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Insights / Humanitarian & Emergency

Where does Australian aid go?

Ask this yourself

Which countries receive the most Australian foreign aid, and how has the balance between the Pacific, Asia and Africa shifted over the last fifteen years?

Papua New Guinea accounted for US$753 million of Australia's net ODA disbursements in 2024, more than three times the next country. Oceania took US$1.52 billion against Asia's US$1.02 billion in 2024, inverting the 2010 position. Africa and the OECD's America aggregate are much diminished. Current-price US dollars.

Largest country recipient, Papua New Guinea
US$753m
2024, current prices · +78% on 2023; Aard calculation
Disbursements to Oceania
US$1.52bn
2024, current prices · 25.5% of all recipients in 2010, 41.5% in 2024; Aard calculation
Disbursements to Africa
US$81m
2024, current prices · 5.0% of all recipients in 2010, 2.2% in 2024; Aard calculation
All recipients, total ODA disbursements
US$3.65bn
2024, current prices

1. One country dominates

Australian is highly concentrated. Papua New Guinea alone accounted for US$753 million of the US$3.65 billion Australia disbursed in 2024 — more than Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Myanmar combined. It is up from US$423 million the year before. Below it the distribution flattens quickly: the tenth-largest country recipient, Vanuatu, received US$60 million. Figures are net of loan repayments and in , so they are not adjusted for .

Largest country recipients of Australian ODA, 2024

Official development assistance disbursements, current-price US dollars. Individual countries only: the OECD's recipient dimension also carries regional, income and multilateral aggregates, which are excluded here and must not be added to these bars.

  • Papua New Guinea
  • Other series

US$ million · Recipient

OECD, DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, 2010-2024 DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions

Show the numbers
Largest country recipients of Australian ODA, 2024
RecipientPapua New GuineaOther recipients
Papua New Guinea753—
Indonesia—232
Solomon Islands—115
Fiji—112
Myanmar—87.2
Timor-Leste—85.0
Bangladesh—82.4
Tonga—68.0
Philippines—64.2
Vanuatu—60.1

2. Oceania now takes more than Asia

The regional shape of Australian has turned over. In 2010 Asia received US$1.41 billion against Oceania's US$977 million; by 2024 that had inverted, Oceania US$1.52 billion and Asia US$1.02 billion. The switch is not clean. Within the years plotted Oceania first exceeded Asia in 2021, fell US$9 million below it in 2022, then led in 2023 and 2024; it had also led in 1998 and 2003. As shares of all recipients, Oceania went from 25.5% to 41.5% and Asia from 36.8% to 27.9%.

Australian ODA disbursements by recipient region

Net official development assistance disbursements, current-price US dollars. All five OECD recipient-region aggregates. The share denominator used in the text is all recipients, which includes core multilateral and regionally unallocated flows as well as these five regions.

  • Oceania
  • Asia
  • Other series (3)

US$ million · Year

OECD, DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, 2010-2024 DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions

Show the numbers
Australian ODA disbursements by recipient region
YearOceaniaAsiaAfricaAmericaEurope
20109771,40919034.70.21
20111,2091,66439340.70.31
20121,1472,09139352.83.6
20131,0411,71931630.30.36
20148501,64218315.90.21
20158521,19410311.10.62
201673584376.97.70.88
201781489715412.00.86
201884294674.43.80.60
201982083274.44.00.51
202078689556.32.54.8
20211,3161,21752.72.20.23
20221,0411,05063.80.7646.3
20231,1741,02876.50.9015.8
20241,5161,01880.70.7320.1

3. Africa and the Americas are much smaller than they were

Two regions have shrunk sharply as a destination for Australian . to Africa reached US$393 million in both 2011 and 2012 and were US$81 million in 2024 — 2.2% of all recipients against 5.0% in 2010, an Aard calculation. The OECD's America aggregate started the period at US$35 million, peaked at US$53 million in 2012 and was US$0.7 million in 2024. Africa's fall is concentrated between 2013 and 2016; the America series fell earlier and further.

Australian ODA disbursements to Africa and the Americas

Net official development assistance disbursements, current-price US dollars. 'America' is the OECD's own aggregate and covers what the OECD puts in it; it is not a Latin America series.

  • Africa
  • All recipients
  • Other series

US$ million · Year

OECD, DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, 2010-2024 DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions

Show the numbers
Australian ODA disbursements to Africa and the Americas
YearAfricaAmericaAll recipients
201019034.73,826
201139340.74,983
201239352.85,403
201331630.34,846
201418315.94,382
201510411.13,494
201676.97.73,278
201715412.03,036
201874.43.83,149
201974.44.02,888
202056.32.52,869
202152.72.23,546
202263.80.803,079
202376.50.903,251
202480.70.703,655

4. About a fifth is core multilateral ODA

Australia reported US$679 million to multilateral recipients in 2024 — the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UN agencies — 18.6% of the all-recipient total, an Aard calculation. This is : pooled money with no donor-assigned country destination at the point of reporting. It is not money that never reaches a country. Where it lands is reported by the receiving institution, and the OECD publishes a separate imputed-multilateral measure for it.

Australian ODA disbursements to multilateral recipients

Net official development assistance disbursements to multilateral recipients, current-price US dollars, against the all-recipient total.

  • Multilateral recipients
  • All recipients

US$ million · Year

OECD, DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, 2010-2024 DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions

Show the numbers
Australian ODA disbursements to multilateral recipients
YearMultilateral recipientsAll recipients
20105393,826
20116744,983
20128635,403
20136964,846
20148844,382
20157413,494
20169873,278
20176243,036
20185993,149
20196642,888
20205502,869
20214793,546
20224613,079
20235333,251
20246793,655

What to watch for

  • Figures are current-price US dollars, not constant prices, so part of any movement over fifteen years is inflation and part is the Australian dollar exchange rate. Where this page describes a change over time it gives the share of the all-recipient total as well, because a share is not exposed to either effect.
  • Country rows do not sum to the all-recipient total. Multilateral contributions, regionally unallocated spending and administrative costs sit outside the named countries, and the OECD publishes countries, regional aggregates, income groupings and multilateral institutions in the same recipient dimension — adding them together double-counts.
  • A single large year for one country usually reflects the timing of a disbursement rather than a durable change in allocation. Papua New Guinea's 2024 figure is nearly double its 2023 figure and should be read against its longer range, not as a new baseline.
  • These are disbursements and they are NET. The OECD's dissemination label for this measure says only "Official development assistance (ODA), disbursements", and carries no description to settle it — but the all-recipient total for 2024 matches the DAC's own "Disbursements, net" for Australia exactly, at US$3,654.8 million against US$3,686.6 million gross, a difference of US$31.7 million in repayments and recoveries received. So a recipient row can in principle be negative, though none was in the 2024 response. Australia's headline aid figure uses a different basis again, grant equivalents, US$3,384.1 million.
  • The shares, ratios and year-on-year percentages on this page are Aard calculations from the cited series, each stated with its operands. The OECD publishes none of them. Recipient figures are revised as members resubmit.
  • The OECD's Europe aggregate is small enough to miss on the regional chart: US$0.2 million in 2010 and US$20.1 million in 2024, having peaked at US$46.3 million in 2022. It is the only recipient region here that grew, and an earlier version of this chart omitted it while its title promised all regions.

References

Data extracted . Reviewed 2026-09-17 by Aard Data Team. Each numbered entry is the publication that documents the figures; the calls beneath it are the ones the retrieval actually made, and each figure is numbered under its publication — 1.1, 1.2 — and links to the narrowest call that returns it.

  1. [1]OECD, DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, 2010-2024
    Vintage: Net official development assistance disbursements to countries and regions, in current-price US dollars, millions. Revised as members resubmit. Recipients mix countries, regional aggregates, income groupings and multilateral institutions in one dimension, so rows must never be summed; country rows do not add to the all-recipient total.
    OECD (2026), DAC2A: Aid (ODA) disbursements to countries and regions, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (accessed on 16 September 2026). Reuse under the OECD Terms and Conditions.
  2. [2]OECD, DAC1: Flows by provider (ODA+OOF+Private), 1990-2025
    Vintage: DAC1 is revised as members resubmit; every observation used here carries OBS_STATUS 'A' (normal value). The headline ODA measure changes basis in 2018. To 2017 the page uses MEASURE 1010, which the OECD labels 'Official Development Assistance (ODA)', with the ratio MEASURE 2, 'ODA as percent of GNI, net disbursements'; from 2018 it uses MEASURE 11010, 'Official Development Assistance (ODA), grant equivalent', with the ratio MEASURE 11002, 'ODA as percent of GNI, grant equivalent'. Those four labels are the OECD's own, from codelist CL_DAC157_MEASURE; 'net disbursements' and 'grant equivalents' as shorthands for the two eras are ours. The two do not overlap and are not one series. Key order on DSD_DAC1 is DONOR.SECTOR.MEASURE.TYING_STATUS.FLOW_TYPE.UNIT_MEASURE.PRICE_BASE (seven dimensions). The retrieval used the unversioned (latest) form of the dataflow path, so the exact version served at extraction was never recorded; the version given here is the one the OECD registry resolved as latest when the identifier was verified on 2026-09-16. CORRECTED during the Opus audit of 2026-09-16: DONOR=DAC_EC, whose OECD label is "DAC Members", is DAC members' combined ODA over their combined GNI - an aggregate ratio, NOT an average of member countries' ratios, which for 2025 is 0.368%. DONOR=DAC ("DAC countries") is a different aggregate again, 0.26% in 2025. MEASURE 11010 is served in both USD and XDC (national currency) on the same key, so a call that does not pin UNIT_MEASURE mixes currencies. The response also returns ALLM, 4EU001, WXDAC, DACEU and G7 rows, none of which is a provider. The data path carries no version because the OECD data endpoint returns 404 for a parenthesised version in a data request; the version served is in each response's STRUCTURE_ID column and was 1.7 on 2026-09-16.
    • API Calls: · extracted 17 September 2026
      OECD.DCD.FSD:DSD_DAC1@DF_DAC1(1.7)https://sdmx.oecd.org/public/rest/data/OECD.DCD.FSD,DSD_DAC1@DF_DAC1/AUS.......?startPeriod=2024&endPeriod=2024&format=csvfilewithlabels

      Australian ODA for 2024 on the four flow bases DAC1 publishes, pulled to settle what DAC2A's measure 206 actually is. DAC2A's all-recipient total for 2024 is 3654.84, which matches DISBURSEMENTS, NET here exactly and differs from gross by the 31.74 of disbursements received. The OECD's dissemination label for measure 206 carries no description in CL_DAC2_MEASURE, so the label alone cannot settle it - the identity can, and does. Added 2026-09-17 during the SDMX audit pass, after an independent review pointed out that an earlier version of this page declined to call the measure net on the strength of a silent label, leaving the reader a gross reading of a net series.

    OECD (2026), DAC1: Flows by provider (ODA+OOF+Private), OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (accessed on 16 September 2026). Reuse under the OECD Terms and Conditions.

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