Devex Podcasts

If a Washington, D.C., think tank publishes a voluminous policy paper, but barely anyone reads it, does it have an impact? Not really, according to Todd Moss, long-time development think tank leader and founder of the Energy for Growth Hub. Moss, who joined Devex’s Theory of Change podcast, sees a glaring mismatch between many organizations that claim to be in the business of informing policy deci...

In a live episode of Global Progress in the AI Era, Shalina Wadhwani discussed what Wadhwani AI has learned from building tools with governments — and what she hopes a new generation of AI philanthropists will fund. Shalina Wadhwani spent years working at digital health startups before joining the family office her father, Sunil Wadhwani, had built. Now, as the next-gen philanthropist assumes lead...

As governments face growing pressure to modernize public services and rebuild citizen trust, artificial intelligence offers new opportunities to improve service delivery. But turning AI experimentation into measurable, citizen-centered impact requires more than new technology. It calls for strong implementation, cross-sector collaboration, and a clear focus on human needs and accountability. In th...

This week, we take a look at the latest in the U.N. secretary-general race. In the latest informal straw poll to gauge support for the next U.N. secretary-general, Costa Rican diplomat Rebeca Grynspan secured the nine Security Council votes needed to advance but faced opposition from two permanent members — meaning the threat of a veto remains. The race is far from over, as new candidates can stil...

What happens when an organization built on maximum cost-effectiveness discovers that one of its flagship programs isn't delivering the results it promised? For Evidence Action, the answer was clear — if uncomfortable: follow the data, own the mistakes, and scale back. In a recent episode of Devex’s Theory of Change podcast, Evidence Action’s new CEO, Danielle Bayer, unpacked the nonprofit organiza...

Haiti has spent years dominating international headlines almost exclusively through the lens of political crisis and humanitarian emergency. But behind the headlines lies a resilient ecosystem of local organizations that continue to drive change. Recorded live at Devex Impact House in New York City on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, this special episode of the This Week in Global Devel...

This week we are coming to you live from Devex Impact House, our summit on the sidelines of the World Bank and IMF annual meetings. We unpack the bank’s push for “small AI” in developing countries to avoid the considerable costs of building data center architecture, while weighing the risks of deepening technological dependency on the U.S. and China. Alongside exploring the institution’s drive for...

The recent history of U.S. foreign aid has been dominated by budget cuts, institutional dismantling, and massive workforce reductions. Against this backdrop, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, feels less like a template for modern foreign policy and more like a relic of an unrecognizable past. In an era defined by political fragmentation and widespread skepticism of go...

This week, the Devex team is on the ground in Berlin for the World Health Summit. We explore how this year’s event stands apart from previous iterations and what makes it distinct from the World Health Assembly. During the conversation, we explore a major theme of the event: the intersection of global health and security. With geopolitical tensions rising, we examine how organizations are struggli...

In this special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast, produced in partnership with the Global Disability Fund, Devex co-founder and Executive Vice President Alan Robbins sits down with the fund’s director Ola Abualghaib for a candid, personal conversation about why disability inclusion keeps getting treated as an add-on and what it would actually take to build it into the system...

At the World Health Summit in Berlin, leaders are aligning around critical pillars including Health Equity and Future-Ready Health Systems. Public health initiatives globally face intensified opposition from well-funded commercial interests, widespread health disinformation, and mounting pushback against health workers. For the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, this conversation is essential: having...

More than 90% of global vision loss is preventable or treatable with low-cost interventions such as cataract surgery or prescription glasses. Yet 1.1 billion people worldwide currently lack access to basic eye care — a number projected to double by 2050 without strategic action. In this special edition episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by The Fred Hollows Foundation...

The California-based drone delivery company Zipline made waves last year when it secured a $150 million pay-for-performance grant from the U.S. State Department to scale up its operations in Africa. That announcement came just months after the State Department took control of the U.S. government’s foreign aid portfolio in the wake of USAID’s dismantling, and the deal with Zipline was portrayed as...

This week we are at Building Bridges, a conference aiming to bring different stakeholders together to build investable solutions to global challenges. We discuss the key topics at the summit, including how the private sector can be effectively engaged in social impact and making financial instruments accessible for smaller businesses. We are also looking ahead to the World Health Summit, which wil...

Across the global development landscape, artificial intelligence promises to redefine how health, education, and social protection services are delivered. However, moving past small-scale piloting to deliver measurable, population-level impact amid tightening budgets is rarely a pure tech challenge — it is an organizational and human one. In this special edition episode of the This Week in Global...

The fundamental question of how development and growth are financed is undergoing a profound transformation. Over the course of a series of original essays and op-eds, The Next Frontier (https://pages.devex.com/thenextfrontier.html) – a Devex series in partnership with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation – has mapped a rapidly changing, pluralistic financing ecosystem shaped by philanthropy,...

The United States is set to implement one of the biggest overhauls of its global health assistance in decades. The new strategy will reshape how billions of dollars flow to 35 countries, shifting greater responsibility onto their governments through bilateral agreements that encapsulate the Trump administration’s America First Global Health Strategy. In this episode, we discuss what we know of the...

In this special edition episode of This Week in Global Development, sponsored by Public Digital, Devex's Alan Robbins sits down with Public Digital's Lauren Kahn and Mike Bracken CBE. Recorded at Devex Impact House during UNGA, they unpack the urgent need for emerging economies to transition from passive "tech-takers" to active "tech-makers" by reclaiming digital sovereignty. The conversation expl...

In a live episode of the Theory of Change podcast, Buddy Shah, CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative and chair of the Anthropic Long Term Benefit Trust, shared an inside look at the intersection of global health, market-shaping agreements, and artificial intelligence. "The mistake that many of us are making ... is looking for an AI point solution. What's a cool use case where you can develop...

Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei made headlines recently by calling for slowing the development of increasingly powerful AI models to give safety measures time to catch up. That only increased the urgency of another effort within the company, which is expanding: An initiative to help governments and nonprofits use the models available today. Elizabeth Kelly leads that effort as Anthropic’...

This week we are closely tracking the conversations at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and what they mean for the global development sector. From U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech rejecting international governance frameworks and championing national sovereignty to questions around AI regulation, we break down what the discussions at the U.N.’s headquarters in New York m...

In a live episode of the Theory of Change podcast recorded at the Devex Impact House in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, David Beasley, the former World Food Programme executive director and former governor of South Carolina, laid out his playbook for navigating today’s increasingly hostile political climate — while leaving the door at least somewhat open for his o...

This week, we report on the Gates Foundation’s 2026 Goalkeepers Report, which includes a $1 billion pledge to make AI more inclusive. The funding aims to expand access across health, education, agriculture, and digital equity to directly benefit the global south. We unpack how AI can help lower-income nations tackle critical challenges while ensuring local communities remain central to the process...

In an interview on Devex's Theory of Change podcast, Alight CEO Jocelyn Wyatt warned that the traditional humanitarian business model is facing structural failure. Following the collapse of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the transition of U.S. foreign aid programs to the U.S. State Department, organizations are having to rely on more rigid grants from United Nations agencies tha...

In this special episode of the This Week in Global Development podcast, sponsored by Rippleworks, Devex Senior Editor for Special Coverage Catherine Cheney sits down with Doug Galen, CEO of Rippleworks, and Azeez Gupta, co-founder of Rocket Learning, to reimagine how philanthropy thinks about scale. As foreign aid budgets shrink, most conversations stop at the number cut. This one asks a different...