It’s January, and we’re all slowly beginning to grapple with the year ahead of us. As ever, there are plenty of events in the global development calendar. To help you prepare for 2024, this is a guide to some of the big moments we’ll be watching throughout the year, and why they matter. Make sure you’re signed up to the Devex Newswire to follow our coverage of these events, and more.
Kicking off the year in traditional fashion, we have the World Economic Forum annual meeting in mid-January on the snowy slopes of Switzerland. Unlike the other summits and conferences on this list, official decisions are rarely made at Davos — there aren’t any intergovernmental negotiations or treaties to be signed. But like it or not, it gathers many of the world’s most powerful people in one place, and a lot of important conversations happen here. Some people take the topics that stand out at Davos as an indicator of what’s going to matter in the year ahead. We’ll have a team on the ground to keep you posted.
The African Union has declared education to be its theme for 2024, so we can expect a focus on that when heads of state and government gather for this year’s summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February. Also on the agenda, though, are its evolving health institutions under the newly autonomous Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. The governance framework for the new Africa Epidemics Fund, a financing pool that will help countries on the continent prepare for and respond to disease threats, will be up for approval. And it’s possible that some of the leadership roles for the new African Medicines Agency will also be signed off, although as of late November we were told that the final nominations for the agency’s nine-member board were still coming in. These institutions are potentially of huge importance to the continent, helping it better coordinate on health issues and reduce dependence on outside institutions during health emergencies.