Five things learned about development finance from Aid Atlas

The Stockholm Environment Institute developed Aid Atlas to address the complexity of tracking global development finance. While the OECD's Creditor Reporting System provides the most comprehensive data, its design makes it difficult for the public and smaller recipient countries to use. Aid Atlas transforms this data into an intuitive, visual tool to help decision-makers in developing countries understand aid flows and focus on whether funding generates lasting positive impacts.

• Global development aid commitments increased significantly between 2007 and 2017, rising from US$ 169 billion to approximately US$ 314 billion according to the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS).
• Reported development finance is composed primarily of grants (roughly 40%), Other Official Flows (35%), and ODA loans (22%), with private development finance from large philanthropies accounting for about 2.5% of total reported flows.
• The OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) maintains the most comprehensive data set on development finance, but the database is difficult for the public to use because it was not originally designed for public tracking.
• Smaller countries often lack the capacity to create coherent overviews of the support they receive or how donors account for it, which hinders the evaluation of whether funding creates lasting positive impacts.

APA

Stockholm Environment Institute (2020). Five things learned about development finance from Aid Atlas. https://www.sei.org/publications/five-things-learned-development-finance-aid-atlas

Chicago

Stockholm Environment Institute. Five things learned about development finance from Aid Atlas. 2020. https://www.sei.org/publications/five-things-learned-development-finance-aid-atlas.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Stockholm Environment Institute |title=Five things learned about development finance from Aid Atlas |date=22 June 2020 |url=https://www.sei.org/publications/five-things-learned-development-finance-aid-atlas |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{stockholmenvironmentinstitute2020five, author = {{Stockholm Environment Institute}}, title = {{Five things learned about development finance from Aid Atlas}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2020}, month = jun, url = {https://www.sei.org/publications/five-things-learned-development-finance-aid-atlas}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }