In light of the new global 2030 Agenda, donor countries have been
developing a new statistic to measure their contribution towards the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although still a work in progress,
Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD) endeavours
to count all financial flows from traditional and emerging donors aimed at
supporting global public goods and sustainable development. While TOSSD
stretches the boundaries of its predecessor, official development assistance
(ODA), it is being created without consulting the main beneficiaries, the
developing world, in the process.
At the third UN Conference on Financing for Development it was agreed
that countries would ‘hold open, inclusive and transparent discussions … on
the proposed measure of total official support for sustainable development’.
Unfortunately the process has been far from such. This policy insight paper
captures some of the views from Africa and the Global South on the new
development finance statistic put forward by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD).
