Making Data the Engine for Financing for Development by Broadening the Coalition
by
Lorenz Noe, Research Manager, Open Data Watch
20th November 2025
This blog was originally published by the Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data
The newly released 2025 Partner Report on Support to Statistics (PRESS) lands at a critical juncture. Building on the momentum of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, this edition of PRESS provides an updated, evidence-rich view of how funding for data is evolving across the global landscape.
While PRESS 2025 reveals encouraging trends, such as overall funding increases and consistent growth in support for African countries, it also exposes fundamental vulnerabilities that threaten the entire data ecosystem.
The most important takeaway is a consistent finding of PRESS over the years: The success or failure of external financing for data depends on a remarkably small group of champions. When the top five donors routinely account for 50-80% of all funding, each decision reverberates across the entire ecosystem. Recent aid cuts from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom demonstrate this danger acutely, particularly for gender data financing, which has fallen steadily from its 2021 peak to just $154 million in 2023.
Building resilience against these shocks requires a broader and more diverse coalition of funders, along with new approaches to how data systems are financed.
Expanding external partnerships
The financing architecture for statistical systems needs broader foundations. While DAC donors remain essential, their dominance creates systemic risk. The path forward requires actively recruiting new donors and adopting new approaches: non-DAC bilateral donors, South-South cooperation mechanisms, and innovative financing instruments, as well as keeping private foundations consistently in the conversation. Private philanthropies like the Gates Foundation and Wellcome have already demonstrated their potential as major donors: their record disbursements in 2022 showed what’s possible when new actors engage. Yet the subsequent decline in 2023 underscores that episodic engagement isn’t enough. Sustained commitment from a more diverse donor base is necessary.
Connecting data to domestic resource mobilization
Perhaps more importantly, the perspective of finance ministries must shift to view statistical systems as strategic investments in state capacity rather than cost centers. The business case is compelling: better data improves tax base identification, integrated administrative data systems reduce social protection leakage, and quality statistics enhance credit ratings and investment climates. Countries with strong statistical systems are also able to raise capital more effectively to invest in their countries.
Learning the language of finance ministries is one way for national statistical offices (NSOs) to broaden the base of support for investments in statistical systems. For example, NSOs can demonstrate how every dollar invested in data systems returns multiples through improved resource mobilization and reduced waste. This requires NSOs to look beyond the statistical system itself, cultivating relationships with data users across government and beyond, and to become policy partners. When data becomes central to domestic financing strategies rather than peripheral to development assistance and is used by policymakers, sustainability follows.
Bridging digital innovation and statistical financing
The PRESS report notes a steady increase in AI-focused initiatives, which is an unsurprising trend given the inextricable link between data and artificial intelligence. This convergence with digital public infrastructure and the momentum around the Global Digital Compact creates unprecedented opportunities, but only if the right connections are made.
Digital ID initiatives should build on and reinforce foundational civil registration systems, ensuring these core functions remain the backbone of trusted identity and data ecosystems. E-government platforms can play a pivotal role in improving the quality and integration of administrative data. In the emerging AI era, national statistical offices have an essential role as data stewards—linking robust statistical systems with the data needed to train and deploy AI responsibly. Strengthening these connections creates a virtuous cycle in which AI enhances data collection and analysis, while high-quality data supports ethical and effective AI for development.
The risk is funding flashy innovation while neglecting basic systems. Technology advances rapidly, threatening to leave the Global South behind even as it offers opportunities to leapfrog legacy challenges. The solution lies in combining DPI investments with statistical capacity building, fostering public-private partnerships that bring both innovation and sustainable financing, and ensuring catalytic funding that leverages private sector engagement while protecting core statistical functions.
The power of transparency and evidence
These three strategies — expanding partnerships, connecting to domestic financing, and bridging digital innovation—converge on a critical insight: the coalition can only grow if it is clearly understood.
This is precisely why the PRESS report is vital. It shines essential light on who finances data and statistics, reveals dangerous concentrations alongside promising opportunities, makes visible the gaps between commitments and disbursements, and enables evidence-based advocacy for sustainable financing. The Clearinghouse for Financing Development Data provides the infrastructure for this transparency by tracking financing flows, enabling coordination, preventing duplication, and supporting strategic decision-making.
Without greater visibility, it becomes impossible to hold donors accountable, identify emerging partners, provide finance ministries with evidence of return on investment, or connect digital innovation to statistical capacity. A broader, more resilient coalition cannot take shape under these conditions.
The tent must be bigger. The PRESS report highlights the current landscape, the gaps, and the stakes. The path forward is clear: expand the coalition, link data to domestic financing, and ensure that innovation strengthens—rather than bypasses—the foundational systems that make sustainable and inclusive development possible.
