Can health survive the development finance revolution?

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With aid budgets under pressure globally, delegates at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Sevilla, Spain, are urgently exploring innovative ways to fund global development. But as the spotlight shifts toward private capital, there’s a growing concern that essential interventions without immediate financial returns — such as health investments — could be overlooked.

“We’re very clear that the cheapest money — concessional money, grant financing, and very concessional loans — should be allocated to those investments that give you this massive societal return, but not necessarily a financial return,” said Kalpana Kochhar, director of development policy and finance at the Gates Foundation, in an onstage conversation with Devex President and Editor-in-Chief Raj Kumar.

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance demonstrates how strategic health investments can pay off over time. “Gavi has graduated a number of countries who originally needed that subsidy to bring in vaccines and help purchase them at a lower price, but now [those countries] are doing it on their own,” Kumar said. However, at the recent Gavi replenishment round, pledges fell short by about $2.9 billion of the total budget request.

The discussion also highlighted new opportunities to attract private investment in health manufacturing — from vaccine production to locally made bed nets — and reflected on the progress made since the last Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, about a decade ago.

This special episode of This week in global development was sponsored by the Gates Foundation.