This year has been a difficult one in the development sector. We’ve seen war, drought, famine, debt, and the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Need has worsened and budgets have been stretched, with numbers ever changing. We’ve pulled out 10 numbers to remember, that helped define this challenging year.
1. $185.9 billion — total ODA
One place to start is with the total budgets available to tackle development issues. There are no figures yet for 2022 — the year is not over — but one place to start is with the figures for 2021, which the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts at $185.9 billion.
OECD figures highlight how much international development depends on a small pool of donors. Some 70% of funding came from just five countries — the United States, Germany, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
The figure also shows that the world is nowhere close to spending 0.7% of gross national income on ODA, a long-agreed-upon target. This year, the level was 0.33%.
Of course, that figure doesn’t reflect all spending on development. On top of official development assistance, there are many other sources: multilateral and bilateral lenders, major donors and foundations, and the general public, to name but a few. This question — how much development funding happens outside of ODA — is one that Devex plans to look at in 2023.
Whether 2022 resembles 2021 is open to debate, largely due to the impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine — of which more below.
2. $16.7 billion — humanitarian assistance to Ukraine
In total, more than $100 billion of support has been committed to Ukraine so far by other nations. Of this, according to a report by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, $16.7 billion is humanitarian assistance, which will definitely count as ODA, and $53.4 billion is financial assistance, some of which may count as ODA.
Devex has published its own funding tracker, which showed billions more in assistance from multilaterals, foundations, and the public.
In addition to the direct spending on the war and the response, Ukraine has generated a refugee crisis. The ONE Campaign estimates more than $50 billion will be spent on housing refugees over the coming months — almost four times as much as in any previous year. Much of this will be eligible to be counted as ODA, although it is not clear how much of national budgets will be diverted from other development issues.
3. 30% — the cut to U.K. bilateral aid this year
The impact of the war in Ukraine has been widespread in the world of development. It pushed up prices for oil, gas, and grain, driving rapid inflation, and putting pressure on national budgets. As mentioned above, significant amounts of ODA have been diverted to humanitarian relief and refugee support. Several nations have announced cuts to ODA budgets as a result, including Sweden and Germany.
However, Ukraine has had perhaps the greatest impact on aid in the recession-hit U.K. where the government chose to shift more than £3 billion ($3.65 billion) of spending on refugees into the ODA budget, prompting a 30% cut in bilateral funding — and an excoriating attack on the U.K.’s lost status as a “development superpower” from the minister in charge.
4. 324 million — the number of people in need of humanitarian support
While more funding is being absorbed by Ukraine, other humanitarian crises are growing worse, according to figures released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or UNOCHA.
The numbers make grim reading. Crises in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Ethiopia were overshadowed by Ukraine in 2022 and are heavily underfunded. The number of people who now need humanitarian support is up by 27% from last year, according to Devex calculations based on the UNOCHA figures, while the amount of funding projected to be needed next year has risen to $51.5 billion, up from $41 billion at the start of 2022.
5. 828 million — the number of people facing chronic food insecurity
Separate from the number of people facing acute humanitarian need, the world faces a lower-level challenge of chronic food insecurity — the inability, usually due to poverty, to be certain that you can consistently put enough food on the table — which according to 2021 figures affected more than a tenth of the population.
Because those figures are from 2021 they, therefore, do not take into account the war in Ukraine, which has had significant impacts on food and fertilizer costs, although a grain deal has now addressed some of the worst effects.
Separate figures exist on acute food insecurity — the level at which urgent humanitarian assistance is likely to be needed — although discussion exists over which figures are best.
6. $1 trillion — the amount of debt owed by low-income countries
Rising food and fuel prices due to the war in Ukraine had another impact — a sudden spike in inflation. In the U.S. and other high-income economies, the response was to push up interest rates, which had a major impact on the price of debt.
Since 2010, debt has tripled in low-income countries, partly because those countries had to borrow to ride out the pandemic. As interest rates have started to rise, debt payments for 69 low-income nations analyzed by the bank have risen to $62 billion a year — a third higher than in 2021.
And increasingly, the debts of low-income countries are owed to China, which is less inclined than the Paris Club of high-income western nations to offer restructuring.
All of this has detracted from the ability of low-income nations to deliver infrastructure, healthcare, and education, and has in several cases led to political instability — a cocktail that threatens the progress made in the development sector.
7. 12.5 million — the number of ‘zero dose’ children
Another legacy of the pandemic has been in the field of health. One of the key stories of 2021 was vaccine inequity. Citizens of high-income countries received multiple shots of COVID-19 vaccines, while those in low- and middle-income countries were often still waiting on the first dose.
Beyond that, the world has seen a decline in routine childhood vaccinations, largely as a result of reduced health coverage during COVID-19 lockdowns.
Last year saw “the largest sustained decline in childhood vaccinations in approximately 30 years,” according to World Health Organization and UNICEF.
The number of children who have not received a single dose of any vaccine in their lives rose by 570,000 to reach 12.5 million. This is the second year in a row this number has risen.
8. $3.25 billion — USAID’s local funding target
While headwinds have been affecting the environment in which the development sector operates, the sector’s leaders have been trying to change how they respond.
One key part of this response is the transfer of power and funding to local communities and NGOs. At the heart of this drive is the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose administrator Samantha Power said early in her leadership that she wanted 25% of USAID funding to go to locally led organizations by 2025 — although a final definition of “local” is still to emerge.
USAID has since clarified that this target excludes several categories of agency funding, including contributions to U.N. agencies, direct support to other governments, and the agency’s own operating expenses. Once these are excluded, around $13 billion remains — making the benchmark target around $3.25 billion this year.
At the point, Power made her speech, around 6% of funding was going to locally led organizations, and evidence has not yet emerged of significant growth — in fact, Devex analysis showed funding falling in 2021.
However, only limited data is available for the period since Power gave her speech, so she still has time on her side to hit the target.
9. $0 — the amount so far committed to the new ‘loss and damage’ fund for climate
While much of the news around the sector has been driven by war and the pandemic, the signs have continued to grow that the planet’s climate is changing, not least with floods in Pakistan and a sequence of failed rainy seasons in the Horn of Africa.
But the international community has been slow to commit funds to address climate issues. A Devex analysis found that far less climate finance has been committed than had been promised and that what was committed was low quality.
There was jubilation at the 27th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP 27, over a commitment to creating a new loss and damage fund to help compensate countries vulnerable to climate change. But so far, there are scant details about what it might look like. And as yet, no money.
10. 8 billion — the number of people on the planet
The final statistic is not one that has had a direct impact on the development sector this year, but it is a sign of the times. Last month saw the birth of baby 8 billion, somewhere in Manila, Philippines, meaning the population of the world has doubled in less than 50 years. The growth is projected to continue for most of this century, topping out a little above 10 billion in 2086.
Much of that growth is projected to be in low-income nations, particularly in Africa, where the development sector is most active.
Update, Dec. 21, 2022: This article has been updated to include end-of-year data on official development assistance and humanitarian needs.
Read more 2022 look-back pieces:
► What the major bilateral and multilateral donors funded in 2022 (Pro)
About the author
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
