Welcome to the latest roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency.

Join the launch of the 2025 DFI Transparency Index

We’re delighted to invite you to the launch of the 2025 DFI Transparency Index.

📅 Thursday 26 June 2025, 2.30 – 4.00pm BST / 9.30 – 11.00am EST

📍London & Online

The development finance landscape is shifting. As traditional aid flows decline, Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) have become critical actors in addressing global challenges.

But how transparent are DFIs about where their money goes, the impacts of their investments, their climate finance, their accountability to local communities and how they’re mobilising private capital?

On 26 June, Publish What You Fund, in partnership with ODI Global’s Centre for Private Finance in Development, will launch the 2025 DFI Transparency Index—our latest assessment of how multilateral and bilateral DFIs are performing on transparency.

Join us as we bring together DFIs, civil society, and the private sector to discuss the findings of the Index and explore strategies for improving financial and impact transparency in development and climate finance. We’re delighted to be joined by:

• Sam Attridge, Director of the Centre for Private Finance in Development & Principal Research Fellow, ODI Global (Introductory remarks)
• Maria Smith, Managing Director, Chief Impact Officer, British International Investment
• David McNair, Executive Director, The ONE Campaign
• Hans Peter Lankes, Managing Director and Deputy Chief Executive, ODI Global (Moderator)
• Gary Forster, CEO, Publish What You Fund (Presentation of findings)

+ More speakers to be announced soon

Register here

Are donors delivering on their local funding promises?

Despite years of high-level commitments to increase local funding, our new research reveals that only 5.5% of the sampled project-type funding went directly to local organisations. Using transparent, independent analysis of aid data, the research examined how Australia (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), Canada (Global Affairs Canada), Netherlands (Ministry of Foreign Affairs), UK (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), and US (United States Agency for International Development) are delivering on their promises. Looking at a sample of countries in US fiscal year 2024, the research found:

• Across all five donors, just $287 million of the $5.2 billion reviewed (5.5%) went directly to local organisations.
• The Netherlands-MFA directed the highest share (6.9%), followed by UK-FCDO (6.3%), Australia-DFAT (6.2%), Canada-GAC (5.3%), and USAID (5.1%).
• Four of the five donors, with USAID as the exception, lacked clear local funding targets and used inconsistent measurement approaches, resulting in insufficient quality and granularity in aid data. This makes it difficult to hold donors accountable.

The findings suggest that the localisation agenda has not translated into significant shifts in donor funding practices.

Henry Lewis summarises the findings in this blog.

Download the report: Metrics Matter III

Localisation re-imagined: Funding for local actors in a changing aid landscape

Last month we convened a panel of expert voices from local groups, INGOs, think tanks, and funders to explore the current state of locally led development, and discuss if this is the time to rethink how we approach localisation. You can catch up on this timely conversation with Dylan Mathews, George Ingram, Gunjan Veda and Sarah Rose below.

Data and transparency are pivotal drivers of private finance mobilisation

Writing in Environmental Finance, our CEO Gary Forster sets out why better data can help capital flow to emerging markets.

“Transparency serves as a cornerstone for informed investment decisions. When data on financial flows, project impacts, and credit performances are readily accessible, private investors gain the confidence needed to engage in markets that might otherwise seem opaque or risky.”

Read the article

Sign up for our free training on using aid and development data

Last available dates before summer break:

📅 Monday 23 June 11:00am BST

📅 Monday 7 July 2:30pm BST

Ever wondered:

💰 Who is funding what, where, and why?

🌍 What the latest trends in official development assistance (ODA) are?

📊 How to track global aid and development projects and their impact?

In one hour, we’ll introduce you to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)—the leading global open aid dataset. Learn how to access and navigate over a million development, humanitarian, and climate projects to support your research, planning, fundraising, advocacy, or campaigning.

This interactive online training is free— and places are filling up fast.

Find out more and book your place

Other news

Here’s a quick round up of the news and publications we’ve been reading over the last few weeks:

The Cross-Party Group on International Development has completed its review into the Scottish Government’s international development funding. We were pleased to see the findings included our proposal that the Scottish Government should adopt the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard ‘as an efficient and globally recognised way to improve transparency’. The findings also included a recommendation that the Scottish Government should publish a new International Development Strategy to provide greater clarity on their chosen themes and localities, as well as their application processes.

Writing in Environmental Finance, Dirk Meyer (BMZ) and Melinda Bohannon (FCDO) look at a key obstacle to greater investment in emerging markets and developing economies: a lack of high quality, accessible data to enable firms to better price risk. They outline why mobilising capital for emerging markets and developing economies requires collaboration and coordination.

A team of economists and cost-effectiveness experts have set up Project Resource Optimization (PRO) – to help match philanthropies with projects that have lost USAID funding. Hosted by the Center for Global Development, the team are using foreignassistance.gov data to create a database of the most impactful, cost-effective and mid-implementation aid projects to help donors identify the most urgent priorities. It was featured in this NPR story.

Open Data Watch has released the Open Data Inventory 2024/25. It assesses the coverage and openness of official statistics to identify gaps, promote open data policies, improve access, and encourage dialogue between national statistical offices and data users. This edition compares 197 countries across 22 categories of official statistics. It finds investing in open data works but sustained commitment amidst a changing data ecosystem is needed to protect progress.

This Donor Tracker Commentary explores the current and future impacts of defence spending on ODA in prominent donor markets, highlighting key trends and potential implications.

The Guttmacher Institute has set out the UK’s track record of investments in family planning and HIV, and warns of the potential impacts of planned future ODA cuts.

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