It’s a USAID-focused edition today. The agency does not typically hold a business forecast call in the fourth quarter, but we do have an updated list of available contracts. We also look at USAID’s latest plans to reorganize, and in our funding activity section we cover a recent announcement for heating in Ukraine.
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Pipeline dreams
The U.S. Agency for International Development has released $4.6 billion in new opportunities since the last time we visited the business forecast, bringing total opportunities to $32.9 billion — $1.9 billion more than the same period last year. But there’s been little progress on the biggest group of contracts: the NextGen global health supply chain, which accounts for more than a third of all the opportunities on the list, with the release dates of several requests for proposals delayed once again.
Business forecast: USAID Q4 2022 (Pro)
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Funding activity
ADB. $1.87B for the development of a commuter railway network in the Philippines.
AfDB. $25M to provide loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria.
EBRD. $24.3M (€25M) to support green and sustainable investments in Turkey.
WB. $7.5M to strengthen the public-private partnership agenda in Panama.
USAID. $55M to aid the heating infrastructure in Ukraine.
Bureau of change
Featured opportunity: Flood focus
The European Union has announced €30 million in new humanitarian aid for Pakistan in the wake of unprecedented flooding.
The new funding will address urgent needs such as shelter, water and sanitation, food and nutrition, health, protection, education in emergencies, and cash assistance. Aid will be focused on the most affected areas of the country, including Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
It was only two years ago that USAID created the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation, as part of a flagship round of reorganizations under former U.S. President Donald Trump. Now, the next generation of leaders at USAID wants to reorganize the last round of reorganizations …
Three other bureaus will also see changes — resilience and food security; policy, planning, and learning; and budget and resource management — while two new offices will be created: the Office of the Chief Economist and the Office of Development Policy.
USAID says that the new system has proved overly complex and overstretched the leaders of the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation. And there are additional problems because USAID’s bureaus do not match up with corresponding sections of the Department of State.
Exclusive: USAID plans to break up a bureau in latest 'readjustment' (Pro)
Battered budgets
Development work, and the organizations that do it, rely heavily on money from official development assistance budgets for funding. This week there are several pieces of news that suggest those budgets are under a lot of pressure.
Up to $50 billion of ODA could be channeled into refugee costs this year, jeopardizing funding elsewhere. And big funders don’t seem to be stepping up to cover those costs. This week alone, we’ve got stories about a lackluster response from the EU and downsizing from Norway.
Rising costs: What will happen if refugee costs reach $50B? (Pro)
+ The free read: Is there a double standard when it comes to global charity? Siddhartha Basu from the International Growth Center suggests just that in this opinion piece examining charity to Ukraine vs. other recent crises.
UE Why?
Any development leader will be well familiar with ill-thought-out government interventions that cause needless trouble and make it hard to do their job, and the United States has served up a doozy.
This time it’s the fault of the introduction of the unique entity identifier — an alphanumeric string that you need to have in order to access the SAM database, which allows organizations working with the U.S. government to bid for contracts and get paid.
The UEI was introduced in April this year and immediately caused chaos for everyone, particularly for USAID partners.
Red tape: How identity numbers caused chaos for USAID overseas partners (Pro)
Test yourself
1. Which development organization employs the most people?
2. Which one spends the most money?
3. Which one works in most countries?
Find out all the answers in our latest explainer on the largest aid orgs.
DevExplains: What are the largest organizations in aid? (Pro)
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About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
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