Making sense of aid flows

by Emily Kallaur

Through AiDA (the Accessible Information on Development Activities) database we are trying to provide an increasingly comprehensive picture of development assistance flows around the world. I just came across a picture that illustrates how challenging this problem can be—it’s from a 2007 paper entitled “Trends and Issues in Development Aid,” by Homi Kharas of the Brookings Institution.


It’s quite a complex web! In recent months we have added data feeds from more private aid organizations to AiDA, and we are working to capture more. The more information can be reflected in a single repository, using a single format, the better development actors will be able to assess where funds are going and how they are being used.

The paper and diagram above also highlight the relatively small share of development aid that makes it to countries as “programmable aid.” The definition of programmable aid excludes debt relief, humanitarian and food aid, technical assistance, and donors’ administrative costs—not because these are not worthwhile, but in order to zero in on the aid flows that can be used by recipient governments to invest in development. Kharas found that only about $38 billion of the over $100 billion in official development assistance from OECD/DAC member states was channeled to developing countries as “net programmable aid” (as of 2007). For Sub-Saharan Africa, net programmable aid of about $12 billion in 2005 was approximately the same amount (once adjusted for purchasing power) that was delivered in 1985.

This situation underscores the need for detailed, standardized data on aid flows in order to understand what is really happening on the ground, and gauge its impact. Another implication is that recipient governments need aid information that can be easily disaggregated into programmable aid, that they can reflect in the national budget and direct toward development priorities, and other types of aid (such as technical assistance) which do not represent financial flows to the country. Currently this level of detail is not necessarily the case.