OECD Archives

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.

DFI additionality disclosure: More boxes ticked, but is value added?

By Ella Remande-Guyard | Jul 16, 2026 | Blog

A year ago, we asked how convincingly development finance institutions (DFIs) could show that their financing added something the private sector would not otherwise have provided. Twelve months and a fresh dataset later, we went back to check their progress.

Making additionality count: Why development finance institutions must step up on transparency

By Ella Remande-Guyard | Apr 16, 2025 | Blog

As more public finance is channelled to the private sector in the name of development, we need to know: are these investments genuinely adding value, or are they just substituting what the market could do on its own? This is where additionality comes in: the idea that ODA should only be used when it delivers something that private capital cannot.
Our latest research explores how well donors and their bilateral DFIs are disclosing the additionality of their private sector instrument (PSI) investments using the new OECD-DAC reporting requirements.

Being serious about WEE requires funders to be serious about transparency

By Alex Farley and Sally Paxton | Jan 13, 2023 | Blog

The political support for investing in women’s economic empowerment (WEE) has never been higher. Especially in light of the disparate impacts from COVID-19 on women and girls, there has been a loud chorus of voices on the need to invest in WEE. The critical question, though, is whether the political rhetoric is matched by effective, catalytic investments that are significantly advancing women and girls’ equality and giving them the meaningful ability to participate in, and benefit from, economic opportunities and prosperity?

Your step by step guide to researching funding for women’s economic empowerment and women’s financial inclusion

By Alex Farley and Sally Paxton | Nov 2, 2022 | Blog, News

We’ve produced two new guides for anyone wishing to track international funding for women’s economic empowerment (WEE) or women’s financial inclusion (WFI) in their own country. The guides are based on an approach we’ve developed and tested over the last two years, which is designed so that it can be used and adapted by decision makers, researchers and advocates for their own purposes – including holding funders accountable or advocating for different investments. The new step by step guides are concise, accessible and flexible – signposting to a range of other, more detailed resources.