The latest aid and development transparency roundup highlights two major issues affecting the sector: the difficulty of tracking funding that reaches local organisations and the lack of meaningful progress in how multilateral development banks report private capital mobilisation.
The first update focuses on lessons learned from five years of research into international funding directed to local organisations. The research team has produced five reports examining how major donors and philanthropies report local funding and how much support is actually reaching local actors. Their work shows that while locally led development is widely discussed, the systems needed to measure progress remain weak.
A key lesson is that clear and transparent definitions of “local” are essential. Without a shared definition, reported figures can become difficult to compare and may lack credibility. Different donors may classify local organisations in different ways, making it hard to understand whether funding is genuinely reaching community-based or locally rooted groups.
The roundup also stresses the need for consistent and well-explained measurement methods. If donors use different approaches without explaining them clearly, the results become less meaningful. Stronger measurement standards would help make local funding figures more reliable, comparable, and useful for accountability.
Data gaps remain one of the biggest barriers to understanding local funding flows. Many donors still do not publish detailed, accessible, and usable information on where their funding goes and which organisations receive it. As a result, commitments to localisation are not yet matched by the ability to prove whether funding is actually shifting toward local organisations.
The second update examines private capital mobilisation by multilateral development banks and development finance institutions. Private capital mobilisation is increasingly seen as an important tool for closing the development financing gap, but the roundup argues that measurement and disclosure systems remain inadequate.
A new scorecard was developed to assess progress in the latest MDB Joint Report on private capital mobilisation. Although the report includes headline figures for 2024, the analysis finds no demonstrable progress in reforming how private capital mobilisation is measured and no meaningful improvement in the transparency of the data.
The concern is that the MDB Joint Report may be losing relevance if it does not provide clearer insight into how private capital is mobilised, where it goes, and what role public institutions play in attracting it. Without better data, it is difficult to judge whether mobilisation efforts are efficient, effective, or aligned with development priorities.
The central message of the roundup is that aid and development finance systems need stronger transparency, clearer definitions, and more useful reporting. Whether tracking funding for local organisations or assessing private capital mobilisation by development banks, better data is essential for accountability, learning, and real progress.
