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This Week in Global Development
A look at Kenya’s new deals with the US, and the latest on food aid cuts
00:31:00
The U.S. State Department has https://www.devex.com/news/the-us-signs-first-bilateral-health-deal-with-kenya-for-1-6-billion-111510, its first in its ongoing efforts to overhaul how it provides global health assistance. The United States said it will...
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Leanda Wine
Foreign.
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Atba Saldinger
My name is Rumbi Chakamba and you're listening to this Week in Global Development posted by myself, Atba Saldinger and David Ainsworth. I'm joined by Sarah and Ayanat who are all reporters based in Kenya. Hi guys, it's so nice to have you. Kenya was in the news last week. Kenya signed two key deals with the US last week. It was the first country to sign a bilateral health agreement. We've been on the lookout for these agreements and Kenya was first to sign it. Msra, can you take us through some of the deals, details of the deal?
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Sarah
Yeah, absolutely. So it was a big deal because it was the first bilateral deal as you mentioned, as part of the US government's new America first global health strategy. So the US will provide $1.6 billion to Kenya over five years and the Kenyan government will be co financing these efforts with 850 million. The US also signed a smaller deal with Rwanda last week and with Liberia this week. But at the Kenya signing ceremony last US Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised Kenya and called it the perfect partner to serve as kind of a proof of concept for this new mode of American health assistance. And he kind of spoke more deeply about why he appreciates the Kenyan government for the relationship the countries have encountering terrorism and praise the role that Kenya played in sending police officers to Haiti. So kind of on the health aspect, over five years it includes this gradual transition of management of procurement of health commodities from the US to Kenya as well as a transition of US funded frontline worker salaries onto the Kenyan government payroll. And it will help support the scale up of Kenya's health data systems. Dr. Uma Oga, who is the Principal Secretary of the State Department for Medical Services at Kenya's Ministry of Health, kind of noted that this agreement is quite a bit of a departure from how the Kenyan government has engaged with the the US government in the past. I read through the Kenyan agreement and much of the language aligned with what the Americans have been asking for in a template memorandum of understanding. But the agreement did have a lot of language ensuring that the cooperative, cooperative agreement complies with Kenyan law. And this is likely kind of due to the strength of Kenya's negotiating team. There was about over 90 individuals from the Kenya side negotiating with the U.S. yeah, but there are still concerns kind of these deals are going to be signed across the continent and in other, other continents as well in low and middle income countries. And there's concern around the outcomes for agreements for countries that may not come to the table with such a big negotiating team. And then another interesting tidbit is that there's the intention to transition the supply chain management to the Kenya Medical Supplies Authority by the end of next year. And this is an agency that has faced controversy also.
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Atba Saldinger
Say hello. Problems right with Khemsa.
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Ayanat
Yeah.
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Sarah
But is amid reforms as well.
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Atba Saldinger
What I found really interesting about Marco Rubio's remarks on Kenya is he spoke about the plan is to transition countries away from aid and he spoke about a period of possibly eight years that Kenya won't be, won't be needing aid anymore and that it's a great country to start off with, it's the perfect partner. But a big concern amongst countries is everyone agrees that okay, it's probably a good idea for us to move away from aid and we should probably start funding our own programs. But a big concern is debt. A lot of African countries are servicing debt and have to pay a large amount towards their debt. I think for Kenya it's like one third of their income has to go towards debt servicing. Not paying off the debt, but debt servicing. And so another interesting deal that was signed last week was a food for debt swap with the usdfc. Can you take us through ir? Can you take us through the details of that deal and why such deals are so important and how they can help with the debt issue?
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Ayanat
Yeah, absolutely. This was a really interesting one that we saw last week. So they're not exactly new these debt for development swaps, but they are still innovative. They haven't been used in a huge way in many countries. So basically how it works is that a country that's heavily in debt like Kenya will say, you know, can we swap X amount of our debt, In Kenya's case, $1 billion of our debt for usually what happens is a debt at a lower interest rate so like a cheaper form of debt. And so can we swap it so that our interest pays payments will go way down and then the savings that we get on having to pay less in interest will go directly into a program that we agree. So in this case food security. So we don't have the actual details of this, of this particular agreement. I asked DFC and they were pretty tight lipped about it saying they didn't want to tell us anything about kind of ongoing commercial activity. But usually this is how it works. So we're expecting, you know, the interest rates to go down and the savings to go towards food security. And this will be, it's usually monitored by independent monitor, make sure that those payments are going to those kinds of pre agreed programs and sectors. And so this is really interesting because as you're mentioning of course a huge amount of money, a huge amount of Kenya's revenue goes into interest payments. And this is something that President Ruto himself has been really outspoken on. I've heard him speak a couple months ago at the Africa Climate Summit and he was mentioning this in the context of African countries inability to spend, effect spend much on climate because you know, just so much of their incomes and revenues are tied up in servicing debt. So this is definitely something that's very near and dear to Ruto's heart. So it, you know, makes sense for him to, to be out on the floor on this. Another thing that was interesting as part of that agreement is that Ruto said that DFC would be starting a regional presence in Kenya. So again this was of course I asked DFC immediately about this. They remained tight lipped about what this actually means. But this is really interesting because some experts when I spoke to them had said, you know, dfc, this has been a long standing kind of challenge or hope or wish for the DFC is that it really needed more on the ground presence around the world. At the end of the Biden administration the goal was that it would have 12 people overseas and it actually didn't reach that yet. It was around as under 10 by the end of the Biden administration. So this is, you know, it's a huge organization, a huge institution while working on billions of dollars and it just actually doesn't have that many people based overseas. So this is really seen by experts as a really positive stent to trying to make sure that the DFC actually has a physical presence on the ground overseas and make sure that it's able to work more effectively in the regions in which it's deploying capital. So that's definitely something to watch and quite exciting for the sector.
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Atba Saldinger
A lot of UN agencies and development organizations are looking to increase their presence in Kenya. So I think we'll be seeing quite a lot of those movements moves to Kenya next year. And it'll be quite interesting to see how that plays out and how that changes how development is done. Does it improve things having this presence on the ground? But Sarah, in terms of challenges, one thing that you mentioned is also the ability of countries to negotiate. Kenya had this big negotiating team and obviously it was really well prepared for this negotiation it seems. But there are concerns about other countries. One way of maybe giving countries a leg up is publicizing the deals. Like the Kenya deal is out now. People have an understanding of like what's included in there, what's not included in there, and it gives countries like a footing to sort of negotiate on. But one key point was specimen sharing. The US had a big ask in terms of specimen sharing and there were a lot of concerns about that because that's something that's also being negotiated at a global level and the US is trying to negotiate this one on one with countries. So what came out of the deal in terms of specimen sharing from Kenya?
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Sarah
Yeah, and just kind of in terms of the transparency around the agreement, my understanding is that it's currently being leaked, but it hasn't been released to the public. So there isn't that kind of widespread public input and kind of analysis of it. But from the legislators, from what I understand there's a process around kind of releasing it. So it's expected that it would be released. And then there's hopes that these kind of early countries can set a precedent for other countries in terms of, of ensuring that they can negotiate kind of these, these provisions as well and lean on Kenya. But yes, as you said, there is kind of this big concern around the specimens sharing and that's been the most controversial element, data more generally, it's caused a lot of kind of criticism in Kenya. Concern, not only the specimens sharing, but concerns around personal patient data that might be involved. And the template. So yes, there's a template of the MOU that people have drawn concern around that shows the 25 year specimen sharing agreement as well as 25 year agreement around other data sharing. And so kind of why the US would want this is if there was, for instance, if Kenya had a health outbreak for a new disease, then that could enable American researchers to make vaccines from that data. But countries have been pushing to ensure they get benefits from the data they share, like access to those vaccines. So, but the, the, the Kenyan Ministry of Health, since the agreement was signed last week, has been going on the local media saying that it's wants to clarify that it didn't actually negotiate a specimen sharing agreement is what they said. And they said that the Americans really wanted that. But they did say that they will share data on request and continue to test in kind of in a joint way with the Americans because they said there's already a US CDC presence in the country and if they cut off kind of that joint sharing of specimens, the Americans would close shop and stop their work in Kenya. But they did say kind of yes, so they will share data within the confines of US supported work within that collaborative five year agreement. But regulators do have to sign off on the data and it has to relate kind of within that agreement. And they said that it would be aggregate data and not personal patient data. And looking at the agreement, it says kind of don't share personal data to the maximum extent. Some language around that extent possible. So one thing that the Kenyan Principal Secretary had been saying kind of in his media appearances this week and last week is that he said there's nothing strange about this arrangement because the Kenyan government already shares similar data with WHO under the international health regulations. He talked about how kind of, you know, the US is giving $1.6 billion to Kenya and the Kenyan government, it's fair for the Kenyan government to share data on whether metrics are. And then he also said kind of because the US has withdrawn from the who, he speculated that he thinks that the US is trying to find new ways to get this data from countries that it's not going to be able to access through who. But yeah, so that's kind of where we're, where we're at with Kenya. But again, as you mentioned, there many countries will be having this one on one negotiation and whether, whether they will be able to also kind of push back against the specimen sharing agreement is yet to be seen.
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Atba Saldinger
And I believe an interesting thing to look out for is what this does to the negotiations in Geneva because under the WHO process, countries are also negotiating how they share this data and what benefits countries who share data are able to get. So they already supposed to be sharing data, but COVID 19 kind of proved that when companies are able to produce vaccines from the data that is shared, countries that have provided the data don't always have access to it. So they're trying to ensure that there's that access. And it will be interesting to see what these deals or these agreements do to that process and if it'll actually have any effect on the bargaining power for low income countries because this is something that they've been really gung ho about and stuck on and they're saying that we really want this included in the agreement and it couldn't be included in the pandemic agreement last year. We're hoping that they'll have come up with a conclusion by May next year. So we'll see how this process plays out.
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Kate Warren
Hi, I'm Kate Warren with devex and today we're taking a short look at how one of the world's largest companies approaches human rights. I'm joined by Leanda Wine, Amazon's Director of Human rights and Social impact. And she leads teams working to safeguard dignity, fair work and equity across Amazon's value chain. So, Leanne, thank you for joining. Can you walk us through the evolution of Amazon's human rights journey? How did this work again and how has it progressed?
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Leanda Wine
Yeah, thanks Kate. And it's so nice to be here to chat about this topic. Something super close to my heart, but like you started out with, Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world. And in fact we are in some respects sort of a company like no other. We operate in so many different industries, so we truly are, you know, global and multi industry company. And that breadth means, from a human rights perspective, our human rights due diligence, it can't be one size fits all. And that's been both a challenge and an opportunity for us because the challenge is the scale, but the opportunity is really that the innovations that we're coming up with, Amazon can, we're building them to apply to lots of different industries. I think that's really exciting. We are actually a younger company, published our first supplier code of conduct only back in 2014 and then formalized our enterprise wide human rights policy in 2019 with our global human rights principles, which are aligned with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. But the real progress that I always like to talk about comes from how we operationalize those policies within the company. And we've come a long way since I first joined the company seven years ago. We've moved from what started out as an enterprise human rights saliency assessment to understand the human rights risks of the whole company to now a far more nuanced and detail oriented approach to human rights due diligence, where we're working with individual business units to understand their specific risks within their industry, within how their businesses are structured, and building tailored due diligence programs for each of these businesses.
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Kate Warren
Well, let's talk about one of the big forces shaping the space. AI is really changing how companies detect and address risk. So how's Amazon using AI to strengthen human rights due diligence?
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Leanda Wine
So over the past year we've developed machine learning models that analyze really millions of data points. Everything from thousands of historical audits, government reports, global news signals.
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All sorts of open source data available on the Internet to help us better identify human rights risks. Because as you know, for any company really, but particularly a company as big as Amazon, our value chain is simply immense. And so being able to target where those human rights risks are with greater and greater accuracy and more efficiently is huge in terms of helping US make that leap to better preventing human rights impacts in the long term. But that's really just the beginning. I think in the long run, the ability to target where these specific human rights risks are is going to be really industry changing in how we address human rights now, of course, I don't want to paint an overly rosy picture. You know, even the most advanced model are only as strong as the data behind them. And so there are a few challenges that stand out in my mind that I think it's worthwhile to chat about, which is we need to expand the breadth and the quality of the data on which we train models. And we also need to ensure broader industry adopts these tools responsibly. So we're doing a lot of work while we develop the models to also collaborate with NGOs, research institutions, audit firms to improve how we collect data.
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Kate Warren
So what's the biggest systemic challenge the business community faces today in advancing human rights?
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Leanda Wine
One I'll mention is that human rights issues are the culmination of many different overlapping forces. There's so many different pieces that go into what causes and the root causes of human rights issues. And so I will say one of the systemic challenges is the need for more collaboration across sectors, across sectoral collaboration. Businesses cannot solve these problems alone. We need collaboration with governments primarily, but also civil society, multilateral institutions, educational institutions. We cannot solve these human rights issues alone because they are caused by so many different forces. But another big challenge that I think is a little easier to solve in the near term is the issue of data fragmentation. So human rights issues in general often remain hidden because data is incomplete, information is incomplete or inconsistent. It's siloed across different owners, across countries and systems and industries, and it's collected in incompatible formats and even constrained by, you know, varying privacy laws in individual countries. And so we really do need shared data standards and trusted mechanisms to share that data, to collaborate on data that both protects safeguards, but allows, has protective safeguards, but also allows us to collaborate on data as an industry. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for data sharing that we're working on through a number of different initiatives right now. And we're really focused on this cross sector collaboration to unlock that value of data.
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Kate Warren
Yeah. Can you give an example of one of those partnerships?
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Leanda Wine
So an example of a sector specific partnership would be Tech Against Trafficking. So this is a coalition that Amazon helped to co found. It includes many major technology companies, including Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, and we bring together the technology industry to help accelerate tech solutions in the anti trafficking space. So we, for instance, will identify promising solutions, smaller promising solutions throughout the anti trafficking community, select technologies that we think are have an opportunity to have a much bigger impact and then work collectively with those organizations to help them figure out how to scale that technology and then also share it with others.
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Kate Warren
So looking ahead, what does long term success look like for Amazon's human rights work?
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Leanda Wine
You know, as I think about it, and I think about this a lot, certainly long term success means that human rights are embedded into every decision we're making and that we are ultimately preventing risks before they arise. That's the real goal. We do a lot of addressing issues once we find them, but we want to prevent those issues in the long term. And a big part of that is that what we want to accomplish is that workers throughout our value chain, and not just workers really all rights holders, are able to raise issues when they see them and have those issues addressed. And that we are being proactive about putting in safeguards to prevent issues before they happen. But I have to say, there's almost no success ever, right? It's the work is never done. So for us it's an effort and constant improvement. And we know we're making progress. And what encourages us to keep going is when we see improvements on the ground for vulnerable workers throughout our value chain. And we have lots of examples of that and it really keeps the team going.
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Kate Warren
Well, lan, thank you for joining us and for giving us a look at how Amazon is trying to turn human rights commitments into day to day decisions from the data and the due diligence to partnerships that can really change the wider system and protect people around the world. So thank you and thank you to Amazon.
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Atba Saldinger
The US State Department also announced some cuts to food resilience programs. These are programs that are supposed to build resilience when countries are not in need of emergency food aid. They're supposed to build resilience to ensure that they don't need food resilience, they don't need emergency food aid. But some of these programs were cut. Ayanat, can you take us through the details of what exactly was cut?
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Ayanat
Yes, absolutely. So basically my colleague Alyssa got some insight last week on what's been happening with these programs. And these were programs that were housed within the behemoth USAID program, which was called Food for Peace. And this was a $2 billion a year program that had been around since the time of President Eisenhower. So really long standing, kind of cornerstone of American food aid. So within that, within that master program There was a smaller program that we were talking about that had focus on resilience building. So it's called Resilience Food Security Activity. Last year, this was around $366 million of activity. And so this was this, this was programming that as you mentioned, was helping build resilience. So this means things like nutrition education programs or agricultural training or in kind food aid distributions in a way that, you know, would strengthen local markets. So to give an example of one program that that was cut, we had one from Mercy Corps in Kenya that had established a demonstration plot next to a malnutrition clinic which helped mothers learn how to grow nutritious food for, for kids. So this is the sort of programming, you know, it is obviously in areas that really need it, but not necessarily like traditional emergency food aid program as, as we might understand it. And so at least we know that about eight organizations that were receiving funding from the.
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Had that cut last week. And this was, you know, obviously we've been seeing cuts across the board. But Food for Peace more broadly has been this really big puzzle about what happens with it next. Because this is a hugely popular program, massively popular, especially with Trump's base, who, you know, a lot of them come from rural America, a lot are farmers. And because much of the programming is underpinned by in kind food aid, I. E. Food that is actually bought from American farmers by the US Government, then distributed abroad, you can see how this is a really politically contentious issue because farmers want their crops to be bought, of course, and they don't want a program that reduces how much of those, those, those crops are bought. So this has been a thing that, you know, we're trying to, we're really tracking what happens to Food for Peace very closely. There's been a lot of conversation about moving this program from of course, a now defunct USAID to the usda. There are questions as to whether the USDA has really the capacity to, to handle it, of course, us some level of programming with other countries. It has international partnerships. But Food for Peace more broadly works in a lot more sensitive areas, which USDA might not necessarily have, you know, experience in working in conflict zones and the like. So this is a big question. And also it has, doesn't have experience working in emergency settings, which also has a whole other can of worms as to how an organization needs to operate. So this is happening against the backdrop of us wondering what's going to happen for Food for Peace. And in the last appropriations bill, the one that passed some weeks ago that, you know, I'll ultimately was got the US Government out of its weeks long shutdown. There was a couple of lines on, on Food for Peace in it and it said that it would that that the USDA should be engaging in an interagency conversation with with different US Agencies about what happens next with you with Food for Peace and how it could be effectively moved to usda. So we're in this, you know, this study should be taking place within 60 days of the passage of the appropriations bill. That was the, the basically the language that was in there. So we're period of limbo right now about what happens to Food for Peace. We know that people still want it. It seems likely that it will exist in some capacity going forward probably within usda. But this latest news makes us question as to whether, you know, what kind of programming might be cut from that if it does move. So you know, maybe will this sort of resilience programming be the sort of thing that's on the chopping block in the new reform Food for Peace perhaps. We're still of course awaiting details on what Food for Peace looks like. But this is kind of an interesting clue about what it could look like in the future.
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Atba Saldinger
I find Food for Peace really interesting because it's clearly one of those programs that benefits American farmers, so benefits America in some way. But it's probably not the most cost efficient way to provide food.
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Sarah
Instead of shipping it all the way.
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Atba Saldinger
From America, you could probably buy locally from farmers and that will probably be more cheaper and that brings about the efficiency that the Trump administration has been speaking a lot about. But I think it'll be interesting to see that tension play out and see what kind of win because I think the fact that it benefits the strong base politically might actually win out over that. So it'll be interesting to see that play out. But another interesting revelation we had this week is the appointment of Malaria Nomo's soon to be new CEO who is also a Trump insider. Bill Steger was appointed Malaria nomo's It's going to be Malaria Nomo's next CEO. He's taking over for Martin Edlund and he was a former USAID chief of staff and he also owned strong proponent of this Trump's way of doing aid. So can you tell us a little bit more about Bill and his profile, Sarah?
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Sarah
Yeah, of course. And our colleague Michael Ego did a really interesting interview with him and wrote up a piece on that. So you should all check that out. But it just comes at it's an interesting development because it comes at this moment, where global health organizations are trying to figure out kind of their new role in the Trump administration and kind of making inroads. So it looks to be like Malaria no More is kind of taking that strategic route of appointing a Trump administration insider. And one of the interesting aspects of this, too, is, you know, under the new America First, Global health strategy has a much narrow focus on a few diseases, and malaria is one of those diseases that the US Government has decided it will still prioritize. So this organization is better placed than others given that strategy. But, yeah, so. So Steiger worked inside USA during the first Trump administration. And one of the interesting tidbits from, from Michael's piece is that he's the godson of former President George H.W. bush. And then during the George W. Bush administration at usaid, he was known for kind of sparring with some of the.
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Ayanat
The.
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Sarah
From some of USAID's largest contracting partners. And since leaving, he's been a prominent critic of the. The USAID model in providing contributions to the Conservative Project 2025 policy roadmap. And he's accused the agency's procurement leaders of stifling innovation and stonewalling progress around localization. But he told our colleague Michael that kind of at the helm of Malaria no More, he'll have focuses on areas like technological innovations such as AI forecasting for malaria. One of the areas he will also focus in on is the impact of climate change on the disease and kind of how AI will interplay with that in terms of weather forecasting and whatnot. So that gives us some insight into kind of the directions the organization will move moving forward, even though I know those have been. Climate change has been a big focus of the organization already.
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Atba Saldinger
He also praised the Zipline deal, which is the deal between the State Department and Zipline, the drone company. And it'll be interesting to see because this focus on innovations, what that means for American companies in this America first era that we're now living in. So I think that'll be interesting to see. But another interesting thing I found about Malaria no More was during Anger, they actually released the report talking about the economic benefits of investing in malaria. And I find, I find that so interesting how people's languages have changed. People's language have changed so much in reaction to the Trump administration and saying, oh, this makes financial sense. Instead of, oh, this is good for people. This now makes financial sense. So it'll be interesting to see how the organization changes under his leadership. But, Sarah, I know that you're deeply focused on the health agreements and you have an event coming up on those. So what can we expect from you and when is that happening?
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Sarah
Actually, yeah, so we will do a delve into the, the bilateral health agreements with experts next Tuesday the 15th, which is, yes, 9:00am D.C. time, 5:00pm Nairobi time. And yeah, I'll just kind of look into kind of where we are, what we know and what the future of how, how these elements will impact the future of global health. This is for our PRO members, so.
- [30:05]
Atba Saldinger
If you're not a Devex PRO member, I suggest you sign up before Tuesday. And Ayanat, are we expecting any more news on the Food for PC Peace Front and what else are you looking into?
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Ayanat
Yeah, great question. We're kind of expecting it anytime there's kind of rumors swirling around any, it seems like any public event that USDA is participating in, we're all wondering if the news might drop then, but there's nothing concrete yet. We're just watching it closely. So definitely keep, stay tuned to our coverage but we'll be covering it as soon as we get any indication about when the move is happening.
- [30:38]
Atba Saldinger
Thank you so much and thank you both for joining us, joining me for this edition of Twigged. And yeah, we'll see you guys next week.