Commentary

Aid agencies across Europe and North America are seeing their budgets slashed. Replenishments to multilateral agencies from the International Development Association (IDA) through Gavi to the Global Fund are under threat. The countries most at risk are those most reliant on foreign assistance to fun...

The State Department is floating foreign assistance reorganization proposals. While there is surely a lot that could be done to make US foreign assistance more effective, I hope Congress focuses on the far more urgent task of ensuring the foreign assistance funding it has already appropriated can be...

The skyrocketing cost of high-cost, innovative medicines is straining healthcare budgets worldwide. In 2021, global pharmaceutical spending hit $1.4 trillion, with oncology drugs alone accounting for over $185 billion—a staggering 70 percent increase since 2016. For low- and middle-income countries ...

It has been almost two and half years since the IMF launched the Resilience and Sustainability Facility. While the RSF saw a strong initial uptake, demand peaked in 2023 and has since tapered off. Two key features of RSF eligibility and program design are inhibiting its uptake by countries.

The US Administration has presented a weak case for its argument that US foreign assistance was so riddled with abuse and fraud that the only answer was to shut down USAID and reboot. The lists of terrible projects and “appalling waste” don’t show any evidence of fraud or abuse, and I’d argue most o...

Last week we presented some estimates of the extent and distribution of cuts to USAID assistance. Since then, a list of active USAID projects has also been leaked. We recalculate our estimates of active and cancelled USAID grants from this data.

In a city increasingly disenchanted with international market-based competition, one block on H Street in Washington DC remains committed to the cause. The World Bank’s procurement rules, which apply to its investment project financing, still mandate international competitive bidding for nearly all ...