This is a joint post with Rachel Silverman.
Through our Value for Money working group, we’ve spent much of the past year immersed in the world of global health funding agencies. With so many new agencies, particularly in the last quarter century (Figure 1), understanding the intricacies of the global health family can be daunting, even for the most devoted observers.
At the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) recent annual meeting in Panama, the two richest men in the world –Carlos Slim and Bill Gates- discussed their contributions to a little known public-private partnership that aims to improve the health status of the poorest Central Americans and Mexicans – Salud Mesoamerica 2015 or SM2015.
There was bad news in research published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine about the effectiveness of what had seemed to be the best prospect for a malaria vaccine, known by the unsexy name of 'RTS,S'.
The study of the phase III trials finds that in babies (aged 6-12 weeks) the vaccine only reduces malaria by less than a third. This is disappointing because this is less than half the effectiveness that had been suggested by the phase II clinical trials.
Before he became the UK Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell was scathing about the habit of having big international conferences to ‘put large sums of money on the table’.
A few days ago Bill Gates released his annual letter to the world, opening with a discussion of how Gates-funded agricultural research can help Tanzanian farmers. Coincidentally, before coming to CGD I did some agricultural research in Tanzania myself -- funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- so I was eager to compare notes. Gates’ letter is so optimistic about agricultural innovation lifting Tanzanian farmers out of poverty, it feels almost impolite to point out that the main sou
This is a joint post with Owen Barder
Whether future historians remember last week’s G-20 Summit in Cannes will depend on what happens in the weeks and months ahead. If the eurozone problems spiral out of control, Cannes will be to the coming crash as the 1933 London Economic Conference was to the Great Depression: a lost chance to avert calamity. If Europe muddles through, the brief association of Cannes with the G-20 will be soon forgotten and the resort will again be famous for its film festival.
Chris Elias, President & CEO at PATH, will step down from his current position and join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) as President for global DEVELOPMENT in February 2012. Yes, that’s global development, not global health. First reactions from many in global health lamented the "loss" of one of the field’s most accomplished and visible experts. But as we digested the details of the announcement and discussed its implications, we realized that the Foundation’s decision could be a bonanza for global health. Here are two reasons why:
I had the honor to speak yesterday at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Philadelphia about the future of global poverty and what it means for philanthropy. I like to think in 3s, so here are my three 3s to frame the big questions:
I was excited to see the announcement that the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are partnering to support “agricultural research projects to help small farmers increase their yields and incomes.” But I was also puzzled.
This post originally appeared on devpolicy.org and devex and is based loosely on a February 10th talk at the Development Policy Center at Australian National University’s Crawford School and a March 1st speech at The International Development Research Centre in Ottawa..
The maxim that armies are always fighting the last war might just as aptly apply to development agencies: they are too often tackling yesterday’s problems with an outdated set of tools. If our development policies and agencies are to serve our interests, then we need them to both live in the present and prepare for the future. So, what then might development policy look like, say, a decade from now? What should we be thinking about now to get ready? Here are three big trends I think will be shaping the development future: