4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In the second of our two-part series on tightening aid budgets, Sam Fenwick explores what shrinking donor support means for global health — from the sudden halt to major US-funded projects, to the pressure on low-income countries to increase their own health spending.
As G20 leaders gather in Johannesburg for the Global Fund’s Eighth Replenishment Summit, we hear from Zambia’s minister of commerce on how his country is trying to plug the aid gap through investment in critical minerals, and from Peter Sands, head of the Global Fund, on why he believes wealthy nations must keep funding global health even as more countries take on greater responsibility for their own systems.
With global aid budgets under strain, we examine what’s at stake at today’s summit — and what the future of funding for essential health programmes might look like.
Produced and presented by Sam Fenwick
(Image: An anonymous woman looks out over her local fishing community near the Zambezi River in Zambia. Credit: Action Aid)
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.6 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. I'm Sam Fennick. |
| 0:12.1 | Coming up, what happens when the aid money runs out. |
| 0:15.8 | It shattered their hope. Human costs all this is how it traumatized the women. Today, as G20 leaders |
| 0:25.4 | gather in Johannesburg to debate how much they're prepared to spend on global aid, |
| 0:30.3 | we hear from the head of the world's largest multilateral health fund. The return on investment |
| 0:36.1 | on investing in health is huge. What has been achieved over the last |
| 0:40.6 | couple of decades is transformative. In the second of our two-part series on tightening aid budgets, |
| 0:47.3 | we're focusing on the health sector, the new funding models being discussed and what they |
| 0:52.6 | could mean for countries still dependent on external |
| 0:55.4 | support. We need to stop going to any country in the world with a begging ball. We should |
| 1:01.6 | interact with them to bring investment in our country. That provides value addition. |
| 1:06.9 | That's all coming up on today's Business Daily. |
| 1:13.3 | On the banks of the Zambizi River in western Zambia |
| 1:16.7 | lie remote fishing villages, where men go out to fish |
| 1:20.8 | and the women buy what they catch to sell at the local market. |
| 1:25.4 | Here there are rows and rows of tiny dried fish laid out on wooden |
| 1:29.9 | tables in the sun. But for the women running these stalls, making a living can be dangerous, |
| 1:36.0 | because the fishermen don't just sell their fish for money. They demand sex in return. |
| 1:41.2 | So for women that we are not able to buy the fish at a price that they could |
| 1:45.9 | afford, the men would take advantage and sell the fish using sex. Fidus Temper is the |
| 1:52.9 | country director for Action Aid in Zambia, an international development charity that works in more |
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