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Historic drop in Official Development Assistance in 2024

Published 16 April 2025 in Facts and figures, News

The OECD published, on 16 April 2025, the preliminary figures for the amounts allocated by donor countries to Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2024.

After five years of consecutive growth in their budget for international cooperation, the 32 members of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) have made a historic renunciation in 2024.

ODA from DAC members fell to 212.1 billion in 2024, a 7.1% drop on 2023. In particular, 22 donor countries have reduced their financial efforts, despite growing international needs.

The multiple budget cuts recently announced by many donor countries suggest that the renunciation begun in 2024 will continue this year. Ten of the major European donor countries are planning to reduce their ODA by $18 billion in 2025 compared with 2023, including $9.2 billion for Germany, $2.6 billion for France and $2.2 billion for the UK. The OECD estimates that total ODA will drop between 9% and 17% from 2024 to 2025.

Analysis.

In 2024, ODA declines for the first time in five years

After reaching a new peak in 2023, ODA from DAC donor countries declined in 2024 to $212.1 billion, down 7.1% in real terms compared with 2023. The United States remains the leading donor ($63.3 billion), followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and France.

The drop in ODA in 2024 was mainly due to a decline in support for the work of international organizations (-10.9%) and for Ukraine (-16.7%), as well as a drop in humanitarian aid (-9.6%). Bilateral aid fell by 5.8%.

In-donor refugee costs, which can be counted as ODA in the first year of hosting, are lower than in 2023 (-17.3%), but nevertheless accounted for $27.8 billion in 2024, or 13.1% of total ODA.

This amount is equivalent to 0.33% of the combined gross national income (GNI) of the DAC countries, down from 0.37% in 2023. Only four countries have reached the target of allocating 0.7% of their GNI to ODA, which was adopted by the industrialised countries at the United Nations in 1970: Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Denmark.

An increase in ODA since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals

Since the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, total ODA from DAC countries has more than doubled in real terms. Compared with 2019, it has risen by 24%, in response to the multiple global crises generated in particular by the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, climate change and their cascading consequences. It should be noted, however, that the cost of hosting refugees in donor countries declared as ODA, which by its very nature does not contribute to the fight against poverty in developing countries, has tripled since 2019.

France lags far behind its own trajectory

France’s ODA reached $15.4 billion in 2024, unchanged from the previous year (-3 million euros in real terms). As a result, France remains 5th among donor countries in volume. However, this apparent stability is due to a drop in its bilateral grants, offset by an increase in its bilateral loans.

This amount represents 0.48% of its GNI, in contradiction with the trajectory set out in the 2021 programming law on inclusive development and the fight against global inequalities. Indeed, the latter envisaged reaching 0.66% of France’s GNI dedicated to ODA in 2024. France ranks 10th among donor countries in proportion of its wealth.

Yet the trajectory of French ODA is unlikely to pick up again in 2025: the 2025 Finance Law foresees a EUR 2.1 billion cut in this year’s budget.