Devex Newswire: What is Gates doubling down on and why?

One thing you can’t accuse the Gates Foundation of is inconsistency. It knows what it wants and doubles down on it. CEO Mark Suzman tells us why.

Also in today’s edition: A former president enters the race for U.N. secretary-general, and deaths from foreign assistance cuts could number in the millions.

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Gates’ steadfast goals

It’s been two years since Mark Suzman, CEO of the Gates Foundation, wrote a letter outlining the foundation’s vision — a lifetime for a development sector that’s undergone unprecedented upheaval in that time.

Suzman acknowledges that upheaval in his missive, “The Road to 2045,” a reference to the year the foundation will be sunsetting, during which time it plans to dole out $200 billion.

“Faced with compounding crises and competing priorities, leaders everywhere are making hard decisions about how to do more with less,” he writes.

That do-more-with-less mentality was in part triggered by the “shock of abrupt cuts” from the Trump administration — Suzman calls its refusal to fund Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance “shocking” — as well as other donor countries such as the United Kingdom, which in slashing aid, declared: ‘‘We will move money away from saving lives in low-income countries towards purchasing arms,” Suzman tells me.

So how do you make the case to reverse the cuts or at least stanch the bleeding? Suzman says you convince donors to fund targeted, high-impact, effective programs that give them “the most development bang for your development dollar.”

That ethos underpins the foundation’s singular focus on three core goals:

• No mother or child dies of a preventable cause

• The next generation grows up in a world without deadly infectious diseases

• Hundreds of millions of people break free from poverty, putting more countries on the path to prosperity

And those goals won’t change, he says, stressing: “This is our north star set of goals for the rest of our life.”

While the goals are static, the foundation isn’t. Among other things, it’s opening a new India and Africa division, shedding up to 500 jobs by 2030 to keep operating costs under control, and forging new partnerships, including with governments trying to navigate the road to self-reliance.

That begs the inevitable question: How can one partner with the Gates Foundation? Suzman says it all, again, comes back to focus.

“There’s still people who look at the $200 billion number and commitment, and they go, ‘Oh, exciting. Are there going to be these new areas? Are there going to be new opportunities? Where are you expanding?’ I say no. One thing we’re very clear on: Not only are we not expanding into any new areas, we’re doubling down on the focus of these very core objectives.”

Side note: Devex has learned from a source familiar with the foundation that Gargee Ghosh, leader of Gates’ international policy team, is stepping down in June. For more career moves in the development sector, sign up to Devex Pro and receive the Pro Insider newsletter, sent every Sunday.  

Read: Gates doubles down on goals in a world weighed down by crisis, CEO says

Sobering stats

That’s the jaw-dropping top-line from a new study published in The Lancet that estimates that by the end of this decade, between 9.4 million and 22.6 million people could die as a result of foreign aid cuts by the U.S. and other Western donors.

“The evidence indicates that an abrupt and severe contraction of this funding could have grave repercussions, potentially resulting in a global death toll approaching — or even exceeding — that of the COVID-19 pandemic,” reads the study, written by researchers from Brazil, Mozambique, and Spain.

The lower end of the range — still 9.4 million deaths — represents a “milder” scenario in which current downward trends continue, the study’s coordinator, Davide Rasella, tells my colleague Elissa Miolene.

The study actually represents a slightly better picture than the researchers’ initial findings, published in July, which found that up to 14 million people could die as a result of cuts to USAID alone by 2030.

Read: Aid cuts could lead to millions of deaths by decade’s end, new study finds (Pro)

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Bachelet is back

Former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet has officially thrown her hat into the ring to become the next secretary-general of the United Nations, my colleague Colum Lynch writes. She has the joint backing of leftist governments of Chile, Brazil, and Mexico. But she likely lacks the support of one key arbiter: the United States.

The first Trump administration clashed with Bachelet, launching an unsuccessful campaign to derail her bid to serve as U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

This time around, despite widespread momentum to finally have a woman lead the world body, the second Trump administration has objected to giving priority to a female candidate.

Still, Bachelet is the most prominent candidate to formally enter the race to succeed U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who is scheduled to end his decade-long term at the end of the year.  

“Getting Brazil and Mexico on board is a bit of a coup for Bachelet. … It does make her look like a regional rather than purely national candidate,” says Richard Gowan of the International Crisis Group. “But at a time when Latin American politics is very polarized on left-right lines, there is a risk that right-wing Latin American governments will view this initiative with suspicion.”

But, he adds, “at least Bachelet has made this a real race at last.”

Read: Former Chilean leader Michelle Bachelet enters race to lead UN

Related: Is the world ready for a woman at helm of the United Nations?

Madame President?

Spoiler alert: Bachelet is not on our Power 50 list of influential people working toward global progress (though we might’ve learned our lesson that she should’ve been). But there’s another potential candidate from Latin America and the Caribbean that we did profile: Rebeca Grynspan, a Costa Rican economist who heads U.N. Trade and Development, which was created to represent the interests of the global south.

So why is she on the list? In addition to potentially heading the U.N. in the future, Grynspan is helping to advance a new vision of global development centered on trade, investment, and global south agency rather than aid dependency. She is also specifically tackling the issue of debt distress, announcing at UNCTAD’s conference in October that Spain would host the Sevilla Forum on Debt

Check out the rest: The Devex Power 50 

+ This is only a tiny sampling. Every day this week, we will highlight a name you need to remember — someone who is shaping this historic new era of global development.

Grafting a narrative

A senior finance official at the U.S. African Development Foundation has been charged with corruption, according to the Department of Justice — yet another blow for an organization entangled in the Trump administration’s foreign assistance onslaught.

While the USADF was declared “unnecessary” alongside two other U.S. aid agencies last February, the story at USADF is unique. For years, Republican lawmakers had accused the foundation’s top staff of mismanaging funds, and Sen. Jim Risch, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced legislation to dissolve the agency in March last year.

Now, that finance officer — Mathieu Zahui — has been charged with “abusing his position” at USADF by directing funds to a government contractor for little to no work, according to the Department of Justice, along with making false statements to a federal law enforcement officer. Zahui has agreed to plead guilty and faces a maximum sentence of two to five years, respectively, for each charge.

“USADF is garbage. A culture of defiant fraud, waste and abuse that must come to an end,” reads a post on X by Peter Marocco, a former State Department official who — according to court documents — is acting as the current chief executive officer of USADF, despite being barred from doing so through an earlier judge’s order. “This is only scratching the surface. Abolish it!”

USADF did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. It is Devex’s understanding that the foundation has largely been hollowed out as a result of last year’s cuts to U.S. foreign assistance.

+ Check out the latest updates on the USAID court cases we’re following, detailing their current status on the legal docket.

In other news

The U.N. peacekeeping mission will deploy a team to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo to monitor a ceasefire between the government and the AFC/M23 rebels following Doha-mediated talks. [Reuters]

A coalition of immigration advocacy groups and U.S. citizens is suing the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in federal court to overturn the government’s decision to suspend immigrant visa processing for citizens of 75 countries, arguing the policy is unlawful and discriminatory. [The Guardian]

The U.N. and Asian Development Bank will back a $100 million, two-year food security program to support about 151,000 families in crisis-hit Afghanistan. [Reuters]

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