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Global Development & Economic Advancement · Dec 2, 2025

December 2025

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Global Development & Economic Advancement · Global Development & Economic Advancement

This month I’m supporting a campaign with GiveDirectly and other Substackers. If it’s successful, 800 families across three villages in Northern Rwanda will each receive $1,100 in direct cash transfers.

I’ve been donating to GiveDirectly since 2014 when I had high uncertainty about how to do good. After working in evidence and impact for over a decade my uncertainty about how to improve the world is even higher, but GiveDirectly still seems like one of the surer bets to do meaningful good.

They were one of the few orgs that came up more than once when I asked economists and development people about donation opportunities for economic growth.

Cash also remains one of the more dignified poverty interventions, letting people spend on what matters most to them.

If you’re interested in supporting this campaign, you can donate via this link.

  • Max Roser - The end of progress against extreme poverty?

    • I have written a response here arguing that progress might actually be continuing if the World Bank data is inaccurate (which I suspect it is)

  • The Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria reached $11.3 billion of its $18 billion target

    • 33% of the funding came from the U.S. (still a decrease from last time but some people expected 0%)

  • Open Philanthropy is now Coefficient Giving

    • (There is a debate on how to shorten this and I’m trying to make CoGi catch on)

  • Alexander Berger (CEO of CoGi) - Four lessons from $4 billion in impact-focused giving

  • The 2025 World Urbanization Prospects used a new standardised grid-based method (rather than relying on varying national definitions) revealing that the world is more urbanised than previously estimated

    • 45% of the global population lives in cities

    • 36% in towns and semi-dense areas

    • 19% in rural areas

    • The combined 81% urban population is much higher than the previously claimed 58%

    • 3,000 cities experienced population decline between 2015 and 2025, predominantly in China and India

  • Chris O. Ogunmodede - Some straight talk about Nigeria’s ‘Christian genocide’ controversy - A long post assessing popular arguments of a complicated debate

  • Asterisk - A conversation on AI and wealth distribution

    • A transcript from a panel discussion including GiveDirectly

  • Event - GiveWell virtual panel discussion - Growing needs, shrinking aid: cost-effective action in a year of funding cuts - 4th December

  • New AidData report tracks, for the first time, China’s loans and grants

    • Shifting from development aid towards strategic lending in HIC’s, focused on critical infrastructure, minerals and high-tech sectors

    • ODA commitments fell to $1.9b in 2023, their lowest in two decades

  • The Gates Foundation has pledged $1.4b to support farmers across Africa and Asia

  • The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is shifting the bulk of philanthropy to science, focusing on AI and biology to curb disease, away from social advocacy, education and politics

    • CZI will spend at least $10b on basic scientific research over the next decade, more than twice the $4b it spent in its first decade

  • US Department of State to provide $150m to Zipline to expand access to medical supplies across Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda

  • MacArthur Foundation - The Sentinel project awarded $100m to prevent pandemics

  • Japan is shifting from traditional aid to strategic VC investment in Africa, pledging $5.5b in financial packages and $1.5b in impact investment

  • Denmark to cut IAVI funds, prioritising multilaterals over smaller grants

  • The cautionary tale of the Sahel’s Great Green Wall

    • Launched in 2007, aiming to plant 8,000km of trees across the Sahel by 2030

    • It has largely failed despite billions spent, with most projects abandoned, international donors bypassing African agencies

    • Senegal shows only 1 of 36 reforested plots with any re-greening

  • Growth Teams have launched Export Boom Atlas, which documents 80+ case studies of rapid export growth across 40+ developing countries and 9 sectors since 1995

  • Why West Africa imports rice while East Africa exports it

  • Morocco hits high-tech manufacturing target 11 years early

    • Technology industries now generate over 50% of the country’s industrial added value

  • Nigeria’s foreign reserves hit seven-year high, reach $46.7b

  • Sarah Logan - Emulating Indonesia: Export bans to spur local value addition?

  • WB - How price controls spread technology but stall innovation

  • Karthik Tadepalli - What happened to technology transfer? - The death of the 20th century’s greatest development policy

  • Côte d’Ivoire climbs into Africa’s top 10 investment hubs on industrial reforms

  • OWID - Growth of global GDP per capita has been remarkably steady over the past three decades

  • Novartis’ new malaria treatment cured 97.4% of patients, more than the current best treatment

    • It kills resistant parasites too, and probably blocks transmission better than current drugs

  • Gavi and UNICEF will pay 25% less for a new malaria vaccine - reducing the cost of the R21 vaccine to $2.99 a dose from ~$4

  • CGD - Smarter vaccine doses: a high-impact fix for global immunisation

  • Replacing paper-based records with electronic medical records in Malawian HIV clinics reduced annual deaths by 28%

  • Maldives just made it illegal for some generations to smoke

  • Inside Nigeria’s 100 million child vaccine drive

  • Our World in Data

    • While vaping is not risk-free, it is less harmful than tobacco

    • Anxiety is one of the world’s most common health issues. How have treatments evolved over the last 70 years?

    • Seasonal flu kills about 700,000 people each year across the world

    • Almost one billion children have died globally since 1950

  • The Examination - Recycling lead for U.S. car batteries is poisoning people

  • UNAIDS reports disruption to HIV services across multiple countries, including treatment initiation declines and preventive medicine distribution dropping 20-60%+

  • Rwanda to set up $24m lab to detect and respond to zoonotic diseases

  • Annual investments of $50-100k could establish air quality monitoring in 83 countries, whilst air pollution causes 7 million deaths annually

  • VoxDev - What are academic incentives? How do they compare to incentives for policymakers and practitioners?

  • Statecraft podcast - How diplomacy works in Africa with Judd Devermont

    • 16 years as an intelligence analyst, and most recently, Senior Director for African Affairs at the NSC

  • Rohit Shinde - India’s labour gets its 1991 moment - A tour of the labour economics behind these reforms

  • CGD

  • DevEx

    • The Millennium Challenge Corporation has made significant changes to its scorecard, paving the way for more countries to meet the requirements and qualify for funding

    • Backed by $10b in guarantees, a new initiative will help public development banks issue green bonds and access cheaper finance for climate-vulnerable countries

    • DFC’s authorisation has lapsed

      • The U.S. development finance institution will continue to honour contracts, but will not make new commitments

    • Green Climate Fund hits record $3.26b in project finance for 2025

  • Closing the Deal: Financing our security against pandemic threats​

    • Report of the G20 high-level independent panel

  • UAE announces $1b initiative to expand AI in Africa

  • The Republic of the Congo entered the international bond market for the first time since 2007

  • The Asian Development Bank approved updates to its energy policy that allows investments and capacity building in nuclear power

    • All 50 Asian members of the AsDB voted in favour of the change. Of the 19 “non-regionals,” only Germany and Austria opposed

  • South Africa wins credit rating boost after two decades

  • S&P raises Nigeria’s outlook to ‘positive’ as reforms take hold

  • Sheriff Alimi - Structural issues mean capital moves extremely slowly through Africa’s fragmented 50+ legal systems

    • Currency restrictions require lengthy approval processes that trap funds locally - Nigeria has $7b worth of uncleared requests for foreign currency

  • Anthropic partners with Rwandan government to bring AI education to hundreds of thousands of learners

  • Rest of World - ChatGPT is huge in India. These locally focused startups found a way to compete

  • Karthik Tadepalli - AI automation measures are not up to the task

  • Chris Paxton - Humanity as a Service - AI and robotic companions are increasingly a part of real life for a shocking number of people, and we should expect this portion to grow

  • NPR - AI steps in to detect the world’s deadliest infectious disease (TB)

  • World Bank - Harnessing AI for agricultural transformation

    • Includes 60 AI use cases across the agrifood value chain

  • The Windfall Trust - The AI bubble and new research on automation & inequality

    • The same technology can reduce inequality in some workforces while increasing it in others, explaining why recent experiments show contradictory results

  • Stanford develops real-world benchmarks for healthcare AI agents

  • Sonia Vallentin - How tech plans to outsmart the next pandemic

  • Rest of World - Syria’s new tech minister wants to rebuild a nation left offline

  • World Bank - When risk aversion keeps firms small: evidence from Kenyan retailers

  • Dharmesh Ba - WhatsApp owns India!

    • WhatsApp has become India’s involuntary business infrastructure (500 million users with no strong competitor) but creates systemic problems because Meta optimises advertising opportunities rather than SME productivity needs

  • Semafor - African fintech players seek new growth paths

    • PalmPay is evolving from providing quick money transfers to offering a health insurance feature that has enrolled one million people in it’s first year

    • Wave arrived in Cameroon in June, expanding its African footprint to nine countries, and is looking to offer loans as well

  • Timothy Motte

  • World’s biggest mining project begins operations in Guinea

    • China backed $23b iron-ore mine could vastly reduce the energy needed to produce steel

    • At full capacity it would produce ~7% of the worlds iron ore

  • EIB Global and ADB invest $275m to modernise Mauritania’s main railway corridor

  • Works in Progress - Why the developing world needs wider streets

  • The world’s largest climate multilateral fund made its biggest financial commitment yet to build a $6b water desalination plant in Jordan

  • Delivering Connectivity: Ethiopia’s Modjo–Hawassa expressway nears completion - part of the Cairo–Cape Town Trans-African highway

  • Roads: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Development

  • 2Africa is the first cable to connect East and West Africa in a continuous system and link Africa to the Middle East, South Asia and Europe. With a reach of 33 countries enabling connectivity for 3 billion people

  • Donors at COP30 committed more than $142m to CGIAR to accelerate agricultural research and innovation for climate-resilient food systems

  • Senegal plans 38% budget increase for agriculture in 2026

  • Senegal secures over $300m to boost food sovereignty

  • Solar dryers are saving Africa’s tomato harvests

    • Some estimate that about 40% of the tomatoes Africa produces are lost before they reach consumers

  • Nigeria Secures $500m World Bank loan to boost agricultural value chains and rural industrialisation

  • Ghana’s vegetable industry expects farm-to-market costs to fall if the government delivers on extensive road upgrades outlined in the 2026 budget

  • For more African agriculture news check out Ag Safari by Hannatu Asheolge

  • Kenya eyes new energy deals as power cuts intensify

  • In 2020, nearly all new trucks in China ran on diesel. By the first half of 2025, battery-powered trucks accounted for 22% of new heavy truck sales, up from 9.2% in the same period in 2024

  • Nigeria’s Dangote plans $1b investments in Zimbabwe

  • World Bank

  • Hannah Ritchie - What happened to global carbon emissions this year?

    • Emissions from fossils are up, emissions from land use are down

  • Guinea-Bissau installs a military ruler after a coup

  • Kenya sounds alarm as Tanzania unrest hits regional trade

  • Mali is grinding towards a halt - As the country’s fuel crisis continues, the military government is facing pressures of its own

  • Democracies tend to have lower levels of corruption

  • MSF - Sudan: Desperate conditions and accounts of mass violence in North Darfur

  • India’s violent crime cases fall 29% in a decade, riots down 40%

  • Congo and Rwanda-backed rebels sign framework for peace deal in latest bid to end decades-long conflict

  • Youth crime rates in sharp decline - International study shows long-term downward trend in developed countries

  • Mapping the intersection of violence and food insecurity in West Africa

  • Podcast - Hard Drugs - The History of Vaccines

  • The White House - Launching the Genesis Mission

    • A federal initiative to build an integrated AI platform using DOE supercomputers and scientific datasets to accelerate research across domains like energy, manufacturing and biotech

  • World Bank data shows 800m people lack official identity documents (down from 1 billion in 2017) and 2.9 billion lack digital ID access

  • Hurricane Melissa triggers 100% payout of $150m World Bank Catastrophe Bond for Jamaica

  • When every child is stunted, no child Is? How local norms distort perceptions of growth

  • Fostering trust to save lives: evidence from organ donation in Tunisia

  • Lev Heller - New Cause Area: Administrative Data Sets

  • OWID - There are huge differences in death rates from road injuries, even across high-income countries

  • Measles deaths down 88% since 2000

  • Uganda - 64% reduction in annual AIDS deaths from 56k in 2010 to 20k in 2024 and a fall in new HIV infections from 96k to 37k over the same period

  • Egypt eliminates trachoma as a public health problem

  • Seychelles, Mauritius, and Cabo Verde eliminate measles and rubella

  • Gavi’s HPV vaccination programme has reached 86 million girls in lower-income countries since 2023, tripling coverage to 25% and potentially preventing 1.4 million future cervical cancer deaths

  • Between 2023 and 2024, the global rate of people falling ill with TB declined by nearly 2%, while deaths fell by 3%

  • For more good news check out Fix The News & Human Progress

Read the original on gdea.substack.com ↗

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