The World Bank has yet to pin down a working definition for what it labels as private sector development (PSD). At different times during the past half-century, some of that work might reasonably be d...

The latest World Development Report (WDR) calls Artificial Intelligence (AI) “a rare path to prosperity” for developing economies. AI is now part of most conversations about health systems and develop...

The current vaccine we have against tuberculosis (TB)—the BCG vaccine—whilst valuable, has relatively low efficacy, and as a result TB remains the deadliest infectious disease in the world, killing ab...

A widely held view is that there is a severe shortage of health workers in low- and middle-income countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no doubt that many countries suffer from sever...

As someone who’s spent many years studying educational decisions, I’ve thought deeply about the issue of school choice and educational inequality. It was, therefore, with great interest that I read Ni...

The Great Lakes Fisheries Commission helps combat invasive, parasitic sea lampreys that threaten native fish populations (and thus fisheries)—and look like the stuff of nightmares. Some good news for ...

There are concerns that this year's El Niño--set to be the largest in living memory--could add another source of pressure on global food markets, alongside volatile global oil and fertilizer prices as a result of conflict in the Middle East, and renewed...

The direction of travel laid out in the Global Health Strategy is correct. To the extent possible, health services should be provided and funded by the countries home to those receiving those services...

A new crackdown on foreigners operating small businesses in Kenya--announced by President Ruto in September--risks undermining progress made on integrating refugees. The government of Kenya must urgently clarify how it intends refugees to be affected, a...

Sweden alone cannot make up for the loss of support or funding by larger donors. It can, however, choose to lead against the current: defending international law consistently, providing predictable finance, supporting multilateral institutions, investin...

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is the largest global pooled fund focused on education. This week at UNGA, GPE will ask donors to contribute to its fifth replenishment, seeking to raise at ...

In this CGD note, Andrew Dabalen and Jacques Morisset aren't adding another list of what Africa lacks. Their argument is sharper than that: on skills, food, power, and public finance, the region has t...

It is a justifiable commonplace that data on outcomes is key to effective aid: for targeting, delivery, monitoring and evaluation. Last year certainly provided additional evidence of the need for data...

How good are donor organisations at designing their aid programmes? Organisations differ substantially in the requirements they place on programme sponsors to follow good design principles. We would love to assess donors on the impact of their aid portf...

Development leaders will gather in Madrid this October. After two years of debate on the future of development cooperation, we now need to build a system that can command political support and deliver...

In one of the poorest and least-supported, Malawi—a country of around 22 million people—the UK has provided financial support totalling around £1.6 billion in today’s money since 2009. So, what has th...

In the current international aid environment, where bilateral funding for education has been significantly cut, multilateral financing mechanisms are likely to play an increasingly important role in enabling low- and middle-income countries to access th...

The World Bank’s repeated reorganizations of its Private Sector Development functions have obscured a more fundamental challenge: the lack of a consistent framework for determining when intervention i...

The reach of electricity in Africa is rapidly extending, not least thanks to an explosion in imports of solar panels. This is good news for the quality of life of people in the region and is the prima...

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) chair Carsten Stauer suggested on Monday that any changes to ODA graduation rules would be limited to highly aid dependent countries nearing the high-...

There’s immense value in curating an evidence-based set of scalable, cost-effective interventions, but not everything is known or measurable, and investing in things need not come at the expense of in...

Clark and Nielsen (2026) assemble a large dataset of quasi-experimental studies and argue that the causal return to an extra year of schooling is close to zero once one corrects for the selective publ...

Renaissance Philanthropy has mobilized half a billion dollars in under three years through a lean, time-bound fund model. Here is how it works and what it means for organizations operating in its issu...

Our new research presents a comparative analysis of historical emissions from numerous datasets using different measures of emissions, different classifications of developed and developing countries, ...

Carsten Staur, Chair of the DAC, responds to Charles Kenny's blog on the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), disagreeing with some of the conclusions and setting out his view of the DAC’s r...

Mobile phones are ubiquitous in today’s world. Consumers can now tap their phones, or even scan their palms, to pay for goods and services. This seamless access to financial services is increasingly c...

A recent announcement by Britain’s new government raises questions about the impact on climate aid of swapping grants for loans

Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) is attempting to break the deadlock among Member States over the EU’s long-term budget, the 2028-2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MF...

The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) defines what counts as Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) —what we usually think of as “aid.” It has been around since the 1960s, and has weathered...

Survey data can be distorted through mistrust, discomfort, or demand effects on the part of respondents. We test whether familiar enumerators--those with whom a respondent has completed a prior survey--influence data quality in a panel survey with small...

I recently proposed an IDA Health Window as the future of multilateral global health financing. The proposal is beginning to gain traction. It has received interest (mostly positive, but always with g...

AI RCTs are on the rise, a trend that’s set to continue, and is likely to intensify. But randomising a rapidly evolving, increasingly widely adopted, technology poses a distinct set of challenges. So ...

Apply to Program Coordinator – Global Health Policy at Center for Global Development in London, London, United Kingdom.

Rigorous evidence on cost-effective interventions must guide the development community, but these interventions will underperform without certain enabling conditions—conditions that can only be made f...

The U.S. is now operating an aid program without an aid agency.

Apply to Research Assistant Sustainable Dev Finance II at Center for Global Development in London, London, United Kingdom.

Public procurement in LMICs averages 13 percent of GDP—roughly $5.4 trillion annually. Although AI-enabled products currently represent a small share of procurement spending, it is likely to grow. . O...

Apply to Research Assistant – Market Shaping Accelerator at Center for Global Development in Washington, DC.

CGD’s Rachel Glennerster speaks with Princeton’s Seema Jayachandran about how gender inequality can manifest differently in different regions, why GDP and labor access don't necessarily align, and wha...

Under this administration, reciprocity is a bedrock principle of trade policy, making a simple extension of AGOA highly unlikely. In addition, USTR is exercising alternative tariff authorities to thei...

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Sharp aid cuts in 2025 and the immediate financing crisis they precipitated have brought to the fore calls to address longstanding challenges in the global health aid architecture. While a greater rol...