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New Zealand’s official development assistance remained steady, with most funds directed to Oceania and small island states. Meanwhile, Ireland, once an aid recipient, doubled its spending in 2023, driven by refugee costs and humanitarian aid.
Also in today’s edition: The success story behind the boom in school meals.
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Anglophone analysis
With the two most prominent English-speaking donor countries seeing aid dollars plummet, we’ve been preparing primers on the others. Today, we’ve got snapshots from Devex number cruncher Miguel Antonio Tamonan of two smaller but influential members of the Development Assistance Committee: New Zealand and Ireland.
New Zealand crossed the $500 million mark in aid back in 2018 and has stayed above it since. Preliminary 2024 data pegs its ODA at $768 million, or 0.32% of GNI — still below the DAC average and 0.7% target. A huge proportion of its aid is bilateral, and a big chunk focuses on Oceania, with large amounts going to Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga. Multilaterals got the rest, including $22.3 million for the World Bank’s International Development Association and nearly $12 million for the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund.
Ireland, by contrast, has seen a dramatic surge. Once an aid recipient, it is now a top DAC performer, with ODA spiking to $2.8 billion in 2023, largely due to refugee costs. Preliminary 2024 figures show its ODA at 0.57% of GNI, placing it seventh relative to its economy. More than half of that went bilaterally, with humanitarian aid prioritized. On the multilateral side, $374.6 million went to the European Commission, plus smaller amounts to IDA and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Both countries punch above their weight: New Zealand as the largest DAC donor to small island developing states, and Ireland as a donor that’s rapidly scaled up, now channeling billions into both refugee response and global humanitarian priorities.
Read: A primer on New Zealand aid (Pro)
Also read: A primer on Irish aid (Pro)
Related reads: Primers on Canadian and Australian aid (Pro)
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Carbon loading
The Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, or VCMI, has launched a new tool kit to help countries make sense of fast-changing international carbon market rules. It lands just before nations face their final deadline to submit nationally determined goals, or NDCs — so far, only 29 of 197 countries have done so.
Carbon markets put a price on pollution, whether through government-run compliance markets or voluntary ones where businesses offset emissions by funding things such as tree planting or renewable energy. Supporters say they spur innovation and climate-friendly projects. Critics argue they let polluters “buy their way out” and sometimes fail to deliver real benefits.
The new tool kit, developed with Climate Focus, offers guidance on when to use voluntary carbon markets, how to link them to NDCs, and how to set up legal and institutional frameworks that ensure high standards. It arrives as countries begin implementing Article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement, which lets them trade emission reductions across borders.
“For developing countries, carbon markets provide an avenue for accessing private capital,” says Bianca Gichangi, Africa lead for VCMI’s Access Strategies Program. “It reduces emission reductions and protects nature, improves livelihoods, fuels local prosperity.”
VCMI and Climate Focus have already been working with governments in Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Panama, and Peru. In Mexico’s Yucatán state, the program helped develop a carbon market strategy and offered guidance to nature-based project developers on working with communities and sharing benefits transparently, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz writes.
Looking ahead, agriculture and forestry will be central. “Latin America needs $700 million just to deliver on growing NDCs,” says Daniel Ortega Pacheco, executive secretariat lead for the Partnership for Agricultural Carbon. “Agriculture alone is about 1 gigaton of emissions. Some of that has a potential to engage in carbon markets,” he says. This could mean farmers using practices that help trap and store carbon dioxide to then generate income through carbon credits.
“Every ministry of agriculture needs to explore how much is technically feasible to engage with markets,” Ortega Pacheco says. “What we do is to provide the tools so that we understand scientifically … what is there to be done.”
Read: A new how-to guide on carbon markets
Silent spread
Cholera, a disease that should be history, is roaring back. We’re in the seventh pandemic in 200 years, with 355,800 cases and 4,000 deaths by July 2025. And that’s just what’s reported — the Global Task Force for Cholera Control says the true toll is 1.3 million to 4 million a year.
The fix isn’t rocket science: clean water, sanitation, and hygiene. Ninety-seven percent of cases between 2010–2021 hit just 31 countries with the weakest WASH infrastructure. The World Bank says low-income countries need 42 times more funding, but even the money allocated often goes unspent.
The cost is measured in lives, writes Nicolas Villeminot of Action Against Hunger USA in an opinion piece for Devex. In South Sudan, U.S. aid cuts closed clinics, leaving families to walk hours for treatment. Its neighbor Sudan has had 95,000 cholera cases since the conflict reignited in 2024. In stark contrast, targeted WASH programs in Somalia cut cholera deaths to zero in some districts.
Vaccines help, but they’re expensive, short-lived, and only have 60% efficacy. Furthermore, stockpiles fall far short of what’s needed to cover everyone at risk. Meanwhile, countries that invest in WASH are eliminating cholera. The Global Task Force for Cholera Control has road maps ready for 30 nations, Villeminot notes — but political will and funding are still lacking.
Opinion: Cholera is surging, yet we know how to stop it. So what’s missing?
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Meals, markets, momentum
Development has been pretty bleak in 2025, but here’s a little bright spot. In 2022, 418 million children received school meals — 30 million more since early 2020. Over that period, global investment in school meals increased by $5 billion. From Indonesia’s new mega-program to Brazil’s model system, the school meals momentum is building, boosted by philanthropic commitments such as The Rockefeller Foundation’s $100 million pledge.
Governments lead the way, Carmen Burbano de Lara, director of the School Meals Coalition at the World Food Programme, tells my colleague Ayenat Mersie. She describes it as “probably the most important development success story in recent years.” Since 2021, the coalition has grown to 109 countries and 140 partners.
Standout progress: Ethiopia expanded from 1.6 million to 7.5 million children, raising its budget from $11 million to $127 million. Kenya tied meals to local farmers and added drought-resistant crops. Across Africa, 20 million more kids are covered, with 98% of the funding coming directly from government budgets, Burbano de Lara says.
Low-income countries still struggle, but creative financing is emerging. Bolivia uses hydrocarbon taxes, while Kenya is negotiating debt swaps. “For every dollar that you invest in school meals, somewhere between $7 and $35 are put back into the economies,” Burbano de Lara says. The Islamic Development Bank and the African Development Bank are also backing programs.
The private sector brings food, supply-chain know-how, and tech — though Indonesia’s free meal program has been hit by food safety scandals. Meanwhile, WFP’s School Meal Plus app helps 20 governments design cost-effective, nutritious menus.
The coalition breaks the old donor-recipient mold, with countries from France to Malawi joining as equals. Regional networks are taking shape, and the next milestone is a ministerial summit in Brazil this September, hosted by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Read: National leadership and innovative financing fuel a school meals boom
Related: Inside Indonesia’s plan to feed 83 million people for free
In other news
Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon are urging South American presidents meeting in Bogota this week to turn promises to protect the region’s rainforest into concrete action, noting that many commitments made in the 2023 Belém Declaration have yet to be implemented. [AP]
Diphtheria cases in Somalia have nearly doubled to over 1,600 this year, with 87 deaths, as health officials blame vaccine shortages and U.S. aid cuts, forcing hundreds of health clinics to close and mobile vaccination teams to lose funding. [Reuters]
Burkina Faso has declared U.N. regional coordinator Carol Flore-Smereczniak persona non grata over a U.N. report published in April, which accused both jihadi groups and government forces of abuses against children. [BBC]
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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.
