The 2024 Aid Transparency Index highlights:

• The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) re-joins “very good” category for the first time since merger of DFID and FCO, meeting the target set in the 2023 UK Aid White Paper
• FCDO now ranks joint 10^th in the Index. Rising 11 points from 2022, albeit still 2.5 points below DFID’s score in 2020.
• FCDO has made a focussed effort to address the transparency issues identified in the 2022 Index, which will help people access its organisational and country strategies, see disaggregated budgets and get a clearer overview of its projects.
• There is a need for high quality, up-to-date aid data from all agencies, so that citizens, civil society and journalists can make sense of global promises and challenge donor claims on everything from localisation to climate finance to gender investments.

The UK has returned to the top ten most transparent aid and development donors, according to the 2024 Aid Transparency Index. Released today by Publish What You Fund, the Index is the only independent measure of aid transparency among the world’s major aid donors. It reveals that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) now ranks in the “very good” category after a big drop in the last Index. It scored 82.9 points out of 100, up an impressive 11 points from 2022.

It means that FCDO is back among the top performers in global aid transparency, for the first time since the merger of the Department for International Development (DFID) and Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO). FCDO has met its objective to achieve “very good” in the ranking, as set by the government in response to the Independent Commission on Aid Impact’s 2022 review of transparency in UK aid publication, and repeated in the 2023 UK Aid White Paper.

Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund, said:

“It’s really positive to see that aid transparency is back on track in the UK. After a challenging period where we saw not only a reduction in activity level transparency, but also a deterioration in the way FCDO engaged with civil society, we’re happy that phase is now behind us. It’s a credit to the FCDO Transparency Team that they’ve put in a lot of effort and taken such a laser focussed approach to address the recommendations we laid out in the 2022 Aid Transparency Index. We hope that the new government will strive to continually improve and do even better in the next Index.”

Romilly Greenhill, CEO of Bond, the UK network for NGOs said:

“We’re encouraged by FCDO’s improved rating on the Aid Transparency Index. Despite difficult years following the merger, budget cuts and capacity shortages, these improvements in transparency reflect the impact of strong senior level commitment and the hard work of the FCDO transparency team.”

“We hope the new leadership maintains this commitment to improving transparency across all of government, especially as the UK aid budget is increasingly being spent by other departments and agencies with poor levels of transparency. To ensure value for money and to achieve the goal of tackling poverty, UK aid must be transparent and accountable to both the taxpayer and those who need it most. We look forward to working closely with the new government on this to make sure they can achieve even higher levels of transparency across all departments.”

The 2024 Aid Transparency Index reveals that more aid organisations than ever before are publishing good quality information and score “very good” in the global ranking. African Development Bank (Sovereign Portfolio) retains the top spot in the rankings, with a score of 98.8. Multilateral institutions dominate the top ten.

As data quality rises, and new tools make the information increasingly accessible, researchers, journalists, campaigners and policy makers are flocking to use the data. Examples include analysis of aid-funded health infrastructure destroyed in Gaza, tracking of climate finance and investigations of the role of private sector contractors in UK development.

Alex Tilley, who researched and authored the report, said:

“Transparency and accountability are a cornerstone of a modern, well governed aid system. Aid transparency provides accountability to citizens from donor countries and clarity to citizens in recipient countries. High quality data means governments and civil society can plan and track where aid money is flowing to, and for what purpose.”

“And it’s important to explain why now, aid transparency is more important than ever. Not least because we’re facing global challenges which need a coordinated response between donors. But also because we’re seeing aid and development data increasingly used for decision making by policy makers and those looking to influence policy. As such if a donor is not transparent their role and impact will be misunderstood at best, or invisible at worst”.

The 2024 Aid Transparency Index report is available here. The Index website provides details of the scores and analysis of the performance of each donor. .

The 2024 Aid Transparency Index will be launched at a hybrid event hosted by the Brookings Institution on Tuesday 16th July at 9:30am EDT, 2:30pm BST, 3:30pm CEST. Register for the event here.