Our regular roundup of news on aid and development transparency – featuring highlights from the 2026 Aid Transparency Index, new research into the visibility of development cooperation beyond the DAC, and a look at a new MDB mobilisation approach
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.
Catch up on the launch of the 2026 Aid Transparency Index, hosted by Publish What You Fund and the Center for Global Development. Hear the headline findings and themes, and a discussion about the future of trust, transparency and evidence in development decision-making.
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 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.
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.
