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

Participants announced for the 2026 Aid Transparency Index

We’re pleased to announce the organisations that have chosen to participate in the 2026 Aid Transparency Index. The Index will provide an independent assessment and accreditation of transparency performance, ensuring the sustainability of this vital global accountability tool while opening participation to a broader range of organisations than ever before.

14 organisations have registered to participate, including bilateral donors, philanthropic foundations, UN agencies and multilateral development banks.

See the list here.

UK aid transparency has improved, but Home Office is not transparent about its ODA spending

Our latest review finds that the transparency of aid spending UK government departments has improved. However, it highlights the Home Office as the only department which has become less transparent over the last five years – despite spending £2.3 billion of the UK’s aid budget in 2024.

“Progress and Gaps: Transparency of UK Aid Beyond the FCDO”, commissioned by the UK government, provides a tailored assessment of the transparency of Official Development Assistance (ODA) spending by nine UK government departments, other than the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It shows that the visibility of ODA spending has increased since the last review of 2020, but highlights a significant dip in the intervening years, suggesting that aid transparency needs long term attention.

When transparency pays off: how new data might just have unlocked $600 billion in new lending capacity

After years of patient technical work by the Global Emerging Markets (GEMs) Risk Database team and advocacy from CSOs, the private sector, media and many more, a significant breakthrough has just been announced. During the World Bank’s annual meetings, S&P Global Ratings announced that it had revised its approach to assessing the risk associated with sovereign operations by multilateral development banks (MDBs). S&P estimates that the change, made possible by the public release of the increasingly granular GEMs data, could free up between $600 billion and $800 billion of MDB capital over the next decade.

In this blog, Gary Forster discusses what this change means and why Publish What You Fund and others have been pushing for greater transparency of GEMs data.

DFI climate finance transparency: concerning gaps but glimmers of hope

Two major shifts have reshaped the landscape since our 2024 examination of development finance institution (DFI) climate finance. First, ODA fell for the first time in seven years, making DFIs increasingly central to achieving global development and climate targets. Second, in late 2024, a new global climate finance goal of $300 billion annually was agreed, replacing the previous $100 billion target. In this blog, Ryan Anderton discusses the changing landscape of DFI climate finance. He shares insights from the 2025 DFI Transparency Index and outlines his hopes for future progress.

Look out next week, when we’ll be launching the MDB Climate Finance Dataset, and accompanying report. It consolidates current project-level disclosures by multilateral development banks to assist stakeholders seeking to analyse and track MDB climate finance in detail and to push for further breakthroughs.

Training on aid and development data – last date for 2025

Join us to discover how to track global development funding. 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.

Book now for the final date in 2025:

📅 Monday 17 November, 2.30pm GMT

Book your place

Other news

Here’s a quick roundup of other news and publications we’ve been reading over the last few weeks:
A new study tracking donor funding for the global COVID-19 response is featured in The Lancet. The study from the Science of Implementation Initiative found that between 2020 and 2022, $207.9 billion was pledged globally. Of this, $170.9 billion was disbursed: 86.6% by the World Bank, 11.5% by donor governments, and 1.9% by other multilaterals. 60% of COVID-19 funding took the form of loans and just 8.9% was partner government grants. The authors argue there was a profound disconnect between the rhetoric of global solidarity and the reality. They highlight the challenge of tracking pledges and the lack of timely, complete and consistent data that underscores an accountability gap. The study calls for improved systems to track ODA, so that aid can be transparent, predictable, and aligned with national priorities.

This article in India Narrative looks at South-South Cooperation – arguing that it has largely remained invisible in global reporting with little data on its scale or impact. It describes the Framework for Measuring South-South Cooperation – a comprehensive, inclusive and voluntary methodology developed through a UN sub-group. It has been designed to capture both financial and non-financial activities, bringing greater transparency to South-South Cooperation.

Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab has created a new index of sovereign debt transparency, covering 113 countries from 1994 to 2022. This briefing paper describes how the Princeton-NYU Debt Transparency (PNDT) index has been constructed and how it will provide a rigorous measure of transparency over time and between countries. Data will be released next year.

Rainforest Foundation Norway and the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) have released the second edition of The State of Funding for Tenure Rights, which analyses international trends for aid funding to strengthen tenure rights for Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and Afro-Descendant Peoples. The new report finds that financial support has increased by 46 percent since the 2021 COP26, when donors pledged to give $1.7 billion between 2021 and 2025. However, the report also shows signs of potentially waning momentum as annual funding in 2024 was down 23% compared to the peak in 2021. This decline could accelerate with looming aid cuts. It calls on donors to increase funding ahead of the COP30 summit.

Project Resource Optimization (PRO) – the initiative created by former US Agency for International Development (USAID) staff to save some of the most vital USAID-funded projects – has now mobilised $110 million for health and humanitarian projects. The PRO team have been using foreignassistance.gov data to help identify the most cost-effective life-saving programmes and match these with philanthropies.

Center for Global Development (CGD) has examined the data recently published by President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), what’s missing and why transparency matters. It finds PEPFAR hasn’t released new monitoring data since 2024 – leaving policymakers and partners in the dark about whether life-saving aid is reaching those in need. Amid widespread USAID award terminations, the lack of data undermines accountability, planning, and coordination. A new CGD note explains that restoring transparency is essential to preserve PEPFAR’s credibility and impact and to avoid dangerous gaps in coverage.

Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) has published a new report which spotlights the resourcing realities of feminist and women’s rights organisations amid unprecedented political and financial upheaval. Drawing on over a decade of analysis since AWID’s last Where is the Money? report, it takes stock of the gains, gaps, and growing threats in the funding landscape. AWID calls on funders to invest abundantly in feminist organising as essential infrastructure for justice and liberation and invites movements to reimagine bold, self-determined models of resourcing rooted in care, solidarity, and collective power.

New analysis from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) finds that in 2023 59 of the world’s Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States paid $37 billion to service their debts but received only $32 billion in climate finance. IIED says that the link between high debt burdens and worsening climate impacts is a vicious cycle for low-income countries. Paying for disaster recovery takes away from basic services such as education and healthcare, meaning governments have to borrow more, and so their debts pile up. High interest rates based on perceived risk mean this debt is expensive.

The UK’s International Development Committee has warned that aid cuts and poor value for money mean that the UK’s aid may not reach those most in need. Its new report calls for the FCDO to be more transparent about its approach to value for money. Among its recommendations, the Committee suggest FCDO should require all private contractors to adhere to the International Aid Transparency Initiative.

Donor Tracker’s latest instalment in its innovative financing series unpacks the new OECD DAC reporting standards for private sector instruments and examines emerging DFI funding trends from 2023 data. It concludes that rigorous and consistent implementation of the new OECD DAC reporting standards is key to ensuring transparency. It echoes our calls for transparency in order to assess whether DFI investments deliver additional impact that cannot be achieved through other channels, rather than simply inflating ODA figures.

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