In 2024, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development reported that official development assistance, or ODA, fell from $223.4 billion to $214.6 billion in grant-equivalent terms in current prices. This marks the first drop in overall ODA after five years of consistent growth.
Of this, $163.3 billion was given bilaterally, while $51.3 billion was channelled multilaterally.
Bilateral aid refers to direct donor-to-recipient transactions, while multilateral aid channels the donor’s money into multilateral organizations such as the World Bank or the United Nations. In some cases, bilateral aid may decrease while multilateral aid increases and vice versa.