Tessie San Martin has been appointed as the new Chair of Friends of Publish What You Fund, taking over from George Ingram who has chaired the organisation for a decade. We would like to thank George for his years of service and valuable contributions to Friends, to Publish What You Fund, and to the development community. We look forward to working with
Tessie, CEO of FHI 360, who will bring great experience and leadership.
As traditional aid shrinks, non-ODA financial flows are increasingly crucial. Their transparency, however, lags far behind. In this blog, Tessie San Martin, George Ingram and Sally Paxton assert that better visibility into non-ODA flows will unlock smarter investments and stronger outcomes. Therefore, extending transparency is essential to ensure new development funding achieves real impact
Aid transparency is the law. The 2016 Foreign Aid Accountability Act and 2018 Evidence-Based Policymaking Act mandate public access to U.S. foreign assistance data. The removal of key USAID data sets and websites limits the ability to assess program effectiveness and spending. Without transparency, accountability weakens. The solution isn’t less data, but better data. Expanding subcontractor details and evaluations would strengthen oversight—not erase it.
We’ve been tracking USAID’s localization journey since Administrator Samantha Power first announced the agency’s intention to provide 25% of its funding to local organizations in 2021. Our work has focused on the issue of how much money is actually channelled directly to local organizations. In this article, we reflect on USAID’s new FY 2024 localization progress report, highlighting where USAID is leading the way, identifying areas that still need attention, and looking ahead to what’s next.
Following the World Bank Annual Meetings, and amidst negotiations for the replenishment of the International Development Association, Sally Paxton and Nancy Lee sift through some of the issues holding back the scaling of public and private resources. They find a common thread – transparency – and argue that multilateral development banks should be using the power of their own data to help fill the information gaps that stand in the way of progress.
Ahead of next week’s World Bank Annual Meetings, Sally Paxton discusses the critical role of development banks in mobilising private capital to meet global development goals, and why we still don’t understand what is working. She presents new recommendations from Publish What You Fund to fill the current knowledge gap by improving the measurement and disclosure of private capital mobilisation, and stresses why action is urgently needed.
