As Germany rolls out programs under its €1 billion Development Investment Fund for Africa, the country’s development strategy for Africa is finally coming into focus — and it looks a lot like private sector growth. Most of the fund is dedicated to easing the entrance of German businesses into African markets or helping African businesses grow. Read more.
All of my coverage from the 2019 World Health Summit:
Germany has been lauded for how it has grappled with the legacy of the Holocaust and its anti-Semitic past. A sense of collective guilt is cultivated through school tours of concentration camps and public memorials, including brass stones placed in front of apartment buildings to honor the victims of the Holocaust who once lived inside. It speaks to the seriousness with which Germans take their vow to never forget the crimes of earlier generations.
Yet even as the country has tended to its collective memory, officials have neglected a persistent strain of racism and xenophobia that education and memorials have been unable to eradicate. Such beliefs, alongside unvanquished neo-Nazi ideology, have fueled the formation of underground right-wing terrorist cells and periodically erupt in acts of violence. Read more.
At the Rhodes Forum, disagreement is the goal. The annual dialogue on the Greek island pulls together several hundred business leaders, academics, and the occasional head of state to debate key geopolitical issues that range from whether new institutions are needed to shape the global order, to the ongoing trade war between the United States and China.
There was little disagreement to be had, though, on the issue of sustainable development for the global south — a central topic at this year's forum, which ended Saturday. Participants charted a vision of development fueled by new infrastructure and funded not by World Bank or International Monetary Fund loans, but by less restrictive sources of financing, such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Read more.
Social epidemiologist specializing in workplace mental health. Born in Melbourne, Australia, on May 1, 1983, she died in Melbourne on August 12, 2019. Read more.
“Our goal is to be the Davos of global food of global agriculture," Kenneth Quinn, the president of the World Food Prize Foundation, told Devex. "To bring the intellectual firepower together around where do we go, what are the innovations, how will they impact and affect the poorest developing countries.”
Critics, who warn that the private sector will always prioritize profit over health, worry that the World Food Prize is leveraging its influence to boost the food and agricultural industry’s role in addressing malnutrition. Their critique speaks to a larger tension within the global nutrition community about how, if at all, to engage the private sector.
Paediatrician and expert on asthma and child and infant respiratory systems. Born in Renfrew, UK, on Feb 11, 1958, he died in Bristol, UK, on July 24, 2019. Read more.
Leaders of the global health architecture frame health funding as a capital investment. It is central to their case for domestic financing for universal health coverage — the idea that now dominates the global health agenda.
There are questions about the implications of positioning health financing as an investment, including whether that approach aligns with the vision of inclusive health services that is at the core of UHC and whether it can guarantee sustainability given the political reality that governments often prize investments that offer more immediate returns. Read more.
Ophthalmologist who invented a new technique for cataract surgery. Born in Harlem, New York, on Nov 4, 1942, she died in San Francisco, California, on May 30, 2019. Read more.
In 2016, Germany became the world’s second-largest aid donor by volume — but as the country grapples with its new role as a development leader, the debate over the future of its aid budget is far from settled. Civil society groups have complained a small budget increase for 2020 and the failure to commit to a United Nations goal of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on development undercut the country’s claim of prioritizing the sector. Read more.
Surgeon and pioneer in diagnostic and surgical endoscopy. Born on July 6, 1933, in Manhattan, New York, he died on June 2, 2019, in Scarborough, New York. Read more.
Immunologist who co-discovered IgE and advanced allergy research. Born in Yamagata, Japan, on Sept 28, 1926, she died in Yamagata, Japan, on June 4, 2019. Read more.
Surgeon, oncologist, and medical educator. Born in Tallahassee, Florida, on May 22, 1930, he died in Washington, D.C., on May 25, 2019. Read more.
All of my coverage from the 2019 EAT Stockholm Food Forum:
As it wraps up its latest funding round, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is prepared to introduce unprecedented cuts to country programs in sub-Saharan Africa, designed to spur domestic policy changes and programmatic improvements.
Observers warn that if enacted, the cuts could undermine advances those countries have made against the HIV epidemic, particularly among marginalized communities that struggle to access health services. Read more.