The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has released half-year data on funding to crisis regions. Some of the largest appeals, however, remain highly underfunded.
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Aid gap
Since the start of the decade, OCHA has been tracking a steady rise in the amount of funding needed to tackle humanitarian crises, driven by the pandemic and by conflicts.
Now, at the halfway point in 2022, the gap between contributions and need is at its widest ever, and the number of people needing urgent support has passed 300 million for the first time, according to the OCHA half-year report.
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Five crises require multibillion funding pots — in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Ukraine. OCHA data shows four of them are well short of the level of support needed. In Ukraine, in contrast, funding for humanitarian needs is ahead of the level required.
Meanwhile, G-7 leaders have pledged $4.5 billion to address the crisis of rising food prices. But food security experts say the funding is only a fraction of what is needed.
Shortfall: Humanitarian funding gap hits new record
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Funding activity
AfDB. $41.4M (€39.6M) loan to improve road access in Cameroon.
BOAD. $64M for sanitation and development projects in Senegal.
GAC. $224.3M (CA$288.3M) to support crisis response in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
JICA. $45M to improve waste management in Peru.
USAID. $40M to support water infrastructure in Nigeria.
See more funding opportunities.
Key hires unlocked
The U.S. Agency for International Development tenders some big contracts. Most recently, it released a request for proposals for a $1.5 billion contract to provide in-country logistics, as part of its Next Generation Global Health Supply Chain Suite of Programs, or NextGen.
But what roles do you need in place to win a USAID contract? That’s the question that Rebecca Root, reporting for Devex, has addressed this week, using unique data gathered from our jobs board.
Job market: The roles that USAID contractors typically hire for
Readiness readies
Featured opportunity: $500M from World Bank for bread in Egypt
Egypt will borrow $500 million from the World Bank to ensure that low-income and vulnerable households have uninterrupted access to bread, and to improve food security policies.
The Emergency Food Security and Resilience Support Project will help cushion the impact of the war in Ukraine on the country. The project will help buy imported wheat, equivalent to one month of supply for the Bread Subsidy Program which supports around 70 million low-income Egyptians.
The World Bank last week approved the creation of a new fund to help low- and middle-income nations prevent and prepare for future pandemics.
Current pledges stand at $1.1 billion, though this is only about 10% of the $10.5 billion that the bank and the World Health Organization say is needed annually.
The bank hopes that initial funding from the United States and the European Union will crowd in further donations.
Read: World Bank approves creation of 'ambitious' pandemic preparedness fund
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Strong foundation
Billionaire philanthropist Gautam Adani and his family have pledged to donate 600 billion Indian rupees ($7.7 billion) to a range of social causes in India.
Adani, chairman of the multinational conglomerate Adani Group, is worth more than $98 billion as of the close of Friday’s trading day at the New York Stock Exchange. According to Bloomberg, he is Asia’s richest person.
The funding will be administered by the Adani Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Adani Group. That donation alone would put the Adani Foundation in the world’s top 25 largest philanthropic foundations.
Funding: Adani Foundation to deploy $7.7B for social programs in India
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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.
