Official Development Assistance (ODA) is defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as all loans and grants made to countries on the Development Assistance Committee’s list of developing countries, or to multilateral institutions. ODA must come from public bodies and must meet certain criteria:
– promote development and improve living standards in recipient countries;
– in the case of a loan, the financial conditions must be favorable to the recipient countries;
– ODA cannot be used for military aid, peacekeeping, nuclear energy (except for civilian use), or cultural programs (except for strengthening the cultural capacities of the country).
Africa, Asia, and South America are the continents that benefit most from ODA, which represented an average of 6.2% of GDP per country worldwide in 2014. This aid is particularly strong in Africa, with ODA reaching an average of 7.3% of GDP per country on the continent in 2014. However, there is great heterogeneity between these countries: in Angola, ODA represents only 0.2% of GDP, compared with 6.5% in Ethiopia and 37% in Liberia. Twenty-five countries receive ODA amounting to more than 10% of their GDP, with Afghanistan receiving the highest amount of ODA at USD 4.8 billion (2014 figure).
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