Welcome to the latest monthly roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency.

Register now: Launch of the 2022 Aid Transparency Index – 10 years on

Wednesday 13 July 2022, 2.30 – 4pm BST

We hope you can join us for the launch of the 2022 Aid Transparency Index. 2022 marks the tenth anniversary of the Index, the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major aid organisations. As well as highlighting the current state of aid transparency, we will be examining the extraordinary progress that has been made over the last ten years. We’ll also be discussing how we can tackle real world issues using global aid data with representatives from donors, governments, researchers and civil society.

This hybrid event will be hosted by the European Commission, DG International Partnerships and you can now register to join us online or in-person in Brussels. To register please send an email to intpa-infopoint-conferences@ec.europa.eu, specifying your name and surname and the name of your organisation.

Ten years of the Aid transparency Index

To mark the tenth anniversary of the Aid Transparency Index we’ve taken a quick look back at previous reports and launch events.

The global aid data set is at risk

As reported in this recent Devex article, we’re sounding the alarm over the current risk of rapid deterioration of the global aid data set. We’ve conducted research that identifies drastic drops in aid data quality between editions of the Aid Transparency Index. But funding is running out, signalling the end of the Index. After so much has been invested by so many in the global data set, we need funders to step up to save it.

As our CEO Gary Forster told Devex, “Given the decade of effort and tens of millions of dollars invested in the systems and processes that have enabled the creation of this dataset, it’s unthinkable that we could be facing a catastrophic decline in data quality for want of a mechanism that costs a fraction of that,”.

Tracking international funding to women’s economic empowerment – coming soon

We’re also getting ready to release new research which tracks funding for women’s economic empowerment in Bangladesh, Kenya and Nigeria. Our in-depth analysis looks at international funding flows to women’s financial inclusion, women’s economic empowerment and women’s empowerment collectives as well as considering the gender intentionality of funding and spending on women’s unpaid care work. Look out for the report series which we’ll be releasing on Monday 18 July, and then join us for an event with the Center for Global Development on Tuesday 2 August, when we’ll be discussing the findings and hearing the views of donors and gender advocates.

Using aid data for accountability in nutrition financing

In the run up to the launch of the 2022 Aid Transparency Index, Richard Watts of Save the Children UK discusses how they are using open data to track aid to nutrition and hold donors accountable for their commitments. He explains that this is only possible due to continued improvements in the available aid data, but development partners could still do more to increase their transparency.

Mapping empowerment – using giant datasets to track investments in women’s economic empowerment

Ahead of the launch of the 2022 Index and women’s economic empowerment research, Alex Farley-Kiwanuka explains the monumental effort undertaken by her team to combine four global datasets in order to track Women’s Economic Empowerment funding across three countries. Alex also shares why she feels the Aid Transparency Index is so important for maintaining and improving international funding data and making it useable for researchers like herself.