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Daily Maverick
12-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Climate and development finance in a post-aid world — the case for country platforms
Country platforms, one of the most promising innovations in climate and development finance architecture, offer African countries the opportunity to take ownership of their climate and development futures – on their own terms. Anyone who has visited Cape Town may well have noticed the strange and mystifying sight of its unfinished, raised freeway. As you head towards the popular tourist destination at the Waterfront, one blunt end is clearly visible above you. Half a kilometre away, the other end hangs teasingly against the famous Table Mountain backdrop. These two ends, which were clearly badly askew and never going to meet – and hence the abandonment of the project – represent the perfect metaphor for international climate finance. The supply side lacks volume and the demand is too weak. They need a buckle to pull them together – and one that convinces asset managers and institutional investors throughout the world to pay attention to African investment opportunities. Talk of the town With the Trump administration slashing US Agency for International Development budgets and European nations shifting overseas development aid budgets to bolster defence spending, the world has entered a ' post-aid era '. But there is an opportunity to recast development finance as strategic investment: ' country platforms.' Country platforms are government-led, nationally owned mechanisms that bring together a country's climate priorities, investment needs and reform agenda, and align them with the interests of development partners, private investors and implementing agencies. They function as a strategic hub: convening actors, coordinating funding and curating pipelines of projects for investment. Think of them as the opposite of donor-driven fragmentation. Instead of dozens of disconnected projects driven by external priorities, a country platform enables governments to set the agenda and direct finance to where it is needed most. That could be renewable energy, climate-smart agriculture, resilient infrastructure or nature-based solutions. Country platforms are a current fad. They were the talk of the town at the 2025 Spring meetings of multilateral development banks in Washington, DC. Will they quickly fade as the next big new idea comes into view? Or can they escape the limitations and failings of the finance and development aid ecosystem? The Independent High Level Expert Group on Climate Finance, on which I serve, is striving to find new ways to ramp up finance – both public and private – in quality and quantity. I agree with those who argue that country platforms could be the innovation that unlocks the capital urgently needed to tackle climate overshoot and buttress economic development. The model is already being tested. More than 10 countries have launched their platforms, and more are in the pipeline. For African countries, the opportunity could not be more timely. African governments are racing to deliver their Nationally Determined Contributions. These are the commitments they've made to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions as part of climate change mitigation targets set out in the Paris Agreement. Implementing these plans is often being done under severe fiscal constraints. At the same time global capital is looking for investment opportunities. But it needs to be convinced that the rewards will outweigh the risks. Where it's being tested In Africa, South Africa's Just Energy Transition Partnership has demonstrated both the potential and the complexity of a country platform. Egypt and Senegal also have country platforms at different stages of implementation. Kenya and Nigeria are exploring similar mechanisms. The African Union's Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy calls for country platforms across the continent. New entrants can learn from countries that started first. But country platforms come in different shapes and sizes according to the context. Another promising example is emerging through Mission 300, an initiative of the World Bank and African Development Bank, working with partners like the Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, and Sustainable Energy for All. It aims to connect 300 million people to clean electricity by 2030. Central to this initiative are Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units. These are essentially country platforms anchored in electrification. They reflect how a well-structured country platform can make an impact. Twelve African countries are already moving in this direction. All announced their Mission 300 compacts at the Africa Heads of State Summit in Tanzania. This growing cohort reflects a continental commitment to putting energy-driven country platforms at the heart of Africa's development architecture. Why now – and why Africa? A well-functioning country platform can help in a number of ways. First, it can give the political and economic leadership a clear goal. The platform can survive elections and show stability, certainty and transparency to the investment world. Second, national ownership and strategic alignment can reduce risk and build confidence. That would encourage investment. Third, it builds trust among development partners and investors through clear priorities, transparency and national ownership. Fourth, it moves beyond isolated pilot projects to system-level transformation – meaning structural change. The transition in one sector, energy for example, creates new value chains that create more, better and safer jobs. Country platforms put African governments in charge of their own economic development, not as passive recipients of climate finance. The country sets its investment priorities and then the match-making with international climate finance can begin. Making it work: what's needed Developing the data on which a country bases its investment and development plans, and blending those with the fiscal, climate and nature data, is complex. For this reason country platforms require investment in institutional capacity, cross-ministerial collaboration and strong coordination between finance ministries, environment agencies and economic planners. And especially, in leadership capability. African countries must take charge of this capacity and capability acceleration. Second, development partners can respond by providing money as well as supporting African leadership, aligning with national strategies, and being willing to co-design mechanisms that meet both investor expectations and local realities. Capacity is especially crucial given the scale of Africa's needs. According to the African Development Bank, Africa will require more than $200-billion annually by 2030 to meet its climate goals. Donor aid will provide only a fraction of this. It will require smart, coordinated investment and careful debt management. Country platforms provide the structure to govern the process. Seizing the opportunity Country platforms represent one of the most promising innovations in climate and development finance architecture. Properly designed and led, they offer African countries the opportunity to take ownership of their climate and development futures – on their own terms. Country platforms could be the 'buckle' that finally enables the supply and demand sides of climate finance to come together. It will require commitment, strategic and technical capability, and, above all, smart leadership. DM
TimesLIVE
06-06-2025
- Health
- TimesLIVE
Contraceptives for sub-Saharan Africa stuck in warehouses after US aid cuts
Contraceptives that could help prevent millions of unwanted pregnancies in some of the world's poorest countries are stuck in warehouses because of US aid cuts and could be destroyed, two aid industry sources and one former government official said. The stock, held in Belgium and Dubai, includes condoms, contraceptive implants, pills and intrauterine devices, together worth about $11m (R195.5m), the sources told Reuters. It has been stalled since the Trump administration started cutting foreign aid as part of its 'America First' policy in February, as the US government no longer wants to donate the contraceptives or pay the costs for delivery, they said. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has instead asked the contractor managing its health supply chain, Chemonics, to try to sell it, two of the sources said. An internal USAID memo, sent in April, said a quantity of contraceptives was being kept in warehouses and they should be 'immediately transferred to another entity to prevent waste or additional costs'. A senior US state department official told Reuters no decision had been made about the future of the contraceptives. They did not respond to questions about the reasons why the contraceptives were in storage or the impact of the US aid cuts and delays.
TimesLIVE
05-06-2025
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
Ingenuity helps Zimbabwe weather drought and US aid cuts
Last year, Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park fed villagers who were starved by drought with elephants they had culled to reduce overpopulation. This year, the nearby community of Mabale is banking on rain-harvesting to help locals grow enough food, using chicken wire, canvas and cement to get through the extreme weather that has become Zimbabwe's new norm. President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a state of disaster last April because of the drought and climate experts say this kind of extreme weather is only going to get worse. 'Zimbabwe is a country highly affected by climate change, and looking ahead, science tells us that the situation is likely to become worse,' said Mattias Soderberg, global climate lead at DanChurchAid, a Danish humanitarian organisation. In 2024, Zimbabwe was hit by Southern Africa's worst drought in 40 years. Harvests failed and water reserves dried up in a country where 70% of people rely on subsistence agriculture. The unprecedented drought was fuelled by El Nino, a climate phenomenon that can worsen drought or storms — weather that is made more likely by climate change. Last year, the United Nations said Zimbabwe was among 18 locations that risked a 'firestorm of hunger' in the absence of aid. But now aid has been heavily cut worldwide after President Donald Trump gutted the US Agency for International Development (USAID) on taking office this year. US funding supported a range of projects in Zimbabwe in agriculture, health and food security. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has received termination notices for more than 100 programmes, with Africa the worst hit, a Rome-based spokesperson said via email. It couldn't come at a worse time for Zimbabwe, as it counts the cost of its latest drought — and readies for the next one. 'Without funding, important efforts to increase resilience, and to adapt to the effects of climate change, may never become reality,' Soderberg said. Layiza Mudima, a 49-year-old mother from Mapholisa village in Mabale, about 2km northeast of the park, said her community was facing 'a severe water challenge'. Around Hwange, last year's drought dried up the boreholes and waterholes, threatening wildlife in the park and depriving people in Mabale of drinking water. And though rainfall from December to February this year was normal or above, fallout from the last drought persists.
Euronews
04-06-2025
- Business
- Euronews
'They will die': Foreign aid cuts hit women and girls the hardest
Young girls are denied an education and forced into child labour or early marriage, pregnant women in refugee camps have to give birth without a midwife, female survivors of rape, sex workers and HIV patients are left without shelter or support. These are not hypothetical scenarios or stark warnings, but the real and current impacts of massive foreign aid cuts on NGOs that support women and girls in war and conflict zones and crisis-stricken countries ranging from Gaza to Ukraine, several aid groups told Euronews. Women-led and women's rights groups operating on the frontlines of humanitarian crises have been hit the hardest — with almost half of all such organisations expecting to shut down within six months due to a lack of funding, warned a recent report by UN Women. A survey it conducted in March of 411 women-led and women's rights organisations across 44 countries also found that nearly three-quarters of the groups had already laid off staff while just over half had suspended programmes due to funding cuts. 'Simply put, women and girls will die from lack of access to these services,' said Sabine Freizer Gunes, UN Women's country representative in Ukraine. 'This situation will worsen as women's organisations providing vital services are forced to close.' International aid fell in 2024 for the first time in six years, and over the last year or so, top donor governments have announced cuts to overseas development assistance (ODA), including Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US — the world's largest donor. The administration of US President Donald Trump has dismantled the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and slashed billions of dollars for aid projects globally. Only 11.1% of the $46 billion (€40.6bn) required for global humanitarian needs in 2025 has been funded, forcing the entire aid system to reform and cut back, UN Women said. Dorothy Sang, head of advocacy and policy at CARE International UK, described the responses to UN Women's survey as 'deeply concerning', and said it was not just a case of 'abstract losses or numbers on a spreadsheet'. 'It's about daily, human experience: a girl who no longer has a safe space to learn; a mother giving birth without medical support; a survivor of violence turned away from a shelter that's been closed,' she told Euronews. 'The international aid architecture is being turned on its head and while we of course want to see vital aid being restored — we need to make sure the decisions being made right now do not leave a legacy of destruction for women and girls,' Sang added. Even before the recent cuts announced by leading government donors, humanitarian organisations worldwide were already struggling with an overall reduction in ODA. Such aid amounted to $212 billion (€188bn) last year, a reduction of by 7.1% in real terms compared to 2023, the first drop after five years of consecutive growth, according to the latest data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). NGOs say this funding squeeze has been compounded by the Trump administration's cuts to USAID, which the US president himself referred to last month as 'devastating' while saying he hoped they would spur other countries to 'chip in and spend money too'. The US was responsible for 38% of all global aid funding recorded by the UN last year. US government data shows that it disbursed about $61 billion (€69bn) in foreign aid in 2024, more than half of which came from USAID. Aside from the US, eight European countries and the EU itself have announced or already implemented cuts to their overseas development assistance totalling some €30 billion over the next four years, found a recent study by Countdown 2030 Europe. Aid cuts disproportionately affect local women-led and women's rights groups compared with international NGOs and UN entities, according to UN Women's research and experts. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of the women-led and women's rights organisations surveyed said they have had to reduce services to women and girls, and four in five predicted that the reductions in foreign aid would severely undermine access to life-saving services. A separate report released in April by several UN agencies including the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the funding cuts were putting more pregnant women at risk, and ultimately threatening fragile progress worldwide in ending maternal deaths. In places such as the Democratic Republic Congo, Gaza, and Ukraine, women-led and women's rights groups "are often the backbone of their communities, acting as first responders and providing life-saving relief,' according to Niki Ignatiou, head of women, peace, and security at ActionAid UK. 'Global North governments and donors … need to stop overlooking the national, local and grassroots groups that are doing the heavy lifting in crisis zones,' she told Euronews. 'We know from previous cuts to ODA in the UK that in the immediate wake of cuts, women and girls lose most, including access to lifesaving services," Ignatiou added. When vital services collapse during humanitarian crises, women and girls also tend to take on more care-related responsibilities, such as providing food and water and looking after the sick, UN Women said. They are also more likely to sacrifice their own health and nutrition to put their families first, and tend to have fewer opportunities to earn money. One local women's rights organisation in Ukraine, which operates solely on money from donors, told UN Women that it was in a 'dire situation' due to a reduction in funding. 'Many of our beneficiaries, women who have survived violence, HIV-positive women, former prisoners, sex workers, urgently need adaptation support and social services, but due to funding cuts, we can only offer phone consultations,' said the NGO, which was not identified. Faced with reduced funding, women-led and women's rights groups are selling assets and cutting operational costs — among other measures — UN Women said. Many are also looking for new donors or seeking additional support from their existing backers. Several of the aid experts said that humanitarian programmes for women and girls must be protected and prioritised, with greater investments in local women's organisations and more flexibility over the funding provided in order to ensure long-term support. Gunes of UN Women in Ukraine said the terms of funding for women-led and women's rights groups had routinely undermined their sustainability. She highlighted how money is typically tied to specific projects, which often only last for a few months up to a year. 'This has all kinds of implications for organisational sustainability and strategic growth,' she said, calling for donors to consider flexible funding that allows women's groups to respond in real time to needs on the ground, instead of being driven by donor priorities. While the immediate focus is on protecting the lives of women and girls, there is also concern in the aid sector about the long-term impact of funding cuts on women's rights. 'The weakening of these organisations will roll back the gains and progress made on gender equality and women's empowerment and may further embolden the anti-gender movements,' said April Pham, chief of the gender unit at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Local women's organisations from countries including Colombia and Cameroon told UN Women that the dwindling funding available to them was a setback for women's rights. 'Without the presence of women's organisations, women will be increasingly neglected and their rights will be trampled on,' said one such NGO in DRC, which was not named. At a time when gender equality is under sustained attack, all humanitarian actors must reinforce their commitments to women-led and women's rights groups, Pham said. 'We now have an opportunity to shape a humanitarian reset that truly puts women and girls at the centre — and it is time we do it,' she added. The Russian army is developing its war capabilities by multiple times more than that of NATO despite having an economy 25 times smaller, NATO's secretary general has warned. Mark Rutte also suggested Russia could attack NATO territory within three to five years, during a press conference ahead of a defence ministerial meeting taking place at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Rutte's remarks come as the US is demanding its NATO allies show "credible" progress towards spending 5% of GDP on defence. "The Russians, as we speak are reconstituting themselves at a rapid pace and producing four times more ammunition in three months than the whole of NATO in a year," said Rutte. He said Russia is doing this despite having an economy 25 times smaller than the combined economy of NATO. "So we really have to ramp up our defence spending, and that includes command and control, long range air defence systems to keep ourselves safe in case the Russians decide to attack us in three to five years," he told reporters. Demands for NATO allies to increase defence spending from 2% of GDP to 5% is the key focus of this week's meeting, as well as a leaders' summit for the alliance taking place in the Hague on 24 and 25 June. "Putin needs to know if he tries to attack the Baltics or NATO our response will be devastating," Rutte said. The timeline for allies to meet the 5% target hasn't yet been agreed but US Ambassador to NATO Mathew Whitaker said Washington expects countries to start ramping up spending immediately. US President Donald Trump expects allies to "show meaningful progress on defence budgets and credible growth year after year", Whitaker told journalists in a briefing ahead of the defence ministers' meetings on Wednesday. "The core of our message is 5% - every ally must commit to spending 5% [of GDP]," Whitaker said. He said the US is committed to NATO but the US wants to see Europeans "take a leadership role on European security". He also said Trump wants the war in Ukraine to end, adding: "This war needs to come to an end – the cost is very high on both sides."
New York Post
03-06-2025
- General
- New York Post
Suspected Colorado terrorist Mohamed Sabry Soliman may have had USAID paperwork stashed in his car
Suspected Colorado terrorist Mohamed Sabry Soliman may have had USAID paperwork stashed in his car when he was nabbed over the heinous antisemitic firebombing plot in Boulder, the feds said. The papers brandishing the name of the US Agency for International Development were among the trove of items discovered inside the 45-year-old Egyptian national's 2015 silver Toyota Prius soon after he allegedly hurled gasoline bombs at a peaceful pro-Israel march on Sunday, court papers charge. The beleaguered foreign aid agency once gave a Gaza-based nonprofit tied to the son of a Hamas leader nearly $1 million in aid — with one grant arriving less than a week before the Oct. 7 terrorist strikes on Israel. Suspected Colorado terrorist Mohamed Sabry Soliman allegedly had apparent 'USAID' paperwork stashed in his car when he was nabbed over the heinous antisemitic firebombing plot in Boulder. Other files located inside Soliman's vehicle featured the words 'Israel' and 'Palestine,' according to the arrest affidavit. It wasn't immediately clear if the word 'USAID' had just been scrawled on a sheet of paper — or if the so-called paperwork was officially tied to the agency, which was recently shuttered by the State Department as part of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) cost-cutting actions. The complaint didn't offer up any additional details on the paperwork. The discovery was made after Soliman allegedly wounded eight people when he tossed Molotov cocktails at a group as they were holding their weekly demonstration for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza, cops said. A shirtless Soliman is accused of screaming 'Free Palestine' just moments before unleashing his reign of terror. Video footage captured the hate-filled suspect in the middle of a wild rant as he started tossing the homemade incendiary devices. It wasn't immediately clear if the word 'USAID' had just been scrawled on a sheet of paper — or if the so-called paperwork was officially tied to the agency. Pictured is a file photo of USAID stock. Getty Images At least 16 gasoline-filled Molotov cocktails were found near where the shirtless suspect was detained, according to authorities. A weed sprayer filled with gasoline was also found at the scene, while a gasoline canister was discovered in his vehicle in the aftermath, the complaint states. Soliman, who told investigators that he wanted to 'kill all Zionist people,' had planned his attack for a year, prosecutors said. He allegedly used Molotov cocktails rather than a gun because his illegal status in the US blocked him from buying firearms, according to the feds. 'When he was interviewed about the attack, he said he wanted them all to die, he had no regrets and he would go back and do it again,' Acting US Attorney J. Bishop Grewell for the District of Colorado said. Federal and state prosecutors filed separate criminal cases against Soliman, charging him with a hate crime and attempted murder, respectively. He faces additional state charges related to the incendiary devices, and more charges are possible in federal court. Soliman is being held on a $10 million cash-only bond. With Post wires
