As the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) takes shape, there is a concerning silence around aid transparency. At a time when transparency is more vital than ever – to ensure that scarce development finance is accountable, effective, and impactful -it appears to be falling off the agenda.
We are proud to launch Publish What You Fund’s 2025–2030 strategy—an ambitious roadmap to reinforce transparency as a pillar of effective, accountable development finance. This strategy builds on years of progress while responding to the new challenges of our time.
Publish What You Fund will not be running the Aid Transparency Index in 2026, and all future editions are in doubt unless further funding can be secured. The Index has provided an independent assessment and ranking of the transparency of the world’s largest aid agencies since 2012. It has had a significant impact on the quality and quantity of aid data that is published to the IATI Standard. Without it, there is great risk of an unchecked decline in aid transparency.
Our new report shows a troubling lack of transparency among philanthropic foundations that pledged to increase direct funding to local organisations. Despite commitments made in 2022 through the Donor Statement on Supporting Locally Led Development, the vast majority have failed to report targets or progress.
We’ve been tracking USAID’s localization journey since Administrator Samantha Power first announced the agency’s intention to provide 25% of its funding to local organizations in 2021. Our work has focused on the issue of how much money is actually channelled directly to local organizations. In this article, we reflect on USAID’s new FY 2024 localization progress report, highlighting where USAID is leading the way, identifying areas that still need attention, and looking ahead to what’s next.
Ahead of next week’s World Bank Annual Meetings, Sally Paxton discusses the critical role of development banks in mobilising private capital to meet global development goals, and why we still don’t understand what is working. She presents new recommendations from Publish What You Fund to fill the current knowledge gap by improving the measurement and disclosure of private capital mobilisation, and stresses why action is urgently needed.
