• Report
  • 6 August 2018

Tracing Swedish aid to Tanzania using IATI data

Oxfam’s report Tracing Swedish Development Flows assesses to what extent it is possible to trace Swedish aid flows to Tanzania

Oxfam’s new report Tracing Swedish Development Flows: A study of the traceability of Swedish aid to Tanzania assesses to what extent it is possible to trace Swedish aid flows to Tanzania between 2013 and 2015. The research builds on Development Initiatives’ methodology used in an earlier report on US aid to Ghana .

The report uses 2013–2015 International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) data to trace Swedish aid to Tanzania to its end use. It finds that general budget support (GBS) accounted for much of Swedish aid in 2013 and 2015, but it could not determine final expenditures using IATI data. The authors could confirm that in 2014, 28% of Swedish aid arrived in Tanzania, via the government and Tanzania-based organizations. A key constraint to traceability is that Sweden does not require aid implementers to report to IATI. The report recommends that Sweden encourage such reporting.

The methodology developed for this study was created by Simon Parrish , who worked at the forefront of IATI and open data for many years as part of DI’s team. This methodology note provides further elaboration of the ‘follow the money’ procedures that Simon developed.

Read the report on the Oxfam website

Read Tracing US Development Flows: A study of the traceability of US aid to Ghana

Read the methodology note