MONTHLY NEWSLETTER: FEBRUARY, 2026 by TAI Collaborative

Dear colleagues,

There is no shortage of research, opinion, and funding developments to share this month, from the latest data on funding to multilateral agencies to the rise ofAfrican pension assets to the future of Latin American giving.

Plus, we are heading toward prime convening season in April and May, where a host of “future of development” conversations are taking place - see our Calendar below for a sampling. We will be aiming to get eyes and ears at most so we can report back to you all. Plus, we hope to see you at the next Roundtable conversations around Skoll and AfricaXchange (see Next Steps below).

Highlight of the Month

As low- and middle-income countries hemorrhage resources toward debt repayment — a record $1.4 trillion in 2023 alone — health budgets are shrinking and progress toward universal health coverage is stalling. This brief, commissioned by the Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative under theFund Fiscal project, makes the case that debt reform and fiscal justice are not peripheral concerns for global health advocates; they are central to whether health systems survive at all. For donors and funders engaged in health financing, it is a sharp reminder that without addressing the structural pressures constraining public investment, even well-designed health interventions are building on an eroding foundation.

What’s Emerging Across the Field: 4 Insights on the 4 Shifts

Shift 1: Building a New Era of Development Cooperation

Even before the Trump administration's dramatic 2025 aid overhaul, the multilateral system was showing signs of strain. New OECD data shows Development Assistance Committee donors sent $90.8 billion — 41% of total official development assistance — through multilaterals in 2024, down nearly $17 billion from the year before. The data serves as a baseline reminder: the architecture of development cooperation was already being restructured well before 2025.

When USAID's Development Innovation Ventures (DIV) was shut down in early 2025, it didn't just strand more than 100 active awards — it raised urgent questions about how to sustain evidence-driven, venture-style development funding without a government home. The DIV Fund, an independent nonprofit formally launched on February 6, is attempting to pick up where USAID's DIV left off, using open calls to surface new ideas and a tiered funding model.

A landmark civil society report from Eurodad offers the first comprehensive examination of how technical reforms to aid accounting rules have reshaped who aid actually serves. The report argues that changes to how aid is counted have hollowed out the original purpose of Official Development Assistance (ODA) — to support poverty reduction and reduce inequality in the global south — with aid increasingly delivered as loans rather than grants, spent within donor countries themselves, or used to de-risk private investment, often with little evidence of development impact.

A peer-reviewed study published in The Lancet Global Health provides the most comprehensive quantification yet of what ODA withdrawal means in human terms. Analyzing two decades of data across 93 low- and middle-income countries, the research from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health found that ODA helped reduce child mortality by 39% and prevented HIV/AIDS deaths by 70%. In a severe defunding scenario, projections show more than 22.6 million additional deaths of all ages, including 5.4 million children under five, by 2030.

Shift 2: Remodeling Development Finance Flows

Africa's pension sector has quietly become a major financial force, amassing more than $600 billion in assets under management. But much of this capital is sitting idle in low-risk government securities. A new continent-wide assessment commissioned by FSD Africa maps this paradox and charts what it would take to change it — from new asset classes and investment vehicles to regulatory reform and regional coordination.

A new Center for Global Development note argues we have not yet seen the capital increases needed to meet growing demand for both climate finance and development lending — and that finance shortfalls are particularly acute for countries relying on concessional resources. Should the current ad hoc approach to capital reviews be replaced by a regular, rules-based system? The answer has major implications for how much firepower the multilateral system can actually deploy. Read alongside the Devex piece on “zombie funds” sitting underutilized at multilateral institutions.

Between 2015 and 2019, Africa received $30 billion in net financing from China. By 2020–2024, that had flipped to an outflow of $22 billion — a $52 billion swing in five years. Multilateral lenders have partly filled the void, increasing net financing by 124% over the past decade and now accounting for 56% of net development flows. But the data doesn't yet capture 2025's aid cuts — meaning the real financing gap is almost certainly worse than what these numbers show.

The Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, released by theCOP29 and COP30 presidencies, lays out a pathway to mobilize $1.3 trillion annually in climate finance for developing countries by 2035 — using a "5R" framework spanning grants, private finance mobilization, debt relief, capacity building, and systemic reform.

Shift 3: Strengthening Locally-Led Development

As Western bilateral donors pull back from Afghanistan and Yemen, it is the mid-sized NGOs — many of them women-led — that are quietly collapsing, taking with them years of community trust and local knowledge. Asma Saleem, writing in Alliance Magazine, examines this overlooked gap in the localization agenda and asks whether Gulf-based philanthropy is positioned to step in where traditional donors have retreated.

Ghana's President John Mahama outlines new steps to advance the Accra Reset, an African-led effort to localize development leadership and reduce aid dependency — timely as global foreign assistance faces significant contraction.

Biniam Bedasso, writing for the Center for Global Development, examines how African governments adapted to sudden shifts in international aid flows, offering analysis ahead of the 39th African Union Summit.

Patrick Gathara and Ben Phillips challenge deep-seated assumptions shaping humanitarian work, offering ten approaches to reimagining how thesector tells its story and understands its own foundations.

Shift 4: Improving Philanthropic Collaboration

This Stanford Social Innovation Review pieceexplores how global health innovations can move from pilot to scale — a key challenge for philanthropic collaboration in development. A useful read for funders and implementers navigating thegap between promising ideas and lasting impact.

The OECD's updated report maps the private philanthropy landscape for development in Mexico, offering data and analysis on funding flows, actors, and trends. An essential reference for those working at the intersection of philanthropy and international development in Latin America.

Salesforce's annual trends report tracks how nonprofits are adapting to a shifting landscape — covering technology adoption, donor engagement, and organizational resilience. A data-rich resource for organizations looking to benchmark and plan ahead.

Brazil's Rede GIFE reports (in Portuguese) on how a rising generation of philanthropists is positioning itself ahead of an unprecedented intergenerational wealth transfer — with implications for how giving is shaped across Latin America and beyond.

Events of Interest