Interactive: Trends in Norwegian aid

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You can read more on this topic in these articles:
► These are Norwegian aid's top international partners
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Norway has been one of the leading sources of official development assistance among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development donors, allocating over 0.7% of its gross national income annually — in 2020 the country allocated over $4 billion, 1.11% of its GNI, to development.

According to data from the official Norwegian aid statistics website, Norway’s spending on development has grown significantly — from 26.4 billion Norwegian krone in 2010 ($3.01 billion) to 39.5 billion Norwegian krone in 2020 ($4.51 billion). The dollar conversion is based on today’s rate.

In its recently announced 2030 strategy, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, or Norad, laid out how the country will approach development in the upcoming years.

The strategy will focus on five priority areas — strategic investment, fostering cooperation among different stakeholders, integrating climate concerns with developmental projects, initiating innovations in development, and strengthening knowledge-sharing.

Devex dug into Norway’s development funding to showcase the funding trends, sectoral priorities, and geographical focus in the last four years. We found that the country spent a total of $17.5 billion across 17,872 activities. The same five priority areas listed in their 2030 strategy were also prioritized in this period. For the purpose of this analysis, all figures mentioned are in 2020 constant prices.

Disbursements

Across the period analyzed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs accounted for 47% of the total disbursement, while 34% came from Norad, and 15% from embassies. Although MFA was the leading agency between 2017 and 2019, Norad’s budget has been growing over the past five years — and in 2020, it took over with $2.2 billion disbursements. 

Last year, Norway disbursed $1 billion for 308 COVID-19 related activities. Among the biggest contributions were $41 million to UNITAID’s pandemic response, $35 million to the Global Financing Facility's Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, or ACT-A, and $33 million to The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’s COVID-19 Response Mechanism.

Sectoral focus

Norway prioritized ten target areas between 2017 to 2020. Governance, civil society, and conflict prevention topped the list with 13% of the $17.5 billion total spending — it grew by 27%, from $469 million in 2017 to $598 million in 2020. Emergency assistance followed closely with 12%, and environment and energy with 11%.

Other sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, trade got less than 10% each. Multilateral areas, projects supporting administration costs of multilateral organizations such as United Nations agencies and development banks, represented 23% of the total funding.

A large chunk of funding under the governance and conflict prevention sector went to the OHCHR — which received $36 million from 2018 to 2020 for 11 projects.

Another $32 million was disbursed for a five-year, multi-partner trust fund finance initiative to support peace agreements in Colombia through the U.N.

Norad has also been supporting the Central African Forest Initiative since 2017, disbursing $192 million through the UNDP Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office. CAFI addresses deforestation in countries such as Gabon, Cameroon, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Republic of Congo.

Geographical focus

Norway has disbursed aid to 122 countries in six regions over the last four years. Countries that received the most funding were Syria at $506 million, Afghanistan at $343 million, and Palestinian territories at $296 million.

In Syria, 93% of the total funding was channeled to the emergency assistance sector. One of the biggest projects, worth over $24 million, was in support of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’s Syria humanitarian fund from 2018 to 2020. Almost half of the disbursements in the country were implemented by U.N. agencies — $63 million to UNOCHA, $45 million to UNICEF, and $43 million to UNHCR.

Humanitarian organizations such as the Norwegian Red Cross and the Norwegian Refugee Council were also the top implementing partners and received $104 million and $52 million funding, respectively.

Other priority countries in Africa include South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia which received combined funding of $1.2 billion for 1,684 projects that address governance, emergency assistance, and also the education sector.

Global and multilateral disbursement accounted for 66% of the total Norwegian aid. Among the priority regions are Africa, Middle East, and Asia, which were allocated $653 million, $172 million, and $95 million, respectively.