The Asian continent contains multitudes — and Central and southern Asia are no exception. Between the bustling cities of Bangladesh and the sky-high peaks of Kyrgyzstan, the region is as diverse as those who live there.
But even amid this dynamism, southern and Central Asia face enduring development challenges that shape where aid dollars flow. So, where is the money hitting the region — and what problems are they seeking to address?
Also in today’s edition: Denmark’s IAVI retreat, U.S. bilateral buzz, and who’s getting Oak Foundation funding.
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Asia’s aid snapshot
There’s Afghanistan, where those across the country — especially women and girls — are facing human rights abuses under the Taliban rule. Nepal, which is still recovering from the deadliest, most destructive protest in its history. Bangladesh, where Rohingya refugees have continued to live in what is today the largest refugee camp in the world.
It’s for those reasons and others that nearly $82 billion of official development assistance flowed to southern and Central Asia between 2019 to 2023, Devex Development Analyst Alecsondra Kieren Si reports. She broke down OECD data on the region, finding that in 2023 alone, the region received a collective $16.5 billion — a slight dip from the $16.8 billion it received one year earlier.
Japan was the largest donor to the regions, giving $7 billion — nearly 43% of all total aid received — in 2023. Its biggest recipient was India.
Read: How much aid goes to southern and Central Asia? (Pro)
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Funding activity
We publish tenders, grants, and other funding announcements on our Funding Platform. Here are some of the ones that have been viewed the most in the past 10 days.
The African Development Bank has approved a $71.55 million grant to promote job creation among women and youth in Ghana
The Asian Development Bank has approved a $10 million grant to combat noncommunicable diseases and improve access to quality health care in Vanuatu.
German aid funder BMZ is seeking firms to safeguard biodiversity and drive local development in Armenia.
Mercy Corps has announced a call for proposals that leverage AI to boost financial inclusion, strengthen climate resilience, and generate evidence to share sector lessons across Africa.
The United Nations has launched a call for partnerships for a project intended to create a free and safer environment for journalists worldwide.
The World Bank is seeking expressions of interest for an assessment for a project to use renewable energy to create jobs and encourage local development in the Philippines.
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Vaarwel, IAVI
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative is struggling with funding cuts. Denmark is the latest donor planning to pull the plug on the scientific research group.
Denmark wants to cut its administrative burden and is prioritizing multilateral organizations, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, instead of providing smaller grants to a broader range of organizations.
But the government’s strategy change could come at the cost of accelerating progress toward developing an HIV vaccine.
“We just crossed the corner of essentially a proof of concept of our new approaches, and we were really aiming at accelerating towards more advanced clinical trials in humans,” Maite Suarez, advocacy manager at IAVI, tells Devex Senior Reporter Sara Jerving.
Sara writes that Denmark’s cuts come amid several others for IAVI, which lost some $22 million from January this year to June 2026 due to the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Read: Denmark to cut IAVI funds, prioritizing multilaterals over smaller grants
Bilateral buzz
Speaking of the U.S., Sara reports that the country has begun its first round of talks on bilateral global health agreements — and that 16 African nations are now in direct negotiations with the State Department.
The agreements are intended to see nations cofinance programs from their own budgets, and eventually take over the funding themselves.
It’s a big shift away from the previous U.S. strategy, which focused much more on funneling money through implementing partners. And there are questions over whether this is good or bad news for African nations.
On the one hand, it gives African nations a more direct relationship with their funder — giving them the ability to strengthen their national health systems, which many have long called for. On the other hand, a template for these agreements also included a decades-long pathogen access agreement — which is controversial.
In a press briefing, Sierra Leone’s minister of health, Austin Demby, expressed optimism for the approach.
“We quite look forward to the ‘America First’ concept,” Demby said.
Read: US has begun bilateral health negotiations with 16 African nations
ICYMI: US template for bilateral health deals bypasses WHO pandemic negotiations
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Branching out
Still, there are some following more traditional methods of aid delivery — including those in the philanthropic world. The Oak Foundation, for example, has supported dozens of organizations since 1983, and last year, made 411 grants across 40 countries.
Those grants were worth a total of $466 million, Devex Senior Development Analyst Miguel Antonio Tamonan reports, just over 40% of which went to organizations based in the U.S. While the vast majority of its grantees were in high-income countries — including not just the U.S., but the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and beyond — a smaller percentage of the foundation’s grants went to organizations in low- and middle-income countries, including South Africa, Brazil, and Serbia.
Miguel took a closer look at those in the latter category, finding that the Cape Town-based African Climate Foundation took home most of the Oak Foundation’s cash in low- and middle-income countries, followed by the Trag Foundation in Belgrade, Serbia.
Read: The Oak Foundation’s top grantees in low- and middle-income countries (Pro)
Philanthropy in the forecast
In other foundation news, there’s a ton brewing in Belém, Brazil — including the launch of the Climate and Health Funders Coalition, a $300 million commitment from some of the largest philanthropies in the world.
The coalition — which includes the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and several other major donors — was created to address climate-induced health issues, from weather-sensitive infectious diseases to conditions triggered by air pollution.
The goal is to advance solutions, innovations, and research on the topic, and to strengthen climate and health data to boost the systems behind them, according to Devex contributing reporter Cheena Kapoor.
“Climate change is the gravest health threat of our time, and no single organisation, community, or country can tackle it alone,” says Naveen Rao, senior vice president of the health initiative at another of the coalition’s funders, The Rockefeller Foundation.
Read: Philanthropies commit $300M for climate-health solutions at COP30
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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.
