Improving transparency and accountability for women’s economic empowerment funding

Thursday 15 December, 9.00-10.15am Washington DC, 2.00-3.15pm London

We have spent two years conducting detailed and innovative research to track funding to women’s economic empowerment. Based on our experience of using global datasets, we are launching a new report which extrapolates findings from Kenya, Nigeria, and Bangladesh to unpack the current state of transparency in funding for women’s economic empowerment. We identify the key data limitations, including our ability to understand the impact of funding, and provide recommendations for funders to improve the reporting and publication of information.

Please join us for a presentation and roundtable discussion on these findings and pathways towards greater transparency and accountability for women’s economic empowerment funding. We will bring together a range of funders to discuss our recommendations and encourage contributions from other stakeholders. 

Register here

Save the date: Launch of the DFI Transparency Index

Wednesday 25 January 2023, 9.30 Washington DC, 2.30 London, 3.30 Europe

We’re excited to share details of the launch of the first DFI Transparency Index. This hybrid event will take place online and in-person in Washington DC, hosted by Brookings Institution. Our team has been conducting rigorous assessments of the transparency of 30 of the world’s leading development finance institutions (DFIs). We hope you can join us on 25 January to discover how multilateral and bilateral DFIs are doing on transparency and discuss what this means for the impact of their work responding to global crises.

The biggest challenge for the 2X Challenge? The urgent need for transparency

The 2X Challenge has mobilised US$11.4 billion for women. But what do we know about these investments and how they’re advancing gender equality? Our team has looked back through the data to see how successful the 2X approach has been so far in channelling funds to women and girls. They found a transparency problem – and we’re calling for it to be fixed as part of the new certification process.

How we’re using global aid data

In case you missed it, you can catch up on our recent presentations at IATI’s Virtual Community Exchange. We showcased four areas of our work using IATI data to analyse finance for climate, localisation, development finance institutions and women’s economic empowerment.

What are women’s empowerment collectives, and what funding do they get?

Following our recent research tracking funding for women’s empowerment collectives (WECs) in Kenya, Nigeria and Bangladesh, this blog focuses on women’s groups with WECs elements. Dorcas Mutheu discusses what our research tells us about how these groups are funded and how reporting can be improved for better tracking of funding and impact. This blog first appeared on theEvidence Consortium on Women’s Groups (ECWG) website.

Other news

Here is a brief roundup of what we’ve been reading over the past few weeks:

Among those reflecting on COP27, Donor Tracker has produced an insight summarising the top five takeaways for global development advocates.

The global civil society platform CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness is calling on development stakeholders to uphold effectiveness principles (including transparency and mutual accountability) in the global climate finance architecture. The brief outlines an initial approach to examine key components of effective global climate finance architecture, with reference to the administration, governance, disbursement and implementation of climate change funding.

This Devex article reports that only 7% of funds delivered so far to fulfil a US$1.7 billion pledge to support the tenure rights and forest guardianship of Indigenous peoples and local communities, have gone directly to those groups. Around 50% of the delivered funds have been channelled through intermediaries such as international nongovernmental organisations — prompting the chairs of the funders’ group to call for increased direct funding via mechanisms led or governed by Indigenous and local groups.

Bond has summarised the UK’s 2021 Official Development Assistance (ODA) spending, revealing where the recent aid cuts have hit hardest. The article also reflects on recent announcements that ODA will remain at around 0.5% of gross national income in 2022, despite an increasing proportion of this being spent on refugee hosting costs.

Meanwhile, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has launched a review into UK aid spending on refugee and asylum seekers within the UK between 2015 and 2022. Publish What You Fund will be submitting evidence shortly. We also welcome the recent commitment from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to achieve ‘very good’ in our next Aid Transparency Index – in response to a recommendation in ICAI’s review of the transparency of UK aid. We hope to see similar commitments from all other ODA spending government departments.

This DevPolicy blog looks into the share of Australian aid going to women’s empowerment and the use of the OECD gender marker.

This Candid blog looks at the (rather slow) progress that has been made on transparency by foundations over the last 12 years.