On his first trip to Africa, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany intends to buy natural gas from Senegal, to reduce its dependence on Russian gas. A German government official added that the country might become an investor in Senegal’s massive GTA gas field.  Germany has invited Senegal, ...

This blog post argues that higher health spending is unlikely to be sustained because of the pandemic’s adverse impact on revenues, other spending pressures, and the resulting deteriorating fiscal position of LLMICs. This suggests that countries will need to undertake policy actions to create additi...

In May, the World Bank issued a white paper on a new financial intermediary fund (FIF) for pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response. This document will be the basis for subsequent discussion and approval by the World Bank’s Board, composed of 25 constituencies representing 189 country governm...

How have the ways in which political parties think about and frame global challenges to the electorate changed over the last three decades, as both the challenges and the political climate have shifted? One way to answer this question is to look at their election manifestos. Though the way in which ...

As international support for Ukraine ramps up, IMF special drawing rights (SDRs) are being brought into the mix. European Council president Charles Michel supported the Ukrainian Minister of Finance’s call to reallocate ten percent of unused SDRs to Ukraine. But it is unclear what this ten percent ...

In the UK’s newly released international development strategy, the government commits to upping bilateral finance to 75 percent of the FCDO’s total aid spend by 2025. Here, we look at what this means for budgets, and for the UK’s international role.