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Foreign aid received

Official donors
See all data and research on:
Foreign 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.
  • DAC country recipients are all low- and middle-income countries as defined by the World Bank, or least-developed countries as defined by the United Nations. All recipients are listed on the OECD website.
  • Most ODA is provided by DAC members, which are major aid donors in the OECD plus the European Union. However, some non-DAC countries, such as Turkey or Saudi Arabia, also give aid that follows ODA guidelines.
  • 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.
  • 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.

From OECD's indicator explainer

Official development assistance (ODA) is defined as government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Aid may be provided bilaterally, from donor to recipient, or channelled through a multilateral development agency such as the United Nations or the World Bank. Aid includes grants, "soft" loans and the provision of technical assistance. The OECD maintains a list of developing countries and territories; only aid to these countries counts as ODA. The list is periodically updated and currently contains over 150 countries or territories (see DAC List of ODA Recipients: https://oe.cd/dac-list). A long-standing United Nations target is that developed countries should devote 0.7% of their gross national income to ODA. Prior to 2018, the ODA flows basis methodology covered loans expressed on a “cash basis”, meaning their full face value was included, then repayments were subtracted as they came in. From 2018, the ODA grant-equivalent methodology is used whereby only the “grant portion” of the loan, i.e. the amount “given” by lending below market rates, counts as ODA.

Foreign aid received
Official donors
is defined as government aid designed to promote the economic development and welfare of developing countries. Monetary aid is estimated as net disbursements. This data is expressed in US dollars. It is adjusted for inflation.
Source
OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
February 19, 2025
Next expected update
February 2026
Date range
1960–2023
Unit
constant 2022 US$

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Destination of Official Development Assistance Disbursements. Geographical breakdown by donor, recipient and for some types of aid (e.g. grant, loan, technical co-operation) on a disbursement basis (i.e. actual expenditures). The data cover flows from all bilateral and multilateral donors and philanthropic foundations.

Retrieved on
February 19, 2025
Retrieved from
https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/policy-issues/official-development-assistance-oda.html
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD (2025). OECD Official Development Assistance (ODA) - DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions. OECD Data Explorer.

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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.

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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: Foreign aid received”, part of the following publication: Bastian Herre and Pablo Arriagada (2024) - “Foreign Aid”. Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/foreign-aid-received-net [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 Data

Full citation

OECD (2025) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Foreign aid received – Official donors” [dataset]. OECD, “OECD Official Development Assistance (ODA) - DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions” [original data]. Retrieved March 13, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/foreign-aid-received-net