ODA by donor - Overseas aid
What you should know about this indicator
- Official development assistance (ODA) is aid given to countries and territories on the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) list of recipients and multilateral development institutions. To qualify as ODA, the aid has to serve the economic development and welfare of recipient countries and be either a grant or a loan with favorable terms.
- ODA does not include military aid, except for the cost of using armed forces to deliver humanitarian aid. It also excludes spending on peacekeeping unless it is closely related to development.
- Overseas aid considers the total ODA given by the donor country to other countries and multilateral organizations, minus the in-donor ODA (scholarships and student costs in donor countries, administrative costs not included elsewhere, development awareness, and refugees in donor countries).
- The data is reported as net disbursements. This refers to aid ultimately given and is different from commitments, which is only aid that has been pledged. These are net amounts because any money coming in (like loan repayments or interest) has been subtracted from money going out (like new grants or loans).
- The data is measured in constant 2022 US$ – this adjusts for inflation.
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
We calculated this indicator by subtracting the subcomponents of ODA that are considered in-donor (scholarships and student costs in donor countries, administrative costs not included elsewhere, development awareness, and refugees in donor countries) from total ODA by donor. In the case of shares, we divided this difference by total ODA by donor, expressed as a percentage.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: ODA by donor - Overseas aid”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre, Pablo Arriagada, Simon van Teutem and Hannah Ritchie (2024) - “Foreign Aid”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/amount-of-foreign-aid-spend-in-recipient-countries [online resource]How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “ODA by donor - Overseas aid – Net disbursements” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Official Development Assistance (ODA) - DAC1: Flows by provider (ODA+OOF+Private)” [original data]. Retrieved April 2, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/amount-of-foreign-aid-spend-in-recipient-countries