Welcome to the latest monthly roundup of news from the world of aid and development transparency. We’re pleased to announce details of our forthcoming event on how development finance institutions (DFIs) can improve mobilisation measurement and disclosure. Plus we share our views on how to fix gender equality funding data and introduce our new chair.

Why do we still not know where funding is going for gender equality?

Many organisations have attempted to track funding for gender equality in recent years. We’ve all reached the same conclusion: the data is a mess. The data doesn’t tell us if political support for advancing the rights and economic opportunities of women and girls is being matched with effective investment. If we really want progress on gender equality, we need to move from measuring good intentions to measuring outcomes. We need a new approach.

In a new blog, first published by Devex, Alex Farley (Publish What You Fund), Fionna Smyth (Development Initiatives), Hellen Malinga Apila (SDGs Kenya Forum) and Mareen Buschmann (CARE International UK) set out how we can move towards an approach based on action and outcomes. They propose a multi-stakeholder convening that will review, discuss, and resolve the data issues. This should include funders, gender experts, women’s rights organisations, feminist movements and data experts, drawn from all geographies.

Read the blog here

Join our event: Improving the measurement and disclosure of private capital mobilisation by MDBs/DFIs

16 April, 11:00—12:30 PM ET / 4:00-5:30 pm BST

Online and in Washington DC

The need for much greater mobilisation of private capital for SDG and climate investments has been a critical part of the multilateral development bank (MDB) reform debate. Part of the challenge is the limitations on the data available to judge performance, as well as considerable measurement uncertainties. We have been working to improve the measurement and transparency of private capital mobilisation and will be launching our new proposed approach at this event, co-hosted with the Center for Global Development (CGD).

Key public and private stakeholders will discuss the importance of mobilising more private capital in emerging markets and developing economies, how MDB approaches need to evolve, and the best ways to disclose, assess, and report on their performance. We are delighted to be joined by:

• Alexia Latortue, Assistant Secretary for International Trade and Development, U.S. Department of The Treasury (keynote)
• Hans Peter Lankes, Managing Director and Deputy Chief Executive, ODI
• Kruskaia Sierra-Escalante, Senior Manager, Treasury and Mobilization, Co-Investor Solutions, IFC
• Phil Stevens, Head of International Financial Institutions, FCDO
• Ben Weisman, Executive Director, Capital Mobilization and Public Policy, GFANZ
• Margaret Kuhlow, Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Development Finance and Policy, U.S. Department of The Treasury
• Nancy Lee, Director, Sustainable Development Finance, CGD (moderator)
• Gary Forster, CEO, Publish What You Fund (presentation)

Register here

Introducing our new chair

We are delighted to announce that Al Kags has been appointed as the new chair of Publish What You Fund. Al first joined the board in 2021 and is the founder of the Open Institute. With expertise in open data and citizen engagement, Al will provide great strategic leadership for the next phase of the organisation’s development.

Al said:

“I am very excited to join and lead the Publish What You Fund team that is set on making aid and development data not just available but useful for real-world decision-making. By enhancing how this information is shared and used, we aim to bolster accountability and drive meaningful progress. Together, we’ll turn transparency into tangible benefits for communities worldwide.”

Read more here

Other news

Here’s a quick roundup of other news and publications we’ve been reading over the last few weeks:

A new Governance paper by Mirko Heinzel, Bernhard Reinsberg and Haley Swedlund argues that bilateral aid agencies can increase support for foreign aid by enhancing transparency. The article presents findings from surveys involving a representative sample of 2058 British citizens. The results suggest that transparency reforms are among the most effective institutional interventions for increasing public support. They also suggest that transparency is most effective at increasing public support amongst those who are initially more skeptical of aid and the civil service.

The OCHA Centre for Humanitarian Data has released The State of Open Humanitarian Data 2024, which marks ten years of the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) – an open platform for finding and sharing data across crises and organisations. At the start of 2024, it estimates that 70 percent of relevant, complete crisis data is available across 23 humanitarian operations. It says that while demand for humanitarian data reached record levels, data availability across priority humanitarian operations remained steady. The report includes a country deep-dive for Colombia, which has seen significant gains in data completeness over the past five years, and it showcases the contribution of the World Food Programme.

The International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) has launched an online course for civil society organisations on how to access, use and analyse IATI data. It is available in English, French and Spanish.

A new paper from Eurodad and ActionAid explores the risks and opportunities for blended finance for climate action. It highlights serious issues around transparency and accountability, and points to the current lack of evidence on its prevalence and impact. The report identifies US$14 bn invested into blended climate finance transactions between 2019-2021, compared to US$36.5 bn between 2016-2018.

The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has released its review looking at the UK’s five-year commitment, set in 2019, to provide £11.6bn in international climate finance. The review finds that the government “moved the goalposts” with two years to go to meet the target, by changing the way it is calculated. ICAI recommends that the government increases transparency around the £11.6bn so it can be better held to account, and takes further steps to track the delivery of climate finance to the most vulnerable countries.

A recent Development Initiatives (DI) blog asks how much of the growth in international climate finance is genuine and how much has come from a change in reporting practices. DI used a natural-language processing (NLP) model to identify which of the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) projects were classed as climate finance in 2022, and applied this model to previous years. The results suggest that the UK has spent more on climate-related projects than previously thought (it could be a third higher) , though this also means the upward trend in climate finance has been exaggerated.

In a Center for Global Development blog post, Charles Kenny reflects on ‘zombie statistics’ in foreign assistance, and asks if 20% of aid is really lost to corruption.

The Trust, Accountability and Inclusion Collaborative (TAI) has published a scan of trends in funding for international tax justice, covering illicit financial flows (IFFs)as well as more general advocacy and policy work. It finds that over US$150m has been directed to international tax justice, anti-IFFs, tax and extractives, tax and climate, and Global South regional and country funding since 2020. It also finds that most country-level support for tax justice goes to the US, and more philanthropies align with tax justice than bilaterals or multilaterals

ODI has examined the barriers faced by donors to localisation in climate adaptation, based on initiatives in Uganda. The study identifies five central barriers: risk aversion, administrative challenges, dual accountabilities, divergent values and power asymmetries. It offers a series of recommendations to overcome these barriers and ensure localisation commitments can be realised in global climate adaptation efforts: strengthen donor capacities and shift mindsets; enhance access to quality finance; create space for local agency and decision-making; track localisation progress in climate goals and instruments; and reconceptualise local actor ‘capacity’.
The Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) has released a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for enhancing the BUILD Act to strengthen the work of the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC). MFAN highlights the need for DFC to strengthen transparency, particularly around development impact, mobilisation of private sector resources and ensuring ESG policies are being practiced – especially for project affected communities.

A new feature on d-portal now allows users to see if organisation references are used by other IATI publishers. The fix should help to support the traceability of aid flows in IATI data. This IATI Connect article explains what it means in practice.

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