Gary Forster

USAID’s localization progress: encouraging steps, but measurement challenges remain

By Gary Forster and Sally Paxton | Jan 22, 2025 | Blog

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.

Transforming our understanding of what works to mobilise private investors

By Sally Paxton and Gary Forster | Oct 16, 2024 | Blog

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.

What can you learn about aid and development projects through D-Portal?

By Gary Forster | Sep 5, 2024 | Case studies

Gary Forster introduces the aid and development information that can be found on D-Portal – a gateway to the 800,000 projects in the International Aid transparency Initiative dataset. Using the example of investments made by the African Development Bank into water and sanitation projects in Zambia, Gary shows the wealth of information (such as objectives, partners, funding disbursements, and evaluation reports) that can be explored when agencies publish good data.

Aid more transparent than ever before

By Gary Forster and Alex Tilley | Jul 16, 2024 | Blog, News

The 2024 Aid Transparency Index has recorded its highest ever scores – marking a continued improvement in aid transparency among the world’s major aid and development agencies. The Index found advancements in the quality, quantity and timeliness of aid data. The average score across all 50 organisations in 2024 was the highest seen so far at 64.4 (compared with 61.8 in 2022). More organisations achieved scores in the top ‘very good’ category (12) and fewer organisations than ever before were in the bottom ‘very poor’ category (2).

Aid transparency is back on track in the UK

By Gary Forster and Alex Tilley | Jul 16, 2024 | Blog, News

The UK has returned to the top ten most transparent aid and development donors, according to the 2024 Aid Transparency Index. It reveals that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) now ranks in the “very good” category after a big drop in the last Index. It scored 82.9 points out of 100, up an impressive 11 points from 2022.

Closing data gaps that obstruct solutions to mobilising private finance for the SDGs

By Gary Forster and Guest | Apr 11, 2024 | Blog

With growing calls for both more and better targeted development finance to address rising global needs, private capital mobilisation (PCM) provides an essential part of the solution. For development finance institutions to reach the required scale, accurate measurement and disclosure of PCM data is necessary, so that DFIs and their stakeholders can better identify the most effective mechanisms for increasing the flow of private capital to emerging and developing economies. Gary Forster and Nancy Lee examine why Publish What You Fund is proposing a new method for better measurement and more disaggregated disclosure of mobilisation.

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