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With major cuts to foreign assistance announced or anticipated in the US, the UK, and across the EU, and in the World Bank’s subsidized lending program, we must urgently work to get the most out of shrinking aid budgets. Nothing can prevent the cuts from leading to deaths, but we can still do better...

With donor priorities shifting and global crises competing for attention, the future of development aid—particularly for social sectors like education—has rarely been more uncertain. Given the dramatic reductions in US aid and impending cuts by other donors such as the UK, low- and middle-income cou...

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...

The Trump Administration has signaled that it would like to shut down USAID and absorb its programs into the State Department. That proposal should involve Congress directly, as USAID is an independent agency established under legislation. And lawmakers might want to consult the international record...

From March 3-5, over two dozen nonprofits and funders working at the intersection of AI and development convened in Bengaluru to kick off the AI for Global Development Accelerator. The initiative, which is a collaboration between the Agency Fund, OpenAI, and experts at the Center for Global Developm...

Yesterday, the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that he would fund an increase in the UK’s defence spending by cutting to its aid budget from 0.5 percent of gross national income (GNI) now, to 0.3 percent in 2027. In this blog, we explain what this will mean in practice.

In this blog, we conceptualise this as a health system shock, present a back-of-the-envelope assessment of LMICs that are most exposed, and discuss possibilities for short-term policy responses from other funders and LMIC governments, drawing lessons from the rapid global response to COVID-19.

USAID education spending has been effective, and likely extremely good value for money.

Dear Secretary Rubio: There have been few more eloquent advocates for foreign assistance than you. And I believe the case you make for US aid is backed up by considerable empirical evidence. As you have said, “millions of human beings are alive today because [of] the United States, and others in the...

In 1948, Congress overwhelmingly passed what would become known as the Marshall Plan. That act appropriated $13.3 billion over 1948-51 for Europe’s recovery, equivalent to about $150 billion today. It was proposed by a former general, not an economist or a politician, a man who understood well what ...