Financing the SDGs in Colombia

Spanish Language Version: Financiación de los ODS en Colombia

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires mobilizing resources from a variety of sources, including international partners, domestic budgets, foundations and philanthropy, as well as the private sector. Knowing where this money is going is key to helping policymakers make smarter choices and steer resources to priority areas. However, data on development financing rarely incorporate all of these sources. 

To gain a clearer picture of SDG funding, AidData is launching a cutting-edge pilot in Colombia that will track, integrate, visualize and disseminate all-source financing for the SDGs, allowing decision makers to view progress on financing sustainable development from multiple angles. 

As a proof of concept, the brief presents AidData’s methodology for tracking financing to the SDGs and findings on three key sources of data for Colombia: 

1. Traditional and emerging donor data
2. Data from Colombia’s Aid Information Management System (AIMS), and
3. Colombia’s National Budget data. 

For each data source, information is provided on historical levels of funding for the SDGs, which SDGs received the most funding, and how top donors allocated funds by SDG. Also featured are spotlights on education (Goal 4) and industry, innovation and infrastructure (Goal 9) for a deeper dive into these areas of particular interest to Colombia.

Finally, the brief introduces a pilot index developed by AidData that identifies pockets of social vulnerability at the subnational level in Colombia. This Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) is then overlaid with geocoded aid information to examine if aid projects and dollars are being concentrated in the most vulnerable areas.

Funding: AidData’s work on sustainable development data, including its efforts to develop a global reporting standard for total resource tracking for the SDGs, is made possible through the generous financial support of the William & Flora HewlettFoundation. This work is also made possible by the College of William & Mary.