Global Affairs Canada: Documenting the state of transparency in blended finance

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) commissioned DI to document the current state of play for transparency in blended finance.

Our brief

Blended finance has the potential to improve the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people. But there is still much work to be done to improve the understanding of its impact. Greater transparency is needed to improve the evidence base on the potential impacts of blended finance and ensure accountability.

The Tri Hita Karana Transparency Working Group, which is co-chaired by GAC and the International Finance Corporation, therefore committed to produce a report outlining the current state of play. They asked DI to support the development of this report.

What we delivered

DI has strong expertise in blended finance, with a body of previous work on the subject. This allowed us to make significant contributions throughout the planning, research and drafting stages of the report’s development. As a result, GAC asked us to finalise the report and identify case studies that would bring the report’s findings to life.

We brought together evidence and the experiences of a range of stakeholders and structured this information into a coherent and useful output. We worked closely with GAC, supporting discussions and consultations on the content of the report. These were essential to delivering the report and developing an ambitious set of next steps, reflecting the varied motivations and challenges of the diverse group of actors that the report needed to speak to.

We also developed four case studies that illustrated the practical applications of blended finance. Our relationships with the different organisations and institutions in the blended finance space enabled us to develop a diverse set of pragmatic case studies that provided examples of best practices including, importantly, host-country perspectives and needs.

Results

The Tri Hita Karana Roadmap for Blended Finance: Promoting Transparency in Blended Finance is being used as part of ongoing efforts to improve the transparency and accountability of blended finance. The report has been shared widely as a key output by the Working Group as well as among the development finance community more broadly. It provides a critical but objective assessment of the current transparency landscape in blended finance. It also identifies key challenges and areas where action is needed and possible.