News roundup – Funding for women’s economic empowerment stagnates, and a new approach to tracking climate finance
Welcome to the latest monthly roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency. This newsletter features details of our newly released research tracking funding for women’s economic empowerment, our innovative approach to tracking climate finance, some reflections on the launch of the 2022 Aid Transparency Index, a chance to catch up on an event examining financing for unpaid care work, and details of our methodology for merging global aid data sets.
Funding for women’s economic empowerment stagnates, despite an increase in international development funding
While funding for international development projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria is increasing, funding for projects targeting women’s economic empowerment has remained the same since 2015. This is one of the key findings of new research, which tracks national and international funding for women’s economic empowerment in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria.
The findings also show that within women’s economic empowerment funding, projects aiming to improve income-earning among women, such as those supporting financial services and banking, received the least funding. Most international grant funding for women’s economic empowerment in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Nigeria is from bilateral governments. International grant funders most commonly targeted ‘Girls or adolescents’, ‘rural’, ‘poor’ and ‘vulnerable’ women with their women’s economic empowerment funding. However, a number of donors still do not report this level of data. The full report series, which also examines funding for women’s financial inclusion, women’s empowerment collectives and unpaid care work, can be seen here.
Watch now: Where is the money for women’s economic empowerment?
On 2 August, we launched our research on donor and government financing to address gender gaps in women’s economic empowerment, including unpaid care work and access to financial services, at a webinar hosted by the Center for Global Development. A panel of donor and civil society representatives reflected on these findings and discussed what future investments should look like. Watch a recording of the event below, and see our five key takeaways from the discussion here.
Measuring the gap – international climate finance and the priorities of climate vulnerable countries
We have been looking into international climate finance and how this can be tracked at the national level. Alex Tilley presents research using aid transparency data to see how finance provided so far measures up against climate change adaptation needs identified by Kenya. This is a preview of a larger research project we are currently fundraising for.
Aid transparency comes of age: launching the 2022 Aid Transparency Index
On 13 July we launched the 2022 edition of the Aid Transparency Index. This was the 10th anniversary of the Index, and it marked a special moment. For the first time we’re witnessing data use examples flourishing. We’re seeing a variety of stakeholders, both locally and globally, using open aid data for research, programme design and engagement. Gary Forster summarises his key takeaways from the launch event.
Ten years of the Aid Transparency Index—How has the US fared?
Following the launch of the 2022 Index, Sally Paxton and George Ingram reflect on the performance of the top US agencies, the progress that has been made on transparency and the importance of using data to improve future development outcomes.
If you missed the 2022 Index launch, you can watch a recording of the event here and all the Index results, including detailed profiles of all the 50 donors, can be seen here.
Watch now: Where is the money for unpaid care?
On 19 July, in an exclusive webinar to the Global Alliance for Care and friends, we presented our findings from research developed in partnership with the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) that tracks international funding aimed at reducing women and girls’ unpaid care work.
A methodology for merging IATI and CRS data
Our women’s economic empowerment team wanted to include as many international funding flows as possible when analysing development assistance data. As part of our innovative and rigorous research process, we merged the two main global sources of development assistance data – from the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). In this blog, Benjamin Honey explores the pros and cons of merging the two main data sets and describes the methodology we employed.
Other news
Here is a brief roundup of what we’ve been reading over the past few weeks:
International Budget Partnership has launched the Open Budget Survey 2021, assessing the transparency, oversight, and participation in national budgets in 120 countries. Since 2008, transparency scores have increased by 20%. 31% of countries now provide sufficiently detailed information to understand how their budget addresses poverty, and 14% of governments present their expenditures by gender.
IATI has released new videos on using its Country Development Finance Data tool. The videos are available in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese and cover how to access and understand data on external development finance and how to analyse this data. IATI has also announced that its Members’ Assembly will take place from 8-10 November in Copenhagen (and also online).
Development Initiatives has released the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2022, which finds that total funding has plateaued despite historically high levels of demand.
Donor Tracker and the ONE Campaign have launched a Ukraine ODA Tracker, which monitors donor countries’ support to Ukraine by estimating in-donor refugee costs and tracking pledges made by donors to support Ukraine.
New figures from OECD show that climate finance increased only slightly in real terms in 2020 (to US$83.3 billion, and the commitment to provide and mobilise US$100 billion in annual climate finance to low- and middle-income countries by 2020 is not expected to be reached until 2023.
Civil society organisations in Uganda are calling for total transparency and accountability on the use of borrowed funds by various government entities. SEATINI Uganda, Uganda Debt Network, and Transparency International Uganda want to see data about the performance and results of debt-funded projects and for the government to undertake mid-term assessments on ongoing projects to monitor performance and re-channel funds where appropriate.
In a new report, the Center for Global Development has charted the barriers that prevent research from informing policy and lay out what researchers and funders can do to transform the evidence landscape. One of the key findings is that despite progress in the field, development policies and programmes still go mostly unevaluated with their impact unknown.
Stakeholders in Nigeria have highlighted fragmented and poor funding of nutrition-related activities by the federal government across relevant sectors with resultant poor nutritional indices. Results for Development called for greater collaboration and understanding of how nutrition is financed.
In this blog, the ONE Campaign explains how it is using data in a new way to help the public understand the inter-connectedness of global crises.