Devex

A continued slump in the U.K.'s overall aid budget is hitting the sector hard, with the FCDO's latest pipeline showing a significant drop in projected spending for development contracts. Last month, the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office released its first commercial pipeline in nearly two years, setting an indicative budget of £729.5 million for development contracts.

It’s unclear what happens to FIND after these leadership changes. The organization faces an uncertain future, based on its recently published financial statement. Leadership changes are afoot at FIND, the Geneva-based foundation dedicated to improving people’s access to health diagnostics that has faced mismanagement allegations and donor suspensions.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention helped build America's global AIDS response. As the Trump administration overhauls the agency's role both at home and abroad, CDC officials worry about the future of HIV programs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, is in danger of being sidelined from the global AIDS response it helped build — with implications that extend beyond HIV programs.

Plus, expert advice on how to avoid job-search burnout. This week, we learn how a small group of global health and malaria experts mobilized after USAID-led funding cuts disrupted malaria programs. Through a new initiative, they’ve drawn on decades of technical expertise to help health ministries identify critical gaps in their malaria responses and are now seeking funding through the U.S. State Department to continue their work.

One set of questions kept surfacing during discussions: Who will shape AI? Where will the wealth it creates flow? Can governance keep pace? And will LMICs help shape AI's future — or simply adapt to decisions made elsewhere? Before heading to Geneva this week, I heard AI for Good was a trade show filled with robots, demos, and solutions — not a spot for the biggest debates about development or global governance. But this year was different.

The U.N.'s new Independent International Scientific Panel on AI hopes a shared evidence base can help governments navigate growing disagreements over the technology's risks, opportunities, and governance. As governments race to develop rules for artificial intelligence, members of a new United Nations scientific panel argue they first need to agree on something more fundamental: the facts.

Critics worry that shrinking the global footprint of the U.K’s cultural and educational organization is coming at the expense of the nation’s soft power. Plus, the sisters doing it for themselves with tech, and Africa’s aid cliff. The British Council is closing offices in nine countries and cutting a quarter of its workforce as it battles back from years of financial turmoil. Supporters say it’s turning a corner.

In the industrial town of Thika, just north of Nairobi, Kenya, hospital administrator Sister Maria Inviolata has spent several years trying to maintain the Immaculate Heart of Mary Mission Hospital Kilimambogo. The challenge is the lack of funding, which means that the clinic struggles to purchase drugs and that rudimentary tests such as X-rays are of poor quality. The problem peaked in 2023 when staff were struggling to care for their patients due to a lack of resources.

Opinion: The funding crisis has pushed U.K. INGOs into difficult choices. It has also created an opportunity to rethink power, shift decision-making, and build partnerships that are less dependent on donor capitals and more accountable to the communities they serve. The collapse in aid funding has forced painful decisions across the U.K.’s international NGO sector.

As aid budgets shrink and philanthropy searches for greater leverage, foundations are increasingly asking where their money can achieve something that governments and markets cannot. At the recent Philanthropy Asia Summit, one idea came up in nearly every room: philanthropy as risk capital. This means funding the experimentation and uncertainty that other players are unwilling to bear. The discussion largely focused on public goods.