BRIEF

Commitment to Development Index 2025

Indice de l’engagement pour le développement 2025

Índice de compromiso con el desarrollo 2025

With levels of development finance falling, it is more important than ever to look beyond aid. The Commitment to Development Index (CDI) does just that—ranking the world’s most powerful countries on policies that affect global development.

In an increasingly interconnected and geopolitical world, decisions made by governments of major economies have impacts far beyond their borders, and often disproportionately affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable. Despite a rise in nationalism in many countries, greater global prosperity is in the common interest, creating new economic and trade opportunities, increasing innovation, and reducing risks posed by global challenges in health, security, and climate.

The CDI covers eight distinct policy areas that affect development:

Eight components of the CDI

What does the CDI measure?

We assess countries across more than 40 indicators to come up with rankings for each of the eight policy components, as well as each country’s overall commitment to development. Countries score well for things like generous and high-quality finance for development, transparent investment, low barriers to trade for developing countries, and migration policies that are open and promote integration. Policies that enhance global public goods—such as fostering global health through disease prevention, supporting technological research, protecting biodiversity and the climate, and contributing to global security—also contribute to high scores.

How are countries doing?

Sweden tops this year’s CDI, followed by Germany in second place and Norway in third place. Sweden ranks first in environment, second in development finance, and fourth in health. Its performance in technology, despite an increase in tax incentives for private R&D since the last CDI, remains relatively weak, with low levels of research collaboration. Though Sweden also finished top in the previous two editions of the CDI, its lead over the next-best-performing countries has shortened each time.

Germany comes second overall and is the highest-ranked G7 country; when scores are adjusted for country incomes, Germany overtakes Sweden to top the index. It ranks top of the migration component, following large increases in the numbers of migrants and refugees it accepts per capita. Norway ranks third, performing well in development finance and health—and ranking first for investment—but underperforming on trade and environment due to high agricultural subsidies and fossil fuel production.

Finland and the United Kingdom complete the top five: Finland comes first on health and security, while the United Kingdom scores strongly on its policies supporting investment in and trade with developing countries.

France dropped out of the top five to seventh overall, in part due to a series of cuts to its aid budget (the more recent cuts to the UK’s development budget are not yet captured in the data), though it still ranks in the top 10 across investment, environment, health and technology.

These results predate most of the steep cuts announced in four of the largest providers of development assistance—the US, UK, France, and Germany. Other providers have also announced cuts, and although the more recent and planned cuts are yet to appear in the official data, earlier reductions in the provision of development finance are already evident in our assessment. Still, finance is just one of eight components in the CDI.

Given the economic importance of countries in the G20, we include eight middle-income countries in the ranking. Despite dropping four ranks since the previous edition, South Africa still ranks highest among this group at 29th, with above-average contributions in technology and security. Türkiye and Brazil were the next highest, with relative strengths on migration and investment, respectively.

Luxembourg and Ireland have made the most improvement since the last edition of the CDI, each jumping four ranks. Luxembourg, now ranked 10th overall, is one of the few countries we measure to have increased its (already generous) provision of development finance, and it now tops that component. Austria and Chile each improved by three ranks, while the Netherlands dropped out of the top 10, falling five ranks to 11th.

Collective progress or decline?

While the rankings highlight how individual countries are doing relative to other powerful economies, and show ways in which they could be doing more for development, looking across the indicators can shine a spotlight on areas of collective progress or decline.

A majority of countries are giving less finance for international development than they were in the 2023 CDI (relative to the size of their economies). This is even before accounting for the recently announced cuts to aid budgets. Furthermore, we see that countries are also generally reducing the share of their development finance channelled through multilateral institutions, with this trend more pronounced among non-OECD providers (see section below on development finance quality).

Despite this clear backsliding on development finance, we do see some collective improvement across a number of non-aid policy areas. Between 2020 and 2022, the average CDI country accepted 70 percent more migrants per head of population—up from 66 per 10,000 people to 112 per 10,000 people—with migration from Ukraine, Russia, and Morocco among others driving that increase. Migration from these relatively wealthier countries, however, means that the average income of migrant origin countries has increased, and this is less good for development: a migrant arriving into a rich country from a poor one gains a greater relative increase in wealth and opportunities than a migrant worker from a wealthier country, and remittances they send home are also likely to be a more important component of income. The number of refugees hosted by each CDI country spiked in 2022 with large influxes of Ukrainian refugees, especially in neighbourhood countries such as Czechia and Poland, and those numbers have remained high.

On the environment, we see a majority of CDI countries reducing their emissions per capita, with almost three-quarters of countries improving between 2019 and 2023. This is especially important for development, as lower-income countries tend to be those most affected by the adverse impacts of climate change. However, although the average country has improved, as a collective group, the CDI countries were responsible for 3 percent more emissions in that same time frame: the significant increase in emissions in China alone more than negates the combined emissions reductions in all 30 countries that saw decreases.

Subsidies for fossil fuels (government support that lowers the cost of producing or consuming coal, oil, or gas) have, in contrast, increased in most CDI countries. The latest data, from 2022, reflects subsidies as they were in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; that is, in the context of spiking energy prices and increasing demand after restrictions from COVID eased. Countries that reduced subsidies for fossil fuels in such difficult geopolitical and macroeconomic circumstances—of which there were 10, including Argentina, Australia, and Türkiye—should be commended.

On trade, many of the changes instigated by the second Trump administration are yet to feature in the data, but will have significant impacts on lower-income countries.

In one bright spot, many CDI countries have made progress on reducing harmful subsidies for agriculture—these subsidies create a highly uneven playing field for low-income countries, for which agriculture typically constitutes a large portion of the economy. Agricultural subsidies declined in 28 countries, though they remain high across a number of those despite progress. This is especially the case in EU member states—with agricultural subsidies overseen by the European Commission as part of the Common Agricultural Policy, rather than by individual member states—as well as in Switzerland and Norway (though the value of subsidies in the latter remained very high at more than 56 percent of total farm production).

On security, our analysis reflects the increase in geopolitical tension and conflict in recent years. In our two key indicators, we see over half of countries reducing their peacekeeping contributions and increasing their arms exports, reflecting a longer-term trend of declining finance for peacekeeping. Neither Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nor Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the region following the 7 October 2023 attacks are addressed by active UN peacekeeping missions, and both have shaped the foreign and security priorities of many CDI countries.

At the time of this analysis, Israel and Russia were each engaged in major conflicts. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has had devastating humanitarian and developmental impacts, causing disruption to food and energy markets with knock-on effects for developing countries worldwide. Israel’s military operations in Gaza and the region, and its restrictions on the entry of food, essential supplies, and aid, have had severe humanitarian consequences. The CDI has limited ability to capture the developmental impacts of such actions and cannot meaningfully quantify or compare the effects of different conflicts. For this reason, Israel and Russia are not included in the 2025 Commitment to Development Index.

Many of the spillover effects of Russia’s invasion however—such as higher fossil fuel subsidies, diverted aid resources, and food price increases—are reflected in other countries’ scores.

More information on this is available in the methodology.

Development trends and insights

This year’s CDI is published against a backdrop of major cuts to the provision of aid. This makes a case for countries to increase the quality of their remaining finance, but also to consider the wider set of policies that can accelerate prosperity and security in partner countries. In this section, we highlight three important areas: subsidies for agriculture and fossil fuels, R&D spend and focus, and the quality of development finance.

1. Subsidies for agriculture and fossil fuels

High-income countries spent billions of taxpayer money subsidising the production and consumption of fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, agriculture. With ongoing pressure on public budgets and the major threats posed by climate change, these seem important areas on which to focus. However, they also represent unfair competition between countries—these are major industrial distortions.

There has been backsliding on fossil fuel subsidies, which have increased across most countries, largely in response to increased energy demand following COVID and price spikes resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Across the 36 countries for which we have data, total fossil fuel subsidies amounted to 0.48 percent of their collective GNI in 2022, twice the 0.23 percent a year prior. But our analysis also shows very wide variations in the level of subsidy provided by governments.

In response to issues with gas supply, we have seen that the average subsidy for gas production across CDI countries more than tripled, even more so across the EU. Subsidies for oil also increased in over half of countries, but to a far smaller degree than for gas: the greatest absolute increases in oil subsidies were in Japan (an almost 14-fold increase) and Mexico. Some small consolation may be taken from the fact that subsidies for coal—the “dirtiest” fossil fuel—fell in 23 countries (and stayed the same in five), and that most subsidy increases for coal were modest. However, there were two notable exceptions: Poland and China, where subsidies increased almost fourfold and almost fivefold, respectively. In aggregate, the overall carbon intensity of CDI countries’ fossil fuel subsidies has dropped: the carbon intensity of all fossil fuel subsidies relative to oil was 95 percent in 2021 and just 85 percent in 2022.

Notably, the US provision of subsidies is relatively low. A focus on these subsidies at the G20 in the coming two years could free up public finance, rebalance trade, and accelerate progress on climate. 

There has also been significant progress on reducing harmful subsidies that contribute to overfishing. The landmark WTO Agreement on Fishing Subsidies was adopted in mid-2022 and formally entered into force in September 2025—it has already been signed by all but a handful of CDI countries, such as India and Mexico. But even before this legal instrument took effect, we see that CDI countries had been reducing harmful fishing subsidies: between 2020 and 2022, the average subsidy provided by CDI countries decreased from 7.9 percent of fishing industry output to 5.3 percent.

Figure 1. Fossil fuel subsidies increased overall from 2021 to 2022, but some countries reduced them

 

2. Research and development

The average country in the CDI spends more than twice as much economic effort on research and development (R&D) as it does on development finance. Collectively, it’s almost three times as much, at 0.58 percent compared to 0.2 percent on finance for international development. This figure has also been resilient to the cuts that have befallen development budgets across CDI countries—four years ago, the amount spent on R&D across CDI countries was worth 0.59 percent of their economies.

Figure 2. Total co-authored publications in 2024 (thousands), grouped by average income of co-author countries

Fossil fuel subsidies increased overall from 2021 to 2022, but some countries reduced them

 

R&D funding is aimed at improving societies and productivity, and to spur innovation to meet the challenges of the day. So many of the recent economic shocks have been international in nature or in implication: the impact of Russia’s war on inflation; climate change; COVID; and even the effect of US interest rates on global borrowing costs. Given the shared and international dimensions of so many of these (current and projected) challenges, R&D should be focused on them and involve international collaboration. Development officials and advocates should understand and encourage their government’s international focus.

For the six BRICS+ countries we assess, the amount spent by the government on R&D is orders of magnitude larger than that spent on finance for international development. Researchers from these countries are also more likely than those in other CDI countries to publish research papers in collaboration with researchers from lower-income countries (Figure 2). For example, while the average international co-author of research led by Austrian academics comes from a country with an income per head of $38,500, or almost 16 times the low-income country average, academics from South Africa tend to partner with researchers from countries with lower incomes: $16,900, or 7 times the low-income country average. For many countries, collaborating with lower-income countries presents opportunities both to tackle global issues and encourage mutual growth and innovation.

3. Development finance: New providers and focus on quality

We’ve highlighted that cuts to development finance started before the major cuts announced in 2025. But what about providers outside the OECD?

Our analysis shows nontraditional providers cut their aid first: in the 2020 CDI, based on data from roughly 2017, the 12 providers we assess outside the DAC provided 0.1 percent of their collective GNI as finance for international development. By the 2023 CDI, that figure had fallen to 0.075 percent of GNI, and today that figure stands at 0.05 percent. This is not an entirely homogenous decrease—for example, Saudi Arabia provided more in the latest assessment than in 2020—but the trend broadly holds across the group. Since 2023, China has reduced its finance by almost a quarter relative to its GNI, Indonesia by over a half, and South Africa by more than 80 percent.

That drop was also driven by a fall in the share of finance to multilateral institutions: Brazil reduced its proportion from 95 to 58 percent, and others, including India, Mexico, and South Africa, have reduced their proportions by more than 20 percentage points since our last assessment two years ago. In part, this reflected the conclusion of capitalization of the New Development Bank. It remains to be seen whether the newly expanded BRICS+ group leads to that institution receiving new capital.

On finance quality, our assessment is a simplified version of our Quality of ODA index (QuODA) with just a handful of indicators. Still, we see several clear trends.

The poverty focus of bilateral development finance has been steadily falling as finance is directed away from the poorest countries, where it can have the greatest impact. Much of this deterioration occurred in 2022 when substantial volumes of aid were redirected to (relatively higher-income) Ukraine. In 2018, the average income of CDI country finance recipients was 1.8 times the low-income country average, and by this edition of the CDI, that had increased to 2.2 times. Belgium remains the best country at targeting the poorest countries with its bilateral development finance, while the United States and Japan have both targeted their finance to relatively better-off countries.

In one bright spot, with new survey data on recipients’ views of providers, we have seen an uptick in ownership expressed over finance projects in most CDI countries—that is, a greater proportion of development project objectives are being drawn from results frameworks owned by the recipient country. Both the United Kingdom and the United States have made substantial progress, though EU countries including Italy and Germany make up the majority of top-performers on this indicator.

Figure 3. Aid objectives are becoming more aligned with partner countries
Share of projects with country-owned objectives

Aid objectives are becoming more aligned with partner countries

 

* CDI countries with available GPEDC data
Note: Figures above are not adjusted for missing data

For country reports and full results

Visit cgdev.org/cdi to explore the interactive web portal and see how your country is doing on the Commitment to Development Index. More information on the CDI, including the full data model and method paper are available on our project site at cgdev.org/project/commitment-development-index.

CDI 2025 country ranking table

CITATION

Mitchell, Ian, and Edward Wickstead. 2025. Commitment to Development Index 2025. Center for Global Development.

DISCLAIMER & PERMISSIONS

CGD's publications reflect the views of the authors, drawing on prior research and experience in their areas of expertise. CGD is a nonpartisan, independent organization and does not take institutional positions. You may use and disseminate CGD's publications under these conditions.