ban on nuclear energy. Banga wants to include nuclear power as part of a broader strategy aimed at expanding energy access and supporting economic growth, particularly in low-income countries — including in Africa, where 600 million people still lack power.
Nuclear is seen as a way to deliver reliable, low-carbon energy — especially for energy-hungry sectors such as data centers and AI — while also helping the United States and its allies compete with Russia and China, which currently dominate the market.
But the road ahead is long, Adva writes. The board won’t vote on the proposed change until June at the earliest, and the bank will still need to build technical capacity and define a clear role in nuclear financing. Some shareholders remain skeptical, though others, including the U.S., are pushing hard for change. If approved, nuclear power wouldn’t replace existing investments but add another option — one that’s cleaner than fossil fuels, safer than many assume, and increasingly in demand from countries looking to power up.
Read: Is this the moment for nuclear energy at the World Bank?
Pipeline up
There are now 360 projects in the World Bank pipeline — up 210 from last time — with a tentative committed amount of $63.6 billion from the International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. But as the Spring Meetings kick off, the big question is: What's actually coming down the track?
Things move slowly: Most projects linger in internal limbo before ever seeing daylight. Right now, 119 are stuck at concept review, 18 have started appraisals, 44 are being negotiated, and 24 are nearing the green light.
To find out the biggest ticket items so far, read my colleague Alecsondra Kieren Si’s full analysis.
Read: What’s inside the World Bank’s $38.9 billion pipeline? (Pro)
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Enduring legacy
Pope Francis has died, but the priorities he championed live on.
“As the former Catholic leader of his home country Argentina, he spoke differently than past Popes on the issues of debt and financial crisis because of his experience. In Argentina, he saw first hand the impacts of poverty and debt crisis on his people," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of Jubilee USA, in a statement.
Earlier this year, Pope Francis made global debt relief and new processes to aid the poor the focus of the Jubilee year — a mission that “will continue as the central themes despite his death,” LeCompte said.
Are you in, or are you out?
Global health is one of the lifesaving areas that was meant to survive in some fashion under the new aid regime at the State Department. However, as with everything over the last few months, the unknowns still outnumber the knowns, although we recently uncovered some clarity on the issue.
Devex obtained a copy of an Excel sheet and a PowerPoint sent by USAID leadership that highlights 24 “central awards to support global health programming” that will continue under the agency’s “narrower focus.”
It framed the awards as “What’s In” and “What’s Out,” detailing how the Trump administration envisions the future of foreign aid in the health space. The priorities fall within four buckets: direct health service delivery; procurement of essential health commodities and supply chain management; emergency response to infectious disease outbreaks; and data analytics, monitoring, and evaluation to ensure accountability.
What’s now “deprioritized,” according to the PowerPoint, are awards with a focus on “broad and stand alone behavior change, health systems strengthening, knowledge management, broad research, and technical assistance (not directly tied to lifesaving service delivery activities).”
Read: ‘What’s in’ and ‘what’s out’ in USAID’s global health programming
End of an era
Klaus Schwab, the 87-year-old founder of the World Economic Forum and the man who turned Davos into the ultimate power players’ snowglobe, has officially stepped down as chair of the WEF’s board of trustees.
The timing wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the suddenness caught some off guard — no successor yet, just an interim chair during the search. Schwab leaves a legacy of big ideas and even bigger criticism: Once the poster child for globalization, the WEF has lately been criticized as an out-of-touch elite gathering, dogged by internal culture woes and geopolitical headwinds. Whether Davos remains a global agenda-setter or fades into irrelevance is now in someone else’s hands.
Related reading: World Economic Forum president and CEO on development’s role in Davos
Breaking the currency trap
Emerging economies often borrow in dollars but earn in local currency — a risky mismatch that can become a debt trap and fuel instability if local currencies weaken. Repayments spike, not because businesses or governments failed, but because the exchange rate did.
The obvious fix? Local currency loans. But high hedging costs and shallow local capital markets make that tough. Multilateral development banks, or MDBs, rarely take on currency risk themselves, instead passing the cost on to borrowers — pricing out many public sector clients, Adva writes.
There’s growing pressure for change. Some experts say MDBs should absorb more risk or offer guarantees. Others are pushing new tools, such as Delta — a joint effort by AIIB and EBRD to build local liquidity pools — or scaling up existing ones such as TCX, which helps MDBs manage currency risk through swaps.
Read: Inside the push to ease dollar debt and boost local lending
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In other news
Pakistan has launched a weeklong drive to vaccinate 45 million children against polio, as it remains one of the last countries with a high incidence of the deadly virus. [AP]
Crime syndicates that made billions scamming victims in Asia are now expanding worldwide, exploiting trafficked workers and outpacing global crackdowns, a U.N. report warned. [DW]
Haiti is nearing a “point of no return,” as urgent pleas for more aid and police support grow amid escalating gang violence. [Al Jazeera]
French President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled a €3 billion plan to rebuild cyclone-ravaged Mayotte. [France 24]
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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.
