Although still a work in progress, Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD) endeavours to count all financial flows from traditional and emerging donors aimed at supporting global public goods and sustainable development. While TOSSD stretches the boundaries of its predecessor, official development assistance (ODA), it is being created without consulting the main beneficiaries, the developing world, in the process. At the third UN Conference on Financing for Development it was agreed that countries would ‘hold open, inclusive and transparent discussions … on the proposed measure of total official support for sustainable development’. Unfortunately the process has been far from such. This policy insight paper captures some of the views from Africa and the Global South on the new development finance statistic put forward by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
