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After the Grant Ends: Why Rural Water Utilities Fail — And What We Learned from Building One
For decades, rural water projects in low- and middle-income countries have followed a familiar pattern: Infrastructure is built, communities are trained, a ribbon is cut — and within a few years, the system stops working. After leading the early operations of Max TapWater, a social enterprise providing piped water in rural Bangladesh, Saif Islam identified a fundamental reason for these failures: Investment continues to prioritize capital infrastructure over the operational and maintenance budget needed to sustain it. He explores this challenge, and shares other lessons he has learned about how rural water facilities can sustain operations beyond the grant period.
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2026 Coffee Barometer: Sustainability Cannot be Built on Permanently Cheap Coffee
The newly released 2026 Coffee Barometer exposes systemic flaws in the global coffee industry over the past 20 years.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Global
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Gates Foundation Ebola Response Funding Announcement
The Gates Foundation is committing an initial $15 million in emergency funding to support this response through trusted institutions already working on the ground.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Grant Dependency is Undermining Global Development: Here’s a Fundamentally New Architecture for Funding NGOs
Across the Global South, NGOs often function as the default conduits for addressing key development challenges in remote and marginalized populations. But as long-time development sector advisor Rajat Ray argues, these systemic problems cannot be solved by organizations that are perpetually teetering on the edge of financial suffocation, propped up by short-term, project-based grants. He explains how the survival tactics NGOs adopt to navigate this funding dilemma end up warping their operations and perpetuating some of the sector's biggest shortcomings. In response, he proposes an entirely new funding model — the “Diminishing Grant Framework” — that treats self-reliance not as an aspiration, but as a mandatory financial milestone.
- Categories
- Investing
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The Rockefeller Foundation and Temasek Trust Announce Global Coalition for Nuclear Philanthropy
GCNP aims to mobilize and coordinate philanthropic capital to accelerate efficient, safe, secure, and equitable nuclear energy deployment globally — 0.1%-0.2% of climate philanthropy currently goes towards it.
- Region
- South Asia
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Viewpoint: AI in Global Health Is a Familiar Story With an Uncertain Ending
Opinion: Without foundational investments in data systems, governance, and capacity, AI in global health risks becoming the latest promising innovation to fail in low- and middle-income countries.
- Categories
- Health Care, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Bestseller Supports Regenerative Agriculture in South Africa Through International Fund
The Regenerative Fund for Nature supports projects that are based on local knowledge and existing practices. It was established by Conservation International and Kering in 2021 with Inditex joining in 2023. BESTSELLER is now joining the fund as a partner.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: DengueAI: New Model That Anticipates Outbreaks With 93% Effectiveness and Three Weeks’ Advance Notice
Anticipating and reducing dengue outbreaks enables more efficient use of public resources and targeted, data-driven action in neighborhoods most vulnerable to this mosquito-borne disease transmitted by Aedes aegypti.
- Categories
- Education, Health Care
- Region
- Latin America
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