How $168 billion in development money flows around the world

You’d think that most foreign aid would be reserved for the world’s poorest countries, but that’s not actually true.

For example, according to the advocacy group ONE, the U.S. only gives one-third of its foreign aid to the least developed countries in the world.

This is the kind of information you can unearth with a new tool, called D-Portal, run by a U.K. nonprofit called Development Initiatives. The site tracks development aid flows around the world, showing which countries are donating and receiving money and how it’s being spent. It shows the U.S. gives the most aid every year ($27 billion in 2013 or about 16% of the global total), followed by Japan ($24 billion) and the European Union ($16 billion).

The site uses data from the International Aid Transparency Index and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and gives a sense of whether inbound resources are leading to positive results. It’s a useful tool: You can create country profiles showing income and spending and see how countries are performing on several development metrics (e.g. the number of residents who still live in poverty).

In a recent report, Development Initiatives said many social programs are severely under-funded in developing countries. Across all least developed countries, only 20% of costs are financed.

[Excerpts of Co.Exist article by Ben Schiller]

This entry was posted in Grantmaking, Humanitarian Aid, International Cooperation by Grant Montgomery.