private sector Archives

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.

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.

The three changes we need to improve understanding of private capital mobilisation

By Paul James | Nov 8, 2023 | Blog

the recent report of the G20 Independent Expert Group (IEG) offers a blueprint for how multilateral development banks (MDBs) can be scaled effectively to increase lending to emerging and developing economies. Paul James looks into the mobilisation of private finance targets in the IEG report, and outlines three changes that are needed if we are to better understand mobilisation and ultimately drive changes that will result in its growth.

A new frontier in aid transparency? Private sector aid contractors

By Alex Tilley | Sep 12, 2023 | Blog

We’ve been analysing the transparency of private aid contractors. These organisations handle billions of dollars of aid money, yet the largest players are almost completely un-transparent. This limits both accountability and the scope for analysis of international aid flows. We take a deep dive into the transparency of two of these companies, Chemonics and Adam Smith International, and provide clear policy recommendations to help improve the visibility of the aid that flows through them.