← This Week in Global Development
This Week in Global Development
Turning World Cup hype into impact, and governing AI for good
00:32:01
With the FIFA World Cup entering its final week, we explore how NGOs operating in participating nations https://www.devex.com/news/devex-newswire-g-o-a-l-how-the-fifa-world-cup-scores-for-development-112936 to advance their work. While tournament hype...
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign My name is David Ainsworth and you're listening to this Week in Global Development, hosted by myself, Richard Khamber and Adva Saldian. And I'm joined this week by my colleagues, Catherine Chinney and Tom Serup. Tom, I realize I very rarely say your surname. It's Hungarian. It's incredibly hard to pronounce, so I don't know whether I completely butchered that. Looks like it really doesn't have quite enough vowels. But anyway, welcome on board. And this week we're going to be talking about two very different but important topics. We're going to be talking about AI for good, and we're going to be talking about football, or as our American listeners wrongly call it, soccer. This is one instance where I'm afraid we're going to have to divert a little bit from the DEVEC style guide. So my apologies to everybody on that one. So let's kick off with what's undoubtedly the most important news of the week, as far as I'm concerned. But by the time you're listening to this, England will have either triumphed or been dispatched in a World cup semi final. That's where the attention of my nation currently is right now at this very moment. And, Tom, you've been looking at basically the impact that sport has on development. And in particular, there's a real story around kind of what the World cup has. It's enabled a lot of people to talk about countries that maybe don't always make it into the news, and it's created some unique opportunities for developing communication. And that's really interesting. So. So tell us a bit more about what you found.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah, so it's quite interesting, of course, the football World cup is going on, and it's an opportunity for a lot of smaller countries or developing countries that don't really make the headlines a lot of the time to actually reach the spotlight. And a lot of NGOs operating in these developing countries are using the opportunity that the World cup offers to leverage it for funding, for campaigning, fundraising, and also just raising awareness, not just of the issues that are in those countries, but also of the work that they're doing. So for the writing of the article, I reached out to NGOs that work in the kind of sports, or specifically football and development space, and NGOs that are working in a developing country that is being represented at the World cup, and just to see how the World cup is impacting their work and just the coverage that they're getting. It was very interesting. For example, like I was talking to a representative from the NGO Semia Futuro, which is NGO that does digitalization in Cape Verde. And a lot of people found out, a lot of football fans found out about where Cape Verde is, about the country's history during the World Cup. And it was just really interesting to hear how they're using the Football World cup as part of that campaigning of yes, the World cup is happening. It's great to see Cape Verde performing well, taking on giants like Spain, Argentina. But also there's a lot of issues on Cape Verde and here's our NGO and this is our work and this is what we're. These are some of the issues we're trying to solve.
- [03:08]
A
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Like there's so much attention on this tournament. I remember reading that you can use it to sell literally anything. During the World cup in Germany, there's, they were putting German flags on, tins of beans, dog food, all sorts of things. It just draws the attention absolutely immediately. It's just such a valuable tool to get your message across. And you've been looking at how people are already planning, I think for what comes next, that we're looking at the next sporting event and people are putting plans in place now and how they might use that.
- [03:41]
C
Yeah.
- [03:42]
B
So I had a very interesting call with Simon Anholt. So he developed this national brand index which tracks how countries public perception changes with major sporting events. And it's very interesting to see that his research actually shows that international sporting stage generates spikes in short term awareness, but it actually also disappears instantly. I talked to the head of Common Go, the CEO of Common Goal, Mary Connor, and she had a really interesting quote which was when you do a short pass, you look down, but when you play the long ball, you need to look up. And that's how the, the development sector should be approaching these major tournaments. They should be planning and looking ahead at what major tournament is happening, whether the country that they're operating in is participating. And they should already be devising strategies for how they can leverage the tournament for their own agenda. So for example, the next Football World cup is the Women's World cup in Brazil and Common Goal, for example, they're already using this as an opportunity to plan ahead, thinking about women's rights issues, just raising awareness of women's game and gender inequality in general. So if you're an NGO and you only start thinking about leveraging the World cup while the tournament has already happened, you kind of already missed that opportunity to really leverage the tournament and really Raise awareness of your work.
- [05:06]
A
Catherine, you want to come in on this at all or.
- [05:10]
D
Well, I will say, having been in Geneva last week for the AI for Good summit, which we'll talk about, it was hard to ignore the World cup that people were also simultaneously very engaged in. But actually this makes me think of, you know, my other hat at devex, outside of reporting on AI, which I've been ramping up recently, is I lead news programming for our events. And I definitely see sports as an interesting way to engage people in issues that otherwise might seem distant. Like key example, climate change. I mean, we all know climate change is a huge crisis, but not all of us experience it in our day to day lives in the same way. But Dave, you actually moderated a conversation at our recent London Climate Action Week event with this former NBA player, Pops Bonsu, and he started an organization focused on, well, he supports youth basketball in Ghana and he's basically like a celebrity champion of climate action. And he told a story on stage about how basketball in Ghana is an outdoor sport, right? Kids are playing outside, they're on indoor courts and kids shoes are literally melting as they're trying to play basketball. And he's become this sort of unlikely voice for climate action. And so I just would flag that as well, like even beyond these moments like the World cup, which engages everyone in sport athletes and you know, sports are such an interesting vehicle for public attention on an issue. And I think Tom's really highlighted ways that NGOs can leverage a moment like the World cup, but I think they can leverage athletics and work with athletes across the board. So I think it's an important message for our audience.
- [06:49]
B
In addition to Dave's session at our event at London Climaction Week, I actually had the chance to speak, did like a quick one on one quick social media video with Pops and he actually said something really interesting about the World Cup. How the the climate crisis is being commercialized by big corporations. And we know football, and not just football, but just most major sports have big brands, big teams and there's just so much commercial money in sports that could be leveraged for development. And in fact the Sports for Development piece is a recognized sector within the UN umbrella. It is integrated into the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but also not just about making sure that we leverage this these moments, but also about making sure that we get corporations on board. So rather than framing the climate crisis a commercial opportunity, making sure that these corporations are involved in these discussions and helping to fund some of the issues that football could be used for social inclusion.
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A
Thanks for bringing up that panel, Catherine. That was one of my favorite sessions at what was a very well organized conference. If I. You organized it so you can wear those particular laurels. But that. That was a fascinating session to me. Like, perhaps the most fascinating thing was. Was not even anything Pop said on stage about kind of sports and diplomacy, but the simple fact that we. We talked a little bit about how he got into being a climate advocate for an ngo. And he said, well, they asked me, I said, how many people have you recruited? They said, well, we've recruited 44. And I said, how did that happen? Basically, we asked 44 people, and they all said yes, or almost all of them said yes. Many of them said yes. And it just goes to show that there's a surprising amount of support for development out there and that there's a communications piece that can really be done using not just sport, but all sorts of kind of media like this, all sorts of tools like this. There's a real enthusiasm for. For a real opportunity. I don't want to go too off too much off on a tangent, but essentially, I think that communication about development has not been as good as it could have been. And that's a theme that devex has come back to several times over the last six months. And there are opportunities there. There are. To use a football metaphor, there are open goals available here to a lot of organizations to find and use these tools to talk about the things that people or the things that people already care about. So I wanted to use my privileges as host here to tell one final story about sport and philanthropy, which is when I was at Skol, I talked to a guy who was talking about how he was working for church in Africa. And the church said to him, hey, this place that you're working, we want to build a church there. And he said, I don't think they want a church, actually. I think. I'm not sure that's what they need. And at Skoll, they have this wonderful phrase, thanks. I guess philanthropy, where you give somebody something and they look at it and they go, thanks. I guess you've just given somebody something, but you didn't ask them what they wanted, and it wasn't what they wanted at all. And it transpired in this instance that what these villages actually wanted was a football pitch, and they didn't want a church at all. The thing that they needed most, despite all of the problems they were facing, was they wanted to gather together and they wanted to play football with each other. And that was what they bought. So the transformative power of sport and development rearing its head once again.
- [10:19]
D
Hi, I'm Kate Warren with devex and we are taking a short break from the program for a conversation and partnership with the Pfizer foundation on how Data Innovations are helping overcome last mile health access challenges. And I'm joined by Freddy Nicozy, who is Senior Director for West and Central Africa at Village Reach, an organization working to strengthen health systems so they reach people wherever they are. So Freddy, thank you so much for joining me.
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C
Thank you Kate for inviting me and giving me this great opportunity to talk about the work VH does, but most importantly the work we have been able to accomplish through the generous contribution from Pfizer Foundation.
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B
Great.
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D
So when we talk about the Last Mile Challenge, we're often referring to the gap between national level progress and what communities actually experience. And from where you sit, what does that gap look like on the ground and what approaches work best in closing it.
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C
Yeah, thanks Keith. Once again this is an important question because when we talk about the Last Mile Challenge, we are really talking about the difference between progress that is visible at the national level and the reality the families health workers communities are experiencing day to day. A country can have vaccines in the national system, a strong immunization strategy, an ambitious coverage target, but a child can still remain and rich if the vaccine is is not available at the service delivery point. What we always say at village if the vaccine is not available when and where is needed and the child can also miss the vaccination session only because it's cancelled or if the health workers does not have the right data or if the community has not been engrained in a way that respond to its reality. In our context this gap has both supply and demand dimensions. But I will emphasize that these are system issues, especially when we are talking in about the sub Saharan Africa where we see some trends in many countries where village rich work. So some children are zero dose only because vaccines or vaccination supplies are not available when needed. Some are missed because the session planning is not adapted to the geography to the season, because the population that in the countries where we work, depending whether it's a dry season or wet seasons, can cause a population to move. And if the health systems does not adapt to the change of the system, that could also cause some children being or missing their vaccination session. But it could also be the transport constraint or the daily responsibility of the caregivers. Mothers and families may miss appointments, but that should not be framed as their responsibility alone. Often the System has not made services closer enough or reliable enough or responsive enough for their lives. We have seen through the activities we are organizing some mothers, they are not just able to walk 20 km from their farms areas to the health facilities because it's not only 20km but they need to climb mountains across rivers. That's making accessibility very challenging at the distance almost impossible for the mothers to go and bring their children to the health facilities. This is why local leadership.
- [14:59]
D
Great. Well thank you. You mentioned the data challenges and village reach is known for data informed locally led approaches. As you illustrate it. Could you share an example of an innovative use of data that has helped empower local decision makers to improve access to vaccines or other essential health services?
- [15:27]
C
A good example. I've got so many examples that I can give, but a good one is our work to strengthen vaccine supply chain and data use through the next generation of supply chain that I spoke about in DRC and in Cameroon. The challenge was not simply that data did not exists. In many cases the data exists but the system such as the district health information system software that we call DHS2 did not present the data in the way that the health workers can read, understand easily and make a timely decision. For example, if a health zone or health district manager cannot easily see which facility have low vaccine stock or stock out which antigen are at risk of stock out or where zero dose children are concentrated, the decision, and I can tell you would be delay. That can mean a vaccination session is planned without any reliable data to address the issue of zero dose children or under immunized children where they live. So through the generous contribution from the Faza foundation in Cameroon and Indiac, we have been able to partner with the government to improve the recording and sharing and presentation of logistic data in a way that the health workers can easily understand to make a timely decision.
- [17:45]
D
Well Freddie, thank you so much for sharing all of these examples of how you can bridge the last mile to sure health services reach everyone everywhere. And thank you to the Pfizer foundation and stay tuned to future episodes for more in this series highlighting how innovation is is transforming health systems. Thank you again.
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A
Katherine. Let me come to you though now and talk about the AI for Good Summit which you've been at for the last week and you found some really fascinating things. Could you just run us through the headlines? What do you think were the kind of tell us a little bit about the AI for Good summit, what's happening there and what you heard and found this interesting? Sure.
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D
Well one thing I will do is to contextualize the AI for Good summit into a larger group of events that happened last week. And I'll explain why that's relevant and also into the calendar ahead and why that matters. So basically, AI for Good happens every year in Geneva. It's convened by ITU, the International Telecommunications Union, which is the UN's Geneva based digital technology agency. An F Frankly, I've been aware of AI for Good. I have not prioritized that event as a place to be in part because I heard some pushback, that it's basically a trade show. It's a lot of people kind of showcasing really cool use cases for AI. And I will say many use cases that are incredibly relevant for our audience. I mean, like the World Food Program was there showcasing how they're leveraging AI to save lives. I mean, there are really powerful use cases, but there was also, you know, roboclette, which is a robot that serves Raclette, the melted Swiss cheese. So I understood the pushback, that this was sort of largely a trade show. And yet this year really was different because there was the AI for Good summit along with the World Summit on the Information Society, or wis, Forum, which brought a lot of, you know, tech ministers from low and middle income countries and a lot of relevant players for our audience, as well as the United Nations Global Dialogue on AI Governance. And this was a really big moment because this was something conceived of by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres as a moment for every country to have an equal voice in talking about AI's future. And typically the dominant voices in that dialogue are, say, China and the us, but in this case, hearing from countries that never get a say in these conversations about their vision for the future of AI. So I was following those conversations closely. So again, given that AI for Good happened alongside these other events, I think that convergence made it a super relevant week for our audience. Then the other thing I want to flag in terms of how that week factors into a longer calendar of AI events. So this was the inaugural Global Dialogue on AI Governance coming by the un. The next one will be in May in New York. And so that's just worth keeping in mind. And then additionally, Geneva is going to continue to be a really important center of gravity for these conversations on AI, because this series of summits, many of you may have followed that. Earlier this year there was the AI Impact Summit in India. We had a reporter there, Katherine Davison, covering this for debex, that kind of builds on a series. So there was a conversation on AI safety in The United Kingdom in 2023, that continued in Seoul in 2024, Paris in 2025, New Delhi earlier this year, and next year that will be in Geneva in June. So Geneva kind of is at the center of the spotlight in terms of AI conversations, but in terms of attention, I noticed on the one hand, last week was a super relevant event for AI, but there's some pushback about just one dialogue after the next, one commission after the next. Does this really amount to anything? Even Claire Melamed from the UN foundation, who I spoke with several times last week, she noted in her own takeaway piece from the event that there was an announcement about the dates for next year's AI Summit in Geneva in June while this conversation was still ongoing. So I think that it's a little bit difficult to understand which conversations matter and which commissions are really going to have an impact. And that was sort of my attempt last week and in our special edition newsletter was to kind of go beyond the headlines and the announcements in the press releases and understand, like, where was the real momentum and what's really going to come out of this?
- [22:25]
A
Yeah, I was at a session on this earlier in the year in London, and one of the things that came up on the stage, this guy stood up and he said, and all these people are talking about AI for good. And then in a lot of cases in these discussions, there's a subtext, and over here, there's the real AI. That's what really matters. And we're just having a nice side conversation. And that's obviously the concern here, isn't it, that how do you take these conversations, these issues, and actually impose some of this on the people who are actually making a difference? How plausible? How much do you think we're actually going to see that happen?
- [23:03]
D
So a couple things I think it's worth noting, and it's a little bit concerning, that some of the key players were missing from the conversation last week. So, you know, while I mentioned that every country had an equal voice, you know, the United States did not have a huge presence. There were, you know, remarks delivered by the U.S. but it was, you know, they were just not really there in full force. Additionally, the AI labs, notably Anthropic and OpenAI, which hold a lot of power in the future development of AI, were by and large missing from the agenda. You know, I looked through the whole agenda. I asked around. The one example I found of Anthropic showing up was Anne Stake, who was a recent hire on their team on the Beneficial Deployments team At Anthropic, she was there for some more kind of closed door roundtable conversations. But whereas Sam Altman joined virtually for a keynote a couple years ago, as far as I could tell, OpenAI was nowhere to be found. And, you know, there are reasons for this I could speculate. I didn't really get into the details in our newsletter. You know, our audience may be aware both of these organizations are likely to be going through IPOs coming up, initial public offerings, so they have to tread very carefully, among many other reasons they might avoid the stage. But they were missing. And in fact, I wanted to flag something I saw from a conference participant that I think captures what I feel as well. He said, on the one hand there was momentum, on the other hand there was tiredness. So that's kind of what I'm saying of like, you know, there were a lot of really valuable conversations where it felt like we were headed somewhere, but also some tiredness because these summits are multiplying and it's hard to see how we're going to go from kind of agreement in principle to practice. And then what he said that I really want to emphasize is I fear that as we discuss power crystallizes in the hands of the very few who worth noting, chose not to be in Geneva. So I think the reference there is mostly to the United States government, which had a very small scale presence, but also the AI labs who were not there. It actually is something I asked Amandeep Singhil, the UN tech envoy about and he sort of said he wasn't worried essentially that OpenAI and Anthropic are engaging in other forums just because, you know, they weren't there in a big way at last week's event. In their individual capacities. Folks like Dario from Anthropic are showing up in UN forums and conversations. Another thing I wanted to mention earlier, Dave, when you said like there's AI for good and then there's the real AI, there was something that really stuck with me. I shared this in a, in a LinkedIn video, kind of sharing some reflections about the summit. So I really want to highlight this for our audience and I think it's sort of a call to action of why our audience should pay attention to these issues. So Nick Thompson, who's the CEO of the Atlantic, was on stage with Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, in a fascinating conversation that's, that's worth revisiting. But Nick shared a framework that he has found really useful in thinking about AI. And the framework comes from Audrey Tang, who's the former Taiwanese digital minister and she basically talks about two races. So there's a vertical race, and that is AI labs working to build ever more powerful models, including artificial general intelligence, or AGI, which would surpass human capabilities. And then there's this horizontal race to ensure that human values are built into these systems and that they remain assistive tools and that they benefit humanity. And the question is whether this horizontal race can catch up to this vertical race. And to me that was a huge takeaway. I think a lot of our audience is focused on, number one, how can I use AI to make my work more effective, to make myself more effective in my work? Great. We should be asking that number two, how can I use AI for good? Like leverage AI to, you know, accelerate the impact that I can have, whether it's in health or ag or education. Great. We should be asking these questions. Three, AI risk. Like, how can I avoid AI risk in my work, especially with vulnerable populations? I'm serving absolutely. Number four, and increasingly and actually in a little bit, I'll be moderating a DevexPro webinar. Along these lines. A lot of AI money is going to be coming into philanthropy. How can I tap into that money? How can I influence the direction of that money and perhaps access it myself? Absolutely. In our resource constrained environment, organizations should be asking us. I think what I am not hearing enough of our audience asking is how can I shape the future of AI? I think a lot of our audience might say, like, I'm not a tech person, you know, and that's part of the problem. In fact, this is something I spoke with Philip Tego, who's Kenya's tech minister about. He was saying, the minute you say AI, people think it's an ICT issue. The AI conversation is a development conversation. I completely agree. And then I connect it back to that framework from Audrey Tang, the devex community that should be very involved in that horizontal race. It cannot be left to technologists alone. It has to be people who work in these countries serve the most vulnerable, understand, like how to this is overuse, but maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of these tools in these settings. They, they need to lead this horizontal race. And it's the only way that we will perhaps have a chance of catching up to the vertical race. So I again, I thought that framework was really useful and to me it was sort of a call to action. Why? Back to what you said, Dave. There's like AI for good and then there's the real AI. Our audience needs to also pay attention to quote unquote, the real AI, like how powerful these tools could be and make sure that ultimately they benefit humanity. And don't, you know, not to be dramatic, but it's true. Like threaten humanity's very existence.
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A
Yeah, I mean, well, they could threaten humanity's very existence. People have written many, many books about this. But more to the point, more realistically, we need to ensure that the AI is a tool that actually makes the world better. I feel like we spend too much time talking about how people can benefit money rather than money benefiting people. And it feels very much the same with technology as well. Really the whole purpose of everything that we build is to make the world a good place for people to live in it. And right now the world isn't a very good place for a lot of people to live. And we have the resources that would allow us to make the world very nice for everybody to live in it. And we're just not using them properly. And we don't want AI to become another example of a resource that could be used to benefit ordinary people and make their lives better and instead create an environment where a few people maximize the resources and, and use it to control everybody else. And that really is the battle that our readers among everybody else need to be fighting. Tom, we're going to have to wrap this up in a minute, but I want to come to you and see if you have any final thoughts on anything that we've been talking about.
- [30:04]
B
Yeah, I think it's very interesting to see here this idea of the vertical and horizontal. And I think these forums are a great way to just bring everyone together. And so rather than having vertical horizontal, let's meet in, I don't know, the axis maybe. And yeah, lower middle income countries should be working together to shape the rules of AI and rather than just having to choose between different competing superpowers. And just another thought I think as well, which is important as well, why these convenings are important is a lot of AI is very much based on. Well, historically the first AI models were based on forums which are usually in English and lots of time, just very masculine, so to speak, spaces. And this is an opportunity as well, just to start the conversation of rather just creating inclusive models where someone, for example, if you work for an NGO or if you're a community on the ground, rather than having to write in English to get the desired results from AI model, you should be able to write in your own language and generate results for your specific needs.
- [31:09]
A
For sure. I know this is a huge challenge as well. Right. Well, that's a wide ranging discussion we've had this week and a very interesting one covering lots and lots of different issues. Very, very different perspectives. Fascinating, I thought. Lots of interesting stuff. Hopefully, lots of food for thought to you, our readers, and to everybody out there who's who's going to be watching the World cup final on Sunday. Best of luck to you, particularly, I hope, if you're English. So it just remains for me to say thank you very much to you, Katherine and Tom, and to you, to everybody listening. And this has been this week in global development. We hope you enjoyed it. And goodbye.
- [31:44]
D
Thank you.
- [31:45]
B
Thank you.