After a decade of technical reforms meant to modernize foreign aid, a new report from the European Network on Debt and Development, or Eurodad, warns that official development assistance is drifting off course — away from the world’s poorest countries and toward the political and commercial priorities of wealthy donors.
The report, released today, argues that changes to how aid is counted have hollowed out the original purpose of official development assistance, or ODA, which is to support poverty reduction and reduce inequality in the global south. Instead, aid is increasingly delivered as loans rather than grants, spent within donor countries themselves, or used to de-risk private investment — often with little evidence of development impact.
“Rich [countries] have reshaped what counts as ODA to advance their own domestic priorities, with minimal input from the Global South,” the report says. “This has led to far-reaching consequences for how and where aid is delivered, meaning that those who are most in need are being left behind.”
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
