Data | How much does the Global South receive in development aid and how much does it pay in debt?

The current geopolitical chaos is making its impact on development aid, in the form of the cuts that rich countries are making to aid allocations. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecasts that development aid will fall between 9% and 17% in 2025 compared to 2024, a decline fueled by cuts by four of the world's largest donors: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. Meanwhile, debt levels in the Global South are reaching record levels: 45 countries spend more on servicing their financial obligations than on healthcare. The following graphs help to understand the suffocating situation facing poor countries, an issue that will be addressed at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development , which is being held until Thursday in Seville.

The rich cover up the cuts

The year 2024 has already arrived with cuts to international development aid. The world invested nearly $212 billion in this area, a reduction of more than 7% compared to the previous year, according to the OECD.

Global military spending, meanwhile, will reach $2.7 trillion in 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This is nearly 2.5% of the global total and more than 12 times the amount spent on cooperation. The gap between the two is also set to widen considerably in the coming years, given the global trend of cutting cooperation and increasing defense spending . Last week, NATO countries approved the largest increase in military spending in history, approaching 5% of their GDP.

At the start of 2025, newly elected US President Donald Trump effectively cut off most funding for the public agency USAID, the world's largest donor of development aid. On January 20, there were 6,256 active programs managing more than $120 billion, according to a recent estimate by The New York Times . By May, only 891 programs remained active, with $69 billion. This is a 42.5% reduction. At times in February and March, the cut was as high as 52%, before some programs were reopened.

Even so, some organizations representing wealthy countries insist that aid has increased in recent years. But this claim is fraught with flaws: three, to be precise.

Accounting gets creative…

The distribution of development aid from member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has undergone a transformation since the COVID-19 pandemic. The official position of the thirty countries that make up the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) is that between 2019 and 2023 there was an increase of almost 34%. But the breakdown of that aid shows that it has actually decreased, according to calculations by the NGO ONE Campaign.

The funds allocated for this development aid include part of the aid issued after COVID, which accounted for 10% of the total between 2020 and 2023. Also included are cash flows derived from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with direct aid to that country and support for states that have hosted Ukrainian refugees.

Excluding these items, development aid has fallen by 2% between 2019 and 2023, according to ONE calculations.

…and promises are not kept

In the 1970s, wealthy countries pledged to contribute 0.7% of their gross national product to development aid. Five decades later, almost no one has met that target: only Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Denmark. These four countries together contribute barely $14 billion. Germany, which in previous years had reached 0.7%, has narrowly fallen short in the 2024 budget. Spain allocates 0.24% of its GDP to cooperation, a percentage that leaves it at the bottom of Europe; although it is one of the few countries that does not plan cuts and has set a goal of reaching 0.7% by 2030.

These are the contributions of OECD countries, classified according to the percentage of GDP they allocate to cooperation:

The debt of the Global South is at an all-time high

The greatest burden on the world's poorest countries, however, lies in debt repayments. Developing countries hold barely a third of the global external debt ($31 trillion of the more than $100 trillion owed by all countries in the world, according to calculations by UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development).

To service this debt, developing countries spent around $921 billion in 2024. In 2023 (most recent data), the Global South paid $25 billion more on its financial obligations—principal repayments and interest—than it received in new loans.

The situation is also becoming more complicated for less wealthy countries : the public debt of developing countries has been growing much faster than that of wealthy countries for 15 years.

Rising interest payments are strangling budgets, forcing governments to choose between paying creditors or funding essential services. 3.4 billion people worldwide, or two out of every five, live in countries that spend more on debt interest payments than on education or healthcare.

There is a particularly sensitive group: those countries that pay more than 10% of their budget in interest. In 2024, 61 countries worldwide fell into this group, according to UNCTAD.

The cuts are targeting African countries.

Africa is the largest recipient of aid on the planet (approximately $73 billion in 2023), but it is receiving a decreasing share of global support. In 2013, it received 38% of global cooperation funds. A decade later, it was 27%.

The situation can only worsen with the radical cuts imposed by Trump on USAID, as the US agency provided 20% of all development aid received by the continent. This cut will not be the only one in 2025. Major European donors have already adjusted their budgets in anticipation of increases in military spending. Germany has cut its aid budget to Africa by 10%. France, by 18.6%. The United Kingdom, by 6.5%.

What hasn't diminished is the debt. The uncontrolled rise in interest rates that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine (the ECB raised interest rates from -0.5% to 4% between July 22 and September 23) hit emerging African countries particularly hard.

Interest payments are squeezing budgets, forcing governments to choose between paying creditors or funding essential services. Public spending on debt—repaying principal and interest—will exceed 14% in 2024, according to ONE Campaign calculations. Not only does it already exceed spending on healthcare (around 7%), but it also threatens to exceed spending on education, according to the latest forecasts.

“When Africa spends more on interest than on education [...] we have to talk about a systemic failure,” UNCTAD chief Rebeca Grynspan explained to EL PAÍS a year ago .