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

The 2025 DFI Transparency Index results are out

We’re thrilled to share the findings of the 2025 DFI Transparency Index – Publish What You Fund’s assessment of 32 of the world’s leading development finance institution (DFI) portfolios. We found that since the inaugural Index of 2023, transparency levels have improved almost across the board. While most DFIs have made real strides in data quality, accessibility, and harmonisation, critical gaps remain – especially in climate finance, impact, private capital mobilisation and assurance of community disclosure.

Top performers and trends

• World Bank ranks #1 for sovereign portfolio transparency, followed by Asian Development Bank and African Development Bank.
• For non-sovereign portfolios, Asian Development Bank leads, followed by International Finance Corporation and African Development Bank.
• British International Investment is the top bilateral non-sovereign DFI.
• The only DFI that did not improve its 2023 score? US International Development Finance Corporation.

Download the 2025 DFI Transparency Index report

Other key findings:

• Shareholders, senior leaders, technical and policy staff helped to drive big improvements in transparency at Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), World Bank, British International Investment and Swiss Investment Fund for Emerging Markets.
• Levels of transparency for private capital mobilisation (PCM) data remain low. However, two DFIs stood out in 2025, showing that transparency is possible: IDB Invest is the first DFI to pass our PCM transparency test, while CAF has started publishing PCM data after retroactively obtaining client consent.
• We found that all sovereign DFIs – and most non-sovereign ones – now disclose how they define and count climate finance. But just over half of sovereign DFIs and just over a quarter of non-sovereign DFIs published granular, project-level data. That means in many cases, it’s simply not possible to tell which investments count as climate finance – or how much.

Explore the analysis of all the DFIs

Catch up on the DFI Transparency Index launch

On 26th June Publish What You Fund and ODI Global hosted an important conversation on how we can use development and climate finance more effectively, accountably, and transparently. Leading voices from World Bank, ONE Campaign, British International Investment and Allianz Global Investors discussed the findings of the DFI Transparency Index, where lessons can be learned and the real and practical costs of not delivering on transparency.

Localisation re-imagined: Is it time for a new aid system?

Despite years of global commitments, direct funding to local organisations remains alarmingly low. The latest Publish What You Fund research found just 5.5% of project-type funding from five major donors in 2024 went directly to local actors. Of course money alone does not define localisation. But our findings provided a helpful springboard to a broader, insightful discussion on what’s holding locally led development back – and what needs to change.

In this blog, Henry Lewis captures key takeaways from our recent event, when we were joined by:

🎙️ Sarah Rose (Formerly USAID)

🎙️ Gunjan Veda (Movement for Community-Led Development)

🎙️ Dylan Mathews (Peace Direct)

🎙️ George Ingram (Brookings Institution)

The challenge: to rethink how power, trust, and accountability are shared across the aid system. Local organisations are ready for change. The question is – are donors and INGOs ready to listen?

Read the blog

Be part of the 2026 Aid Transparency Index

Publish What You Fund has produced the Aid Transparency Index since 2012 to track the transparency of the world’s largest aid and development organisations. We are now opening up the Index to give a wider variety of organisations the opportunity to be independently assessed, benchmarked, and recognised for their transparency. For the first time, the Aid Transparency Index will operate as a paid-for service, offering a greater range of benefits.

Participating in the Aid Transparency Index will offer your organisation the opportunity to:

• Demonstrate leadership and commitment to transparency
• Get an independent, credible transparency accreditation
• Take advantage of expert guidance to improve your transparency
• Benefit from peer learning and training

By partnering with Publish What You Fund for the 2026 Aid Transparency Index, you align with a trusted authority dedicated to enhancing transparency in aid and development. Our experience, independence, and collaborative approach make us the ideal partner to support your organization’s transparency journey.

Our information pack contains all the details of what’s involved and the unique benefits for those new to the Aid Transparency Index.

View the information pack

The transparency gap: Why can’t we assess the transparency of some of the world’s largest DFIs?

A few of the biggest players are missing from the DFI Transparency Index – because their transparency is so low, we can’t meaningfully assess them. These DFIs – managing trillions in assets – are avoiding scrutiny and accountability. But they may also be missing out on vital opportunities for coordination, shared learning, and making smarter, more strategic investments. In this deep dive, Ella Remande-Guyard unpacks the disclosure gaps of seven DFIs from China, Japan, and South Korea – and highlights the real-world consequences of this opacity.

Read the blog

Where’s the evidence? Reflections from Seville

Gary Forster and Paul James joined the development finance community in Seville for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). This Bond blog includes reflections from Gary on the risks of relying on blended finance and mobilisation without clear evidence of its effectiveness and impact. It also provides an overview of the civil society reaction to the conference and its outcome document – generally critical of its lack of ambition and the outsized focus on the private sector.

You can catch up on Gary’s take on private finance, transparency and development effectiveness at the Casa Devex event below.

Other news

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

The Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2025 – the annual assessment of the state of international humanitarian financing – shows a humanitarian sector entering financial crisis. Produced for the first time by the ALNAP network, the report finds that after years of growth, total international humanitarian assistance declined by just under US $5 billion in 2024. This is the largest funding drop ever recorded. A range of scenarios produced for the report show that funding from public donors could drop between 34 and 45% in 2025 from their peak in 2023. Reforms to increase effectiveness, such as funding to local and national actors and anticipatory action, have also seen stagnation and reversal.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has published its latest global health financing report, which warns the world has entered a new “era of global health austerity” with funding levels at a 15-year low. Published in The Lancet, the study uses a variety of data sources to estimate development assistance for health from 1990 to 2030. It finds that development assistance for health peaked at US$80.3 billion in 2021 and fell to US$49.6 billion in 2024. In 2025, announced budget cuts – particularly from the US – are expected to lead to further declines to US$38.4 billion. It forecasts further stagnation, reaching US$36.2 billion in 2030. The authors warn that major reductions in global health financing threaten to widen health disparities unless mitigated by increased domestic resource mobilisation or alternative financing mechanisms.

The Center for Global Development has released a new development finance performance brief, which compares 40 major aid providers across three dimensions: how much they give, how well it’s targeted, and whether it supports long-term impact. It finds that:

• Aid is increasingly going to richer countries. The average recipient today is about twice as wealthy as a typical low-income country.
• Too little funding goes through multilateral institutions, despite their proven effectiveness. Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and the UAE spend less than a quarter of their development finance through multilateral channels.
• Top performers are Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands (on both quantity and quality of their development finance).
• Survey data suggests recipient countries are feeling more ownership over aid programmes.

New analysis released by Education Cannot Wait and the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report reveals persistent gaps in how education funding is tracked, coordinated and reported. The joint policy paper highlights the urgent need to harmonise reporting systems to ensure transparency, consistency and impact for global investments in education in emergencies and protracted crises. The paper analyses data from the International Aid Transparency Initiative, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Creditor Reporting System, and UN OCHA Financial Tracking Service, and concludes that funding for education in crises accounts for an increasing share of total aid to education. It says the share of education in emergencies and protracted crises has increased from 9% in 2017 to 12% in 2023. However, low and lower-middle-income countries face a US$100 billion annual financing gap to reach their education targets.

ODI Global has developed a new tool to support foreign aid donors and their partners improve due diligence processes and reduce the risk of inadvertently funding actors undermining gender equality. It says such funding could compromise the integrity, transparency and accountability of aid, and jeopardise the sustainability and effectiveness of initiatives and investments across broader development sectors. Such risks are highlighted in this Devex (£) story about donors accidentally funding groups not aligned with their values.

The Community Health Impact Coalition has released a study into the availability of data on international funding for professional community health workers (proCHWs). The study, published in BMJ Global Health, mapped funding provided by eight major global funders. The analysis showed a gap in accessible data required to quantify the funding for CHWs, particularly proCHWs, across the eight organisations. Only two organisations, The Global Fund and the President’s Malaria Initiative, provided partial data visibility, while none fully disclosed specific funding amounts for proCHW programmes. Most organisations did not systematically track or report CHW investments, making it challenging to assess global funding flows. The study recommends global funders improve the specificity of their data reporting and integrate proCHW indicators into standard reporting tools.

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