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The Catch-22 in Global Health Finance: Why Medical Oxygen is the Test Case for Turning Aid into Investment
By most measures, medical oxygen in sub-Saharan Africa isn’t an investable market. As Alex Losneanu and Jason Houdek at Oxygen CoLab explain, providing medical oxygen is capital-intensive and operationally demanding. That means small- and medium-sized oxygen suppliers typically stall out or get absorbed into grant-funded programs instead of becoming commercially viable, and funders conclude that these SMEs are too fragile to justify the investment risk. They argue that this conclusion is wrong, and also self-fulfilling, reinforcing a Catch-22 that exists across global health. They share findings from a supplier mapping project that show how emerging business models are enabling oxygen SMEs to scale, and propose three shifts in how catalytic capital can be designed to support these and other businesses across the global health sector.
- Categories
- Health Care, Investing
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Swedfund Invests $12 Million to Strengthen Climate-Resilient Agriculture and Food Security Across Africa
The financing will support businesses providing essential services to smallholder farmers, including improved access to agricultural markets, affordable finance, digital technologies, quality farm inputs and post-harvest infrastructure.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Analysis: The AI Sustainability Paradox
AI is being sold as a tool to solve sustainability’s hardest data problems, from Scope 3 emissions to climate-risk intelligence. But the infrastructure behind that intelligence — data centers, water use, energy demand, chips, grids, and community consent — is becoming its own sustainability test. Drawing on conversations at Trellis Impact 26, Ming Wong explores what AI’s physical footprint means for impact investors, corporate sustainability leaders, and the communities being asked to host the next generation of digital infrastructure.
- Categories
- Energy, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Global
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Healthy Diet Too Expensive for One in Three People Globally, UN Report Finds
Global hunger declined for the third year in a row in 2025 but experts call for action to bring down costs of fruit, vegetables and dairy as report shows 2.69bn people can’t afford to eat well.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Global
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The Blind Spot in the EU’s New Deforestation Regulations: Laws and Satellites Don’t Save Forests — People Do
The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) represents an ambitious legislative effort to protect our planet’s remaining forests. But Priscillia Moulin at MosaiX highlights a potential flaw in the regulations: To meet the EUDR's data requirements and prove that their supply chains are deforestation-free, major commodity buyers are turning to remote sensing and satellite AI — and if these technologies detect any tree-cover loss, the path of least resistance is often to permanently exclude that supplier. She argues that this creates the illusion of compliance while pushing vulnerable small farmers into the grey market, as satellite algorithms can identify changes in forest cover but cannot determine intent or causality, or assess other complex realities on the ground. She proposes three ways companies can comply with the EUDR without freezing smallholders out of the EU's premium, regulated markets.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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ADB Approves $50 Million Loan to Modernize Nepal’s Customs, Boost Trade and Jobs
Aligned with Nepal’s Sixteenth Plan and broader efforts to promote private sector-led growth, diversify the economy, and strengthen resilience, the reforms support the implementation of the Government of Nepal’s Customs Reform and Modernization Plan, Trade Logistics Policy, and new Industrial and Logistics Trade Master Plan.
- Region
- South Asia
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Analysis: When “Sustainable” Quietly Means “Without the Farmer”
We are watching the early industrialisation of food categories that have, for centuries, been grown by smallholders in the Global South. The sustainability story we tell about it is real. It is also incomplete in a way that matters.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Global
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Mastering the Art of Stewardship: Why Building Operational Sovereignty — Not Simply Navigating Funding Cuts — Will Define Africa’s Healthcare Future
In response to drastic cuts in global health financing, African governments are increasingly seeking greater health sovereignty — i.e., the ability to manage their health systems without structural dependence on external actors. But according to Scott Dubin at Logistics Marketplace, limited fiscal space is complicating their efforts to replace the often-fragmented and overlapping support structures that have long been provided by multilateral health funds, international NGOs and other outside entities. He explores how Africa's movement toward health sovereignty is revealing deeper capacity gaps in the continent's health systems, and proposes seven practical ways governments can effectively steward the markets and systems that support public health delivery.
- Categories
- Health Care
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