An Introduction to Aid Data

Curriculum

6 Sections
35 Lessons
Lifetime

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Introduction to aid data
Welcome to the world of aid data! In this first module, we’ll be starting from first principles: what do we actually mean when we say ‘aid’, and why is looking at aid data important?
5
A guide to IATI data
One major source of aid data is made available through the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). There are a few different ways that you can access raw IATI data, so here’s a quick run through of what you can get, and where it is, including IATI data itself as well as data about IATI data (metadata).
6
Cleaning IATI data with OpenRefine
So once you've got the raw IATI data, what next? Often it might need 'cleaning' - here, we'll use a sample IATI dataset to learn how to use a powerful cleaning tool, OpenRefine.
5
An introduction to OECD-DAC data
Another major source of data available about international development data, is the OECD. Here, we run through a few ways that they make this data available, and where to find what you're looking for.
8
Inspiration module: how is aid data used in the media?
We've seen a few ways of where to find aid data, how to clean it and use it - but how is this applied in the real world? Here are a couple of examples of 'reverse engineering' aid data that we might come across in the media - maybe it will give you some ideas!
6
Jargon busting the world of aid
This module is intended as a reference point while you're going through the other modules. In each case, the relevance of the term to working specifically with data is highlighted to try and make it clear what you should be looking out for when you come across the term in your work.
5

Things to understand before diving into the data

There are some structural and linguistic concepts it’s important to understand:

Commitment	Disbursement
= written obligation or formal declaration of what will be paid or transferred (ie. a promise of what donors will do)	= actual transfer of resources (money, or goods) to recipient country or agency (ie. money has actually left the donor agency here)
Date of commitment = date that the written obligation/agreement is signed	Date of disbursement: for money: the point of payment by the official sector for goods/resources: the date of transfer of ownership of the resources, or purchase of the goods

Special expenditures like humanitarian aid, where the date of disbursement = date of commitment are an exception

Bilateral aid	Multilateral aid
Resources go from donor country directly to a low income country	Resources go to a recipient institution which: – works either fully or partly in development – is an international agency – eg. United Nations agencies, the EU, international financial institutions, global multi-donor trust funds
Vertical Funds/Global Funds (e.g. Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI))	Core contributions to UN, IFIs, EU Global multi-donor trust funds Global Funds/Vertical Funds
Donor can specify how the funds should be spent (= earmarked funds)	Recipient has complete freedom to decide how the funds are used (= unearmarked funds)
	given through international organisations such as the World Bank rather than by one specific country

What to expect from this data?

An Introduction to Aid Data

Curriculum

Things to understand before diving into the data

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