Blog Archives

2026 Aid Transparency Index: World’s three biggest aid donors fall back on transparency, while multilaterals lead the way

By Sam Cavenett | Nov 4, 2026 | Blog, News

The 2026 Aid Transparency Index shows that the three largest aid providers – Germany, the US and the UK – have become less transparent in the last two years. However, most of the world’s leading aid and development agencies are still publishing good-quality information, after the steepest fall in aid on record. Multilateral organisations lead the way, and Spain makes the biggest improvement in the Index’s history.

Scale dominated the World Bank annual meetings – but where was the evidence of impact?

By Paul James | Oct 22, 2026 | Blog

At the recent World Bank annual meetings, many gatherings focused on how the World Bank and other multilateral development banks and development finance institutions could double down on their record-breaking private capital mobilisation figures. The message was that the World Bank needs to do more to crowd in private finance, and to do it faster. What was much less clear was where development impact – whether measured in terms of project results or market impacts – featured in these conversations. This blog unpacks the main takeaways from the Publish What You Fund team’s trip to the annual meetings.

The goal is “Good” – how France and Agence Française de Développement have taken on the aid transparency challenge

By Sam Cavenett | Oct 15, 2026 | Blog

The French Development Agency, Agence Française de Développement – AFD, is one of the agencies that signed up to be part of the 2026 Aid Transparency Index. As the final results are being calculated ahead of the launch on 4th November, we spoke to Catherine Bareyre, Head of Accountability and AFD Group Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), about her views on transparency and experience of the Index accreditation process.

How visible is development cooperation beyond the DAC?

By Henry Lewis | Oct 13, 2026 | Blog

As the traditional aid landscape shifts, a wider group of governments is playing a growing role in development cooperation. But how much of their contribution is visible in public data? The second report in our Making Impact Visible series assesses the transparency of 47 providers of international development cooperation that are not part of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). In this post, Henry Lewis sets out what the research covered, the strong data foundations it identified, and the information that’s missing.

Understanding the new MDB methodology on mobilisation – what’s changed and what are the implications?

By Paul James | Oct 8, 2026 | Blog

The MDB Task Force on Mobilization’s long-awaited Joint Methodologies for Measuring Private Finance for Development are the first update to how multilateral development banks measure private capital mobilisation (PCM) since 2018. In this blog we consider what has changed, how this aligns with Publish What You Fund proposals and the OECD approach, its likely effects on reported volumes of PCM, and what it says about transparency.

MDB securitisations: transparency must keep pace with financial innovation

By Paul James | Oct 1, 2026 | Blog

Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are being asked to do more with the capital they have. To meet this challenge, some are turning to securitisations – to free up capital for investment, to mobilise private capital, or a combination of both. Since 2018, over $7.6 billion has been securitised by MDBs. Such transactions have also become more frequent, which raises a series of questions regarding what we can see about the transactions and their implications for development finance. This blog unpacks the latest trends in MDB securitisations and highlights instances where improvements in transparency are important for the proper governance of the institutions involved.