Global development finance is being reshaped by a historic retreat in aid. In 2025, ODA as reported by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) fell to $174.3 billion – just 0.26 per cent of the contributors’ combined gross national income. The 23.1 per cent drop from 2024 marks the largest annual decline ever recorded and returns ODA to 2015 levels. Twenty-six of 34 DAC members cut their aid, but five donors accounted for 95.7 per cent of the decline: France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States alone was responsible for three quarters of the drop, cutting its ODA by 56.9 per cent, the largest reduction by any single donor on record. The drop was driven largely by falling humanitarian aid, reduced spending on hosting refugees in donor countries and a 27 per cent reduction in core United Nations funding. A further 6.9 per cent decline is projected for 2026 with the downward trend expected to continue beyond that.

Total official and private resources for developing countries – a broader measure that includes ODA alongside other official and mobilized private finance – grew 12 per cent in 2024 to $419.6 billion (excluding South-South cooperation). Grants and concessional loans, which mainly supported low- and middle-income countries and LDCs, made up just 47 per cent of the total. Non-concessional loans (36 per cent) and private finance (16 per cent) made up the rest, flowing largely to middle- and high-income developing countries.

Private investment has largely bypassed countries most in need. Global foreign direct investment rose 14 per cent in 2025 to an estimated $1.6 trillion, but developed economies captured nearly half of that, with flows rising 43 per cent to $728 billion. Flows to developing economies fell 2 per cent to an estimated $877 billion, while three-quarters of LDCs saw stagnant or declining inflows.

Remittances presented a brighter outlook. After a sharp drop in 2023, flows to low- and middle-income countries rebounded strongly in 2024, rising nearly 10 per cent to $687 billion, driven by stable labour markets in the United States and Gulf States. India remained the world’s largest recipient.

For the first time, the United Nations has a framework to measure a form of development support that has long gone uncounted. The conceptual Framework to Measure South-South Cooperation tracks development support between developing countries. Initial 2026 data from nine pilot countries show that nearly all South-South cooperation takes non-financial forms, such as knowledge sharing, while 11 per cent is non-monetized support, such as goods, medicines and specialist expertise provided in kind rather than cash.

Developing economies are claiming a steadily larger portion in global trade, with their share of world merchandise exports reaching 48.3 per cent in 2024, up 1.4 percentage points from 2023 and 2.9 points from 2015. Their share of services exports, while smaller at 31.5 per cent, is also growing, rising 1.7 points since 2015.

Progress for the LDCs tells a different story. Their share of world merchandise exports edged up from 0.91 per cent in 2015 to 1.13 per cent in 2024. Services exports decreased from 0.73 to 0.59 per cent over the same period. Five years later, the SDG target to double LDCs’ share of global exports by 2020 has still not been met, with the trend in services even pointing to the opposite direction, underscoring how far the world’s poorest economies remain from meaningful participation in global trade.