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The World Bank plans to make smallholder farming central to jobs and growth, built on bank chief Ajay Banga’s pledge to double investments in agribusiness and agri-finance.
Also in today’s edition: A tour of what’s being said at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings.
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Farms, finance, futures
Agriculture is climbing the World Bank’s priority list. At its annual meetings yesterday, the bank launched AgriConnect: Farms, Firms, and Finance for Jobs — a plan to put smallholder farming at the heart of its economic growth and jobs agenda.
The program puts into motion World Bank President Ajay Banga’s pledge to double agribusiness and agri-finance investments to $9 billion annually by 2030. “What we have set out to do is first, help smallholders raise productivity and scale. Second, connect them to structured value chains that lift income. And third, guard against exploitation so farmers aren't forced to sell land for lack of credit, for lack of insurance, for lack of market access,” he said.
With aid budgets shrinking and pressure mounting to mobilize private capital, AgriConnect is being positioned as a test case for collaboration across the bank, the International Finance Corporation, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, and partners such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the African Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. “This initiative is extraordinary. It’s part of the collaboration of the MDBs — we have never collaborated like that before,” said IDB President Ilan Goldfajn.
The three pillars are de-risking agribusiness investment, investing in infrastructure such as irrigation and electrification, and reforming policy, including subsidy repurposing. One early example is a $300 million initiative in Togo to expand irrigation and turn the country into a regional agribusiness hub that’s expected to create 72,500 jobs.
Technology transfer is also central. “With our convening power, we can ensure that a lot of these technologies are going where they're needed — to farmers — so that they get drought-resilient seeds, heat-tolerant crops, and [access to crops like] orange sweet potatoes to improve nutritional needs,” said Shobha Shetty, the World Bank’s global director for agriculture and food global practice, citing Pakistan’s adoption of zinc-enriched wheat now used by 45% of farmers nationwide.
For Wagner Albuquerque de Almeida, IFC’s global director of manufacturing, agribusiness, and forestry, the value lies in treating agriculture as a system: “Not looking to individual parts of the supply chain, which is very complex, but looking at this in a holistic way.”
AgriConnect will be the proving ground for Banga’s “bigger, better, faster” mantra. And the measure of success, Shetty said, will be simple: keeping smallholders at the center.
Read: Inside the World Bank’s plan to boost jobs by investing in agribusiness
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Risky experiment
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out a sweeping 20-part peace plan for Gaza, calling for an end to the two-year war, the release of Israeli hostages, and a halt to military operations. He also pitched a “Trump economic development plan” to “redevelop,” “rebuild” and “energize” Gaza — a blueprint quickly endorsed by both Israel and Hamas.
That speed set off alarms for Nur Arafeh, a fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, who asked whether Gaza is about to become the next experiment in “disaster capitalism.”
“The concept basically captures how a disaster — whether it’s caused by a war, revolution, or ecological catastrophe — creates an environment for governments or other political authorities to dispossess and disempower communities,” Arafeh explained, noting the term was coined by journalist Naomi Klein in 2007. “While doing so, the disaster provides opportunities for big businesses to profit from reconstruction funds, and to access unavailable resources, such as land and state-owned sectors of the economy — all this happens while citizens are distracted.”
Arafeh pointed to U.S., Israeli, and think tank-led proposals — including the one that inspired Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” pitch — as containing “the seeds of disaster capitalism.” That plan, she noted, would let investors buy an “equity stake” in Gaza for 50 years, my colleague Elissa Miolene writes.
“Accumulation by dispossession is the process whereby reconstruction efforts become vehicles for appropriating public resources, seizing land, and transferring wealth from the dispossessed community to private capital,” Arafeh said. “We’re seeing this in the plans to recreate Gaza as the Riviera of the Middle East, as a tech hub, or as a crucial space in the India, Middle East, Europe economic corridor.”
World Bank-IMF meetings reporters’ notebook: Rebuilding Gaza — or redrawing it?
AI hype or hope
The World Bank and Google are betting big on artificial intelligence, announcing a partnership yesterday to turbocharge digital IDs and payment systems worldwide. But while the bank was leaning into AI, others nearby were waving warning flags, Elissa writes.
“[Governments are being] bombarded with pitches from private companies, who say that AI can solve all of their problems,” warned Gabriel Demombynes, manager of the World Bank’s Human Capital Project. “It’s extremely difficult for those officials to judge what’s hype and what’s reality — and there’s a real danger that they’re going to be sucked up into the hype, and go with applications that don’t actually deliver.”
For Temina Madon, chief executive officer at The Agency Fund, the antidote is evaluation — testing not just the model but “the product, the user, and the impact.” And Rebecca Sharp, CEO at IDinsight, said the biggest effects may come down to “user experience,” choice architecture, and design frameworks.
Sharp recalled an education expert in India who feared AI tutors might keep girls trapped at home — because if parents found out girls could receive their lessons from AI tutors, they would have no reason to send them into a classroom. As she summed it up: “The real-world effects are extremely nuanced.”
World Bank-IMF meetings reporters’ notebook: The promise and peril of AI
ICYMI: As foreign aid falters, can AI step in? (Pro)
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Framing the question
As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund gather in Washington, D.C., health financing is back in the spotlight. The pandemic, which caused $13.8 trillion in losses, exposed “the fragility of health systems and underscored the inseparable link between health and economic stability,” writes Hatice Beton, executive director of the G20 & G7 Health Development Partnership, in an opinion piece for Devex.
Yet health spending in 18 G20 countries has already fallen back to pre-pandemic levels, with 41 nations projected to remain below 2019 benchmarks through 2027.
Beton argues that leaders must use the meetings to adopt a “health investment framework — a health taxonomy” to steer global financing. Launched with partners including Harvard University, Tecnológico de Monterrey, and the WifOR Institute, a health taxonomy is “a classification system, an investment map that organizes complex information into structured categories, enabling clarity, comparability, and informed decision-making,” she writes.
It offers a common language for policymakers, multilateral development banks, and investors to align priorities, attract private capital, and help countries move “from grant dependency to sustainable financing models such as loans or public-private partnerships.”
Beton cautions that without such standards, the risk of “health washing” looms large. But if implemented well, the economic upside is huge: Strategic health investments of $2.9 trillion could yield $12 trillion in global gross domestic product by 2040, she writes, while “every dollar invested in health systems yields $2 to $4 in economic benefits.”
Opinion: Why the World Bank meetings need to have health taxonomy on the agenda
In other news
A coalition of 10 philanthropic foundations has committed $500 million over five years to Humanity AI, a new initiative aimed at ensuring human interests are central to AI development. [AP]
Russian drone strikes have hit two WFP trucks that were part of a humanitarian convoy delivering aid in southern Ukraine, according to the United Nations. [Reuters]
Sweden has nominated Jesper Brodin, chief executive at IKEA, to replace Filippo Grandi as the next chief of the U.N. Refugee Agency. [Financial Times]
Update, Oct. 15, 2025: This article has been updated to reflect the official name of the initiative: AgriConnect.
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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.
