The U.S. is beefing up its Sudan portfolio with a new special envoy to the nation nine months after its current war began.
Also in today’s edition: The Gates Foundation is lukewarm about no-strings-attached giving, and a take on USAID’s new bureau. Plus, did the world spend more on iPhones than on development?
Take our quiz to test your knowledge of some of the past month’s big globaldev stories.
|
Is Sudan a priority for the White House? Opinions are mixed, but U.S. President Joe Biden is taking a step that both Democrats and Republicans have been urging for months: He’s tapped a senior troubleshooter to help prevent one of Africa’s largest countries from spiraling deeper into civil war, ethnic cleansing, and humanitarian catastrophe.
The job is going to Tom Perriello, a former Democrat representative from Virginia who has little experience in Sudan — though he has served as a special envoy to Africa’s Great Lakes region. In April, he left his job as executive director of U.S. programs at the Open Society Foundations.
As Perriello takes the mantle of special envoy to Sudan, the U.S. ambassador to the country, John Godfrey, is stepping down, my colleague Colum Lynch exclusively reports.
Colum has inside details on the twists and turns of Perriello’s appointment and Godfrey’s exit, but suffice it to say, the naming of a special envoy could quell criticism that the U.S. president hasn’t prioritized the meltdown in Sudan.
“No single place has suffered from the gap between American policymakers’ atrocities prevention rhetoric and their ability to deliver more than Sudan,” says Akshaya Kumar of Human Rights Watch. “Unlike Gaza, Sudan is blessed with bipartisan support on the Hill. Unlike Ukraine, the fighters terrorizing its populace don’t wear the uniform of a veto-wielding great power. But practically, that has meant little for Sudanese who have seen their country go up in flames over the past nine months.”
But a Biden administration official countered that any suggestion that Sudan lacks high-level engagement “couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Exclusive: US to appoint Tom Perriello as special envoy to Sudan
Sign up for a Devex Community account at no charge to unlock free exclusive news.
|
A message from the World Bank
Fragility Forum 2024: Adapting and innovating in a volatile world
Fragility, conflict, and violence is a global challenge. By 2030, 60% of the world’s poor will live in countries classified as fragile and conflict-affected situations. Fragility Forum 2024 will examine the successes and failures of developmental interventions and seek adaptive and innovative approaches best suited to the evolving global landscape.
Register now.
|
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has thrust trust-based philanthropy — in which donors allow nonprofits to spend grant money how they choose, with few to no reporting requirements — into the limelight.
But apparently, no-strings giving is not every billionaire’s cup of tea.
While the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports the idea of trust-based grantmaking, the organization is not planning to broadly adopt the approach itself, CEO Mark Suzman said.
“We think that’s a very valuable approach as part of the broader philanthropic ecosystem that, you know, has a lot to recommend it,” he said during a virtual briefing Friday in response to a comment about the foundation’s reporting requirements being “over the top.”
“That’s something that we’ve been working on and I think improving,” Suzman replied to the criticism.
As for trust-based giving, “You can’t do an investment like a vaccine trial that’s a general operating grant,” he said. “You have to have clear outcomes and metrics and objectives about what you expect and hope the vaccine will do.”
Read: Why the Gates Foundation isn’t shifting to trust-based grantmaking
Background reading: With trust-based philanthropy, donors ‘don’t need to have the answer’
Not a Devex Pro member yet? Start your 15-day free trial to access all our exclusive events, insider insights, career resources, and more.
|
It’s a new bureau in USAID but an old concept — and to George Ingram and Susan Reichle, it represents a course correction that breaks down silos that were acting as barriers to success at the agency.
On Jan. 10, USAID Administrator Samantha Power swore in Michele Sumilas as head of the newly instituted Bureau for Planning, Learning and Resource Management, aka PLR. The goal is to merge policy, strategy, and budget into one coherent entity.
“The rejoining of these critical and interdependent functions into a single bureau has been a key recommendation for improving USAID’s effectiveness for more than a decade,” Ingram of the Brookings Institute and Reichle of the International Youth Foundation write in an opinion article for Devex.
“There is constant friction between policy and budget that is nearly impossible to align if the two are managed separately with two disparate sets of staff responding to different demands,” they add.
But now that budget and policy are back together, what’s next? Ingram and Reichle outline five steps to cement the merger, including adequate staffing, ensuring the new bureau is led by a Senate-confirmed assistant administrator, and strengthening the relationship between the bureau and its main counterpart/interlocutor at the State Department.
Opinion: 5 next steps for USAID now that policy and budget are merged
Listen to the latest episode of our podcast where we discuss the suggestions — from local organizations, international agencies, and USAID staff — on how USAID can better shift power to local organizations.
|
Sponsored by H&M Foundation
Giving power to waste pickers to boost the circular economy
A holistic, collaborative initiative is helping to solve the complex web of challenges keeping Bengaluru’s waste pickers in poverty.
|
What did the world spend more on last year? International development or iPhones?
Tech giant Apple filed its final results for the calendar year 2023 on Thursday, so my colleague David Ainsworth thought it would be a good time to find out. Sales of iPhones came to a little over $200 billion. That’s actually a little lower than the latest figures we have for official development assistance, which was $211 billion in 2022, and thus could be somewhere over $220 billion for 2023 if ODA rises in line with donor economies.
Of course, a lot of other money flows into development too. There’s some argument over what we might want to count as development funding, but we could look at spending by INGOs, which was around $56 billion in 2022 according to OECD; cash from foundations, which is more than $12 billion from just the largest funders in 2022; and funding from non-DAC donors, which is just under $18 billion in 2022.
On that measure, it starts to look like development is well ahead. We’re getting up around $300 billion here …
But wait. iPhones comprised only about half of Apple’s revenues. Once you throw in iPads and smartwatches and everything else, Apple’s final income for 2023 was just under $386 billion, so development funding has a ways to go to catch up.
|
Opinion corner
- Can the U.S. serve as an example in the wake of last year’s U.N. climate change talks? Gina McCarthy, former White House national climate adviser, and Craig Cogut of Pegasus Capital Advisors think so. “The passage and implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, created an unprecedented opportunity for the United States to come to the negotiating table at COP 28 with a proven commitment to climate action,” they write. “The IRA is no longer an experiment. It demonstrates the value of the public and private sector working together, which is exactly what we hope will happen in the global south through the significant amount of funds pledged at COP 28.”
|
Introducing the Trust, Accountability, and Inclusion Collaborative – revitalizing governance for development
Yes, we can tackle the climate emergency, inequality, and democratic decline by investing in a world where people are informed and empowered, governments and businesses are open and responsive, and collective action enhances the public good. From tax reform to green accountability to information integrity and community participation, TAI is your hub for funder learning, strategizing, tracking field trends, and engaging peer funders.
Learn more / subscribe to our Weekly
|
U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell urged increased global efforts to bridge the financing gap ahead of COP 29 in Baku, emphasizing the need to mobilize at least $2.4 trillion annually for low- and middle-income countries. [Financial Times]
The World Bank approved new initiatives enabling member countries facing natural disasters and other shocks to swiftly access emergency funds from their existing loan programs. [Reuters]
The U.N. and its humanitarian partners announced that $2.7 billion will be needed to aid millions of civilians in Yemen this year. [UN News]
|
Thank you for reading today’s Newswire, edited by Fiona Zublin, copy edited by Nicole Tablizo, and produced by Patricia Guerrero. Have a news tip? Email [email protected].
Forwarded by a friend?
|
Devex thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters.
Our editorial content remains independent.
Interested in partnering with us?
Get in touch.
Would you recommend our content?
|
|