May’s top reads: Gates funding trends, USAID health supply chain review, and ‘global public goods’

As organizations around the world adopt different structures and set-ups in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and adjust to the new normal, our global team of journalists remain hard at work covering other major stories happening in the development sector.

This month, we investigated the European Commission’s prematurely announced sanction against IBF International Consulting, brought you the exclusive on Oxfam’s proposed layoffs, and broke the news on the U.S. President’s Response to Outbreaks proposal for global health security.

For our Devex Pro subscribers, we took our coverage even deeper. Our Devex Analytics team dug into data from 26 UNDP multiyear country strategies from 2019 and 2020 and shared insights on future funding trends. We spoke with experts on the challenges holding back Africa’s development finance institutions and highlighted strategies for strengthening them. We also took a closer look at the barriers to agricultural innovation in LMICs.

Here’s a look at our top-read Devex Pro stories for May:

1. Interactive: Gates Foundation’s 2019 funding trends and COVID-19 response. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has announced over $250 million in funding to support the COVID-19 response. Find out more on how and to whom the foundation awards its grants in our Tableau interactive.

2. USAID health supply chain project ‘fully functional’ but not strategic, review finds. A mid-term review of the largest contract in USAID’s history finds the project has shown major improvement in key metrics, but still lacks the capabilities of more sophisticated supply chains.

3. Who’s who in #globaldev: April 2020 appointments. We round up key executive appointments across major organizations and institutions in the aid sector last April.

4. The return of ‘global public goods.’ We speak with aid experts to find out if the return of this term to the global development lexicon indicates real change or just popular rhetoric.

5. Conference call: The future of German aid. COVID-19 has raised new challenges for Germany as a donor and provided an opportunity for it to step forward as a global development leader. Here are the top takeaways — and the recording from our call.

Check out all of our Devex Pro coverage.

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