Unfortunately, current data available on SDG financing are not sufficient to quantify the distribution of financing for the SDGs. AidData’s methodology for measuring financing to the SDGs attempts to fill this gap by analyzing development project documentation to estimate project-level contributi ... ons to the SDGs (and their associated targets). This methodology lets us see where development financing is targeted, allowing comparisons among SDG goals and individual SDG targets. This methodology note describes two iterations of AidData’s methodology. The first, based on a crosswalk with existing aid reporting schemes, was employed for AidData’s 2017 flagship report Realizing Agenda 2030: Will donor dollars and country priorities align with global goals? and our brief Financing the SDGs in Colombia. The second iteration of the methodology employs a direct coding scheme, linking development projects directly to the SDGs through analysis and coding of project descriptions rather than through an intermediary classification system. This method was employed for our 2019 brief Financing the SDGs: Evidence in Four Countries. more

To realize Agenda 2030, aid agencies, private philanthropies, and their partners in the Global South need better data to monitor how official development finance (ODF) dollars advance the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ... and avoid missing the mark. In this report, we summarize the results of a novel effort to tag and analyze 2.7 million ODF projects between 2010-2021 using machine learning to understand their contributions to the SDG thematic areas at a goal and target level. This time frame is instructive: it compares the last six years of the Millennium Development Goals era and the first six years of the new SDG age, from early optimism to later uncertainty about the resilience of the agenda to drive collective commitments amid unanticipated global shocks. more