AfDB scores 98.8, first among 33 organisations
London, 4 November 2026 – The African Development Bank’s sovereign portfolio has been ranked as the most transparent of the world’s major development institutions for the third consecutive time in the 2026 Aid Transparency Index, released in London today by Publish What You Fund.
The Bank scored 98.8 out of 100, first among the 33 institutions assessed in the biennial rankings. The Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank’s International Development Association shared second place, each with a score of 97.1.
The ranking recognises the Bank’s publication of high-quality, comprehensive and timely open data on its public sector activities and financial flows.
Despite significant changes in leadership, management and strategic direction, the Bank’s score remains unchanged from 2024, an indication that the ranking is the result of an institutional routine, rather than a campaign.
“The AfDB’s continued leadership in aid transparency demonstrates its strong commitment to openness and accountability. It is particularly encouraging to see the Bank consistently innovate and improve its website and data dashboards, making information more accessible, useful and actionable for a wide range of stakeholders. This sustained investment in transparency sets an important example for other development institutions,” said Gary Forster, CEO of Publish What You Fund at the launch of the 2026 Index.
The same approach applies to Mission 300, the Bank’s commitment with the World Bank to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, the largest undertaking the institution has attempted. Its results are published and refreshed every quarter through the M300 dashboard, while the programme is still running.
The Bank maintained its 2024 score, building on its first-place rankings in 2022 and 2024, reflecting transparency built into its operational systems rather than a one-off effort. Over the same period, the average score of organisations assessed in both editions edged down from 62.7 to 62.1 out of 100.
“Transparency is currency. It enables us to deliver the transformation that Africa needs. It builds trust and improves information. Better information strengthens accountability, enabling countries to make better decisions. It gives investors greater confidence, and allows scarce development resources to work smarter, said Dr Sidi Ould Tah, President of the African Development Bank Group, ahead of the launch.
Tracking projects and results through MapAfrica
MapAfrica maps 6,000 projects across over 18,500 locations. Users can explore a project’s objectives, progress and results, alongside the appraisal and supervision documents that explain its design and implementation.
For example, with approximately 60 documents made publicly available, the Institutional Support for the Sustainability of Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Service Delivery Project in Angola illustrates the Bank’s commitment to comprehensive, accessible and timely disclosure.
Why transparency matters for development finance
As the economics of development finance shifts, bilateral aid to Africa is contracting, debt service is climbing, and multilateral banks are being pushed to raise more money on capital markets than from donor budgets.
Lenders and investors in those markets price what they can verify, and African borrowers have long paid a premium that owes as much to absent evidence as to measured risk.
The Bank has made that case the backbone of the New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD), approved by the Board of Governors at the Bank Group’s 2026 Annual Meetings in Brazzaville in May.
Recently, the Bank added a new layer: a traffic-light display, aligned with its Results Management Framework (RMF), which shows, at a glance, whether each operation is on track against the targets set when it was approved
Things to Know About the Aid Transparency Index
The Index has assessed the world’s largest aid and development organisations for more than a decade against 35 indicators, measuring what is actually published in open, machine-readable form rather than what institutions undertake to disclose.
The AfDB joined the International Aid Transparency Initiative in 2011 and has published IATI-compliant data based on that standard since June 2013. Its entire portfolio goes out monthly, with a gap of no more than a month between a transaction and its publication, a record that runs back to the institution’s operations in 1967.
The institution also holds the vice-chair of the IATI Governing Board for the 2026–2028 term.
