Data tool
Tracking aid and other international development finance in near real time
This interactive data tool uses near real-time data, letting you track commitments and disbursements of aid and other global development finance.
Sign up for news about our tracker
For the latest updates and analysis, subscribe to our mailing list on financing for sustainable development and crisis response.
Use the three charts to view commitments and disbursements[1] of aid and other global development finance published by different bilateral and multilateral donors and international financial institutions. Our tracker gives a real-time picture of trends in:
Overall commitments and disbursements
Poverty targeting
Sector targeting
The tracker uses data sourced from the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). Near real-time data from IATI is not curated and therefore subject to change as donors publish new information. This could result in changes to aspects of historical transactions as well as the movement of transactions from one month to another.[2]
See our methodology section for more detail.
This page will next be updated in February 2023.
Real-time international development finance flow tracker
The data in this tool is updated monthly. Currently the data shown covers January 2018–November 2022.
Which aid flows are making up the majority of donor commitments and disbursements, by volume and proportion?
Are donors targeting aid towards countries with high rates of extreme poverty, low-income countries or the least developed countries, by volume and proportion?
Which sectors are donors prioritising, by volume and proportion?
To view this interactive visualisation make sure JavaScript is available on your device.
To view this interactive visualisation use a device with a larger screen.
How to use this data tool
The data tool contains three interactive charts, which you can see by moving between the tabs. The data visualisations are best viewed on a desktop in the Chrome browser.
The controls above each chart allow you to manipulate different views of the data. You can then hover your cursor over (if on desktop) or tap (if on tablet or mobile) the bars to get more detail.
Across all three of the data visualisations, you can:
- Compare types of donors or view individual donors, using the switch under 'Donors'.
a) If comparing types of donors, add or remove categories using the checkboxes.
b) If looking at an individual donor, choose which donor you would like to see from the dropdown.
- View aid commitments or disbursements using the dropdown under 'Transaction'.
- View aid by volume or proportion using the dropdown under 'Measure'.
- Add or remove years using the checkboxes under 'Years'.
The x-axis and y-axis will automatically adjust based on your selections.
Within the 'Flows' visualisation you can also:
- Add or remove flows using the checkboxes under 'Flows'.
Within the 'Poverty targeting' visualisation you can also:
- View targeting of aid towards countries where a large percentage of the population live in extreme poverty, low-income countries or the least developed countries (LDCs), using the dropdown under 'Poverty indicator'.
a) If looking at rates of poverty, add or remove bandings for the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty using the checkboxes.
b) If looking at country income, add or remove income groupings using the checkboxes.
c) If looking at LDCs, add or remove LDCs or other countries using the checkboxes.
Within the 'Sector targeting' visualisation you can also:
- View targeting of aid towards specific sectors.
The data in the most recent edition of the tracker was updated on 23 January 2023.
Source: Development Initiatives based on IATI.
Notes: IFI = International financial institution; LDCs = Least developed countries; ODA = Official development assistance; OOF = Other official flows.
Development Initiatives publishes a range of analysis and evidence on global development finance, including:
Aid (ODA)
The impacts of Covid-19 on aid.
You can receive updates on new resources and alerts about the data in our tracker if you subscribe to our mailing list on financing for sustainable development and crisis response.
Dataset title: Tracking aid and other global development finance in real time
Author: Alex Miller and Jenny Rickard
Source: IATI
Timeframe: January 2018–November 2022
Geography: Global
License: Creative Commons Attribution BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license
Citation: Development Initiatives, January 2023. Tracking aid and other international development finance in near real time. Available at: www.devinit.org/data/tracking-aid-international-development-real-time
ODA – Official development assistance
OOF – Other official flows
IATI – International Aid Transparency Initiative
IFI – International financial institution
LDCs – Least developed countries
Aid – In this context, all humanitarian and development assistance, including official development assistance, other official flows and any other development flows reported by official actors to the International Aid Transparency Initiative.
Commitments – Amounts the donor is contracted to disburse.
Disbursements – Actual spend by donor in fulfilment of a contract.
Official development assistance – Defined by the OECD DAC.
Other official flows – Defined by the OECD DAC.
People living in extreme poverty – People living on less than PPP$1.90[3] a day.
This tracker analyses transactions published to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). A direct download was taken on 23 January 2023 of all the data in the IATI registry. Each transaction was split by recipient and sector classifications to visualise aggregates of poverty targeting and sectoral priorities.
The data tool features a selected group of key bilateral donors, international financial institutions and multilateral institutions reporting to IATI. DI has assessed whether the data provided by these donors for both disbursements and commitments is usable or not.
The full list of donors included in this analysis is in Table A1.
This tracker is by necessity limited to the data that is published to a sufficient standard and in a timely fashion, and is not therefore a comprehensive picture of all donors. Despite this, IATI data has reached a sufficient level of quality and coverage to enable critical analysis of near real-time trends. The data provides a vital early warning system on current aid spending as donors seek to better respond to current and ongoing global challenges, such as those caused by Covid-19.
Some notable exclusions are:
The UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (who do not provide commitment data for all activities).
Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (who report total disbursement data for each activity on the latest transaction date).
France's Agence Française de Développement (who report data on activities cumulatively).
The Federal Government of the United States who have reported poorly and not yet to the end of 2022.
Some historical commitments and disbursements published by USAID have been modified since the last update of this visualisation. It appears that this may have been caused by the reallocation of funds across years between projects that span multiple years.
Since our last update, we have noticed a deviation in the figures that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, has published to IATI and the CRS for 2021. This deviation may be caused by differences in the ODA accounting of in-kind vaccine donations, but our investigation into the cause is still ongoing.
Table A1: Key bilateral donors, IFIs and multilateral institutions used in the analysis of IATI disbursements and commitments
Bilateral donors
Australian Aid No No
Belgium – Directorate-General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid (DGD) Yes No
Canada – Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD) Yes Yes
Denmark – Ministry of Foreign Affairs Yes Yes
European Commission (EC) – International Partnerships Yes Yes
EC – Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) Yes Yes
EC – Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) No No
EC – European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) Yes Yes
EC – European Investment Bank (EIB) No Yes
Finland – Ministry for Foreign Affairs Yes Yes
Germany – Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) No Yes
Germany – Federal Foreign Office Yes Yes
Netherlands – Enterprise Agency (RvO) Yes Yes
Netherlands – Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS) Yes Yes
New Zealand – Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yes Yes
Norway – Norway Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) No No
Spain – Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) No No
Sweden – Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) Yes Yes
Switzerland – Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) Yes Yes
UK – British Council Yes Yes
UK – Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Yes Yes
UK – Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) Yes No
UK – Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Yes No
US – Millennium Challenge Corporation Yes Yes
US – The Federal Government of the United States No No
US – US Agency for International Development (USAID) Yes Yes
International financial institutions (IFIs)
African Development Bank Group (AfDB) Yes Yes
Asian Development Bank (ADB) Yes Yes
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) Yes Yes
International Finance Corporation (IFC) No No
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Yes Yes
Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) Yes Yes
World Bank Yes Yes
Multilateral institutions
Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance Yes Yes
Global Fund Yes Yes
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Yes No
International Development Law Organization (IDLO) Yes No
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Yes Yes
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) Yes No
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Yes No
UN Population Fund (UNFPA) No No
United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) Yes Yes
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Yes No
Unitaid Yes Yes
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) Yes Yes
UNOCHA – Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) Yes No
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) No No
World Food Programme (WFP) Yes Yes
Notes: IFI = international financial institution; IATI = International Aid Transparency Initiative.
Share Tracking aid and other international development finance in near real time
Commitments are amounts the donor is contracted to disburse. Disbursements are actual spend by donor in fulfilment of a contract.
This can be due, for example, to adjustments between operations and accounting departments, journal entries to deal with accrual accounting or cumulative reporting over a quarter.
We are currently reviewing our economic poverty estimates in light of the new World Bank extreme poverty threshold of PPP$2.15 a day. These estimates will be in place for future updates.
Using near real-time data on aid flows: Lessons learnt
Bill Anderson shares lessons learnt from DI's recent experience using near real-time data to examine donor response to the Covid-19 pandemic, highlighting an urgent need for timely, disaggregated data.
Written by Bill Anderson
Knowledge & Innovation Lead
Aid data 2019–2020: Analysis of trends before and during Covid
What key shifts in donors, sectors, targeting and loans during the Covid pandemic are highlighted by new DAC data on 2019 ODA and 2020 aid figures from IATI?
How is aid changing in the Covid-19 pandemic?
This briefing sets out near real-time data on aid for the first half of 2020. It shows how commitments are changing in the Covid-19 pandemic and where these are most likely to affect the poorest people and places.