How is the U.S. Agency for International Development planning to spend its next few months? Funneling out $31.1 billion across the world, it seems — with Washington taking the biggest cut.
Also in this edition: The Pandemic Fund deliberates a new emergency window, the global health sector gets a bump in Berlin, and a petition for more tuberculosis money.
+ Are there topics you want to read more about in Money Matters? We want your feedback.
What’s in USAID’s wallet?
USAID has updated its numbers for this year’s fourth quarter — and in the coming months, the agency plans to finance 245 opportunities worth $31.1 billion. That’s a $1.9 billion increase from this time last year, my colleague Miguel Antonio Tamonan writes.
This is a preview of Devex Money Matters
Sign up to this weekly newsletter and get the latest in development funding in your inbox every Monday.
Miguel did the math: Nearly 70% of this quarter’s opportunities were included in USAID’s last business forecast, while 65 contracts — worth over $4.6 billion — are new. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than twice as much will be procured in Washington, in dollar terms, compared to USAID’s missions. But perhaps more surprisingly, the mission that will take home the most is none other than Madagascar.
“Other missions with significant budgets include the Democratic Republic of Congo, with $175 million; South Africa, with $150 million; and the Philippines, Jordan, and Ghana, with $100 million each,” Miguel writes.
Across sectors, global health took home the biggest portion of funds, with its nearly $3 billion allocation across 23 new opportunities equaling six times the sector’s allocation the previous quarter. The reason? There are three new task orders for NextGen, the massive — and long-awaited — global health supply chain program.
Read: USAID plans to spend $31.1 billion in the coming months (Pro)
+ Interested in more funding coverage? Explore our funding overview page and all our USAID funding insights.
And if you haven’t, start a 15-day free trial of Devex Pro today to unlock all our exclusive content.
Funding activity
We publish tenders, grants, and other funding announcements on our Funding Platform. Here are some of the ones which have been viewed the most in the past 10 days.
The Islamic Development Bank has approved over $3 billion in financing for 20 socioeconomic development projects across 17 member countries.
The Saudi Fund for Development has signed three loan agreements totaling $205 million with Serbia to support agricultural, educational, and energy projects.
USAID launched a $49 million project to enhance Ethiopia’s ability to predict, respond to, and handle natural and human-made disasters.
The European Union has announced an additional €20 million ($21.7 million) in funding to support the fight against the mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has allocated €17 million ($18.5 million) to rehabilitate water supply systems and ensure access to clean and safe water in Kyrgyzstan.
+ Try out Devex Pro Funding today with a free five-day trial, and explore funding opportunities from over 850 sources in addition to our analysis and news content.
911 funding
The Pandemic Fund is considering a new approach to the world’s most pressing emergencies — one that would allow the institution to move with more speed and flexibility whenever the next outbreak hits.
The approach would draw on the Pandemic Fund’s experience accelerating millions to those responding to mpox in sub-Saharan Africa. The nearly $129 million surge was only possible because the fund was in the middle of a proposal process — but now, the team is considering a change.
While it’s not certain that the Pandemic Fund will adopt such an approach, Priya Basu, the executive head of the Pandemic Fund Secretariat, tells Devex contributor Andrew Green that the board is thinking through “how to get better prepared for other future outbreaks,” something that may result in a fast-track procedure introduced within a specific window of time.
“The beauty of a new institution is that there's the flexibility to adjust, and our board is very committed to learning lessons and incorporating those into how we do business in the future,” Basu tells Andrew.
Read: The Pandemic Fund considers an emergency financing model
+ Join us in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Oct. 24, for Devex World where Basu will speak to my colleague Rumbi Chakamba about financing pandemic preparedness. Get your tickets now.
WHO says funding is down?
Reporting from the World Health Summit in Berlin, Germany, last week, Andrew had more good health news: governments, philanthropies, and companies pledged nearly $700 million to the World Health Organization.
“The World Health Organization is more important than ever,” Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a video announcement — which included his country’s own $94 million pledge — aired in Berlin. Støre called the agency the “leading normative and technical organization on global public health.”
Though WHO is still short of the $11.1 billion it needs to cover its base budget from 2025 to 2028, the organization will draw around $4 billion of that total from member state contributions.
Still, speaker after speaker mentioned how resources were contracting — and billionaire Bill Gates warned the audience that now more than ever, they needed to push their countries’ governments to invest further in health.
Despite that, further south of Berlin, the Transform Health Fund — a Pan-African blended finance vehicle — closed its final investment round at $11 million over target, raising a total of $111 million for high-impact, health-focused businesses.
“I think the diversity of investors and the surpassing of our target shows that there’s real appetite — a real hunger — for this kind of investment. We need much more capital like this out there in the world,” says Martin Edlund, executive director of the Health Finance Coalition and chief executive officer of Malaria No More.
Read: WHO raises nearly $700M, but global health funding worries persist
Also read: Pan-African Transform Health Fund surpassed goal, raised $111 million (Pro)
A nod for localization
In an opinion piece for Devex, experts are making the case for localization once again — but this time, it’s for a slightly different reason: the money.
“New evidence reveals a compelling financial case for localizing humanitarian aid: Local organizations are delivering assistance in a more cost-efficient way than their international counterparts,” write Courtenay Cabot Venton, the executive director of The Share Trust, and Hardin Lang, the vice president for programs and policy at Refugees International.
In a new series of studies from The Share Trust, Venton and her colleagues found local organizations delivered assistance that was 17% more cost-effective on average, while global data suggests such a figure could rise to 32% for large United Nations and international agency budgets.
Opinion: There is a clear financial case for localizing aid
ICYMI: New report reveals limited funding for global south organizations (Pro)
+ Your Devex Pro membership lets you get the most out of our localization coverage.
TB push
A petition is making the rounds across the global health world — one that’s advocating for tuberculosis programming to receive a fairer (and larger) slice of the Global Fund pie. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria provides the lion’s share of international funding for TB, my colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo writes: some 76%.
But for years, advocates have been pushing for money from the Global Fund to be split equally among each of the diseases it’s responding to, up from the 18% share TB gets now.
“If Global Fund cannot … explicitly give us data or give us reason for the disease split in terms of where we are now … then [we’re asking] do it equitably, so that everybody can have access to the same level of resources,” Austin Obiefuna, executive director of Afro Global Alliance, tells Jenny.
And for those like Obiefuna, there’s no time to waste. While deaths due to HIV and AIDS, TB, and malaria have declined since 2009, deaths due to TB remain the highest among the three diseases.
Read: The battle for limited Global Fund resources
Sign up to Money Matters for an inside look at the biggest stories in development funding.
About the author
Elissa Miolene
Elissa Miolene reports on USAID and the U.S. government at Devex. She previously covered education at The San Jose Mercury News, and has written for outlets like The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Washingtonian magazine, among others. Before shifting to journalism, Elissa led communications for humanitarian agencies in the United States, East Africa, and South Asia.
