International Budget Partnership

International Budget Partnership We partner with budget analysts, community organizers & advocates in 100+ countries to make budgets work for people.

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) collaborates with civil society organizations (CSOs) around the world to improve governance and ensure that scarce public resources are used effectively to improve service delivery and fight poverty. We work to achieve these goals by promoting public finance systems and processes that are transparent, participatory, and accountable and by building the capacity of CSOs to participate effectively in these systems.

OBS2025 FAQWhat happens when public funds and institutional support don't reach local economic actors in Francophone Wes...
08/12/2026

OBS2025 FAQ
What happens when public funds and institutional support don't reach local economic actors in Francophone West Africa?

IBP engages with a wide range of stakeholders, from the African Union to the World Bank to financing-for-development actors, to help make budgets work for everyone. Continental initiatives and financing vehicles sit outside our direct mandate, but wherever that money, loans, guarantees, or extractive revenues, flows through a national budget, our transparency tools apply.

The real, visible change happens through our country-specific work with local partners, including our colleagues at IBP-Afrique Francophone.

OBS2025 FAQBudget transparency does not just look good on paper. It changes lives.In Malawi, the Civil Society Caucus on...
08/11/2026

OBS2025 FAQ
Budget transparency does not just look good on paper. It changes lives.

In Malawi, the Civil Society Caucus on Public Finance for Children used five years of budget data to show how declining allocations were hurting Early Childhood Development programs. They turned that evidence into budget briefs, and used them to engage Parliament, the Treasury, the Ministry of Finance, and relevant sectoral ministries.

The result: allocations to ECD nearly doubled in two years, from 800 million to over 1.5 billion Malawian kwacha.

This is what happens when open budget information meets sustained civic advocacy. Read more about how the OBS supports reforms like this, link in comments.

Blog: OBS UnpackedAI is already making decisions about public money. Are we paying enough attention? 👀From detecting tax...
08/10/2026

Blog: OBS Unpacked

AI is already making decisions about public money. Are we paying enough attention? 👀

From detecting tax fraud to monitoring public projects, classifying government spending and forecasting revenues, AI is quietly becoming part of how governments manage public finances.

But there’s a catch.
The technology is moving faster than the systems designed to hold it accountable.

The Open Budget Survey 2025 found that 18 countries already had AI performing public finance tasks, while 21 more were at the pilot or emerging stage. Yet only one country disclosed AI driven fiscal models or decisions with external oversight.

So, who is checking the algorithms?
What happens when AI gets it wrong?
And can citizens question decisions shaped by systems they cannot see or understand?

Our latest blog by Lilianna Ziedins takes a closer look at what AI is actually doing in public finance and why transparency, oversight and public participation need to keep pace.

👉 Read the full blog: https://internationalbudget.org/ai-is-coming-for-public-finance-what-is-it-actually-doing/

OBS2025 FAQs Public money can work for everyone, even in countries facing deep political, economic, and social instabili...
08/07/2026

OBS2025 FAQs

Public money can work for everyone, even in countries facing deep political, economic, and social instability.

Our evidence backs this up. Countries at every income level have shown sustained improvements in budget accountability, and it rarely comes down to wealth or stability alone.

What we've found is that it comes down to people. Reform champions inside finance ministries, supreme audit institutions, and legislatures, working together, and pushing to make fiscal information available at every stage of the budget cycle, on time.

Coordination and commitment can outweigh circumstance.

7 clues. 1 mystery country. How fast can you crack it?We turned our Open Budget Survey 2025 findings into a game. Use th...
08/06/2026

7 clues. 1 mystery country. How fast can you crack it?

We turned our Open Budget Survey 2025 findings into a game. Use the clues, make your guess, and see how many of your seven attempts it takes to land it.

Think you know global budget transparency? Prove it. Play now and tell us your score in the comments.

Play the Budget Atlas: internationalbudget.org/open-budget-survey/budget-atlas

OBS2025 FAQLow public participation is still one of the biggest barriers to fair resource allocation. So what can citize...
08/05/2026

OBS2025 FAQ
Low public participation is still one of the biggest barriers to fair resource allocation. So what can citizens actually do about it?

Advocate for participation mechanisms at every stage of the budget cycle, not just one. Push finance ministries, line ministries, legislatures, and audit institutions to open the process up, and to publish how public input actually shapes decisions.

Then use the channels that already exist, formal and informal, local, regional, or national, and make that demand for participation loud and clear.

Read the full Q&A to learn more.

Has your country made progress on public participation in the budget process? Tell us how, in the comments.

OBS2025 FAQs "Which countries are making the most progress?" — the question we heard most after today's OBS 2025 launch....
08/04/2026

OBS2025 FAQs

"Which countries are making the most progress?" — the question we heard most after today's OBS 2025 launch.

The answer, published in our global report: progress isn't limited to any one region or income bracket. Countries around the world have made concrete advances this year in budget transparency, oversight, and public participation — real bright spots worth learning from, wherever they happened.

See the full 2025 results: https://internationalbudget.org/open-budget-survey/2025-global

Congratulations to Ministry of Finance | Egypt on its progress in the Open Budget Survey 2025.A more transparent budget ...
07/30/2026

Congratulations to Ministry of Finance | Egypt on its progress in the Open Budget Survey 2025.

A more transparent budget is not just about better scores. It is about ensuring people have access to information, institutions are accountable, and citizens have meaningful opportunities to shape how public resources are used.

Egypt's improvements in budget transparency, oversight, and public participation reflect the value of sustained commitment to open and accountable public finance. We look forward to seeing this momentum continue, and to supporting governments and civil society around the world in making public budgets work better for everyone.

Learn more about OBS 2025 and explore the latest results: https://internationalbudget.org/open-budget-survey/

Knowing where health money was supposed to go is only half the story. Knowing why it did not get there is the harder, mo...
07/30/2026

Knowing where health money was supposed to go is only half the story. Knowing why it did not get there is the harder, more useful half.

Last week in Nairobi, we brought together 30 civil society partners from 17 countries for a peer learning exchange on health expenditure monitoring.

This work sits within our "Collaborating for Open and Accountable Budgeting"(COAB) programme, supported by the European Commission, and our emerging health budget work with the Gates Foundation. Over three days, partners applied a problem driven approach, starting from a concrete health service delivery failure and tracing it back to the specific public finance management bottleneck behind it.

We also introduced our new OBS health budget credibility module, which diagnoses how far health spending strays from what was planned, and how well governments explain those gaps. It will be piloted across these countries this year.

Thank you to every partner who leaned in and dug deep - Shamseya, Bajeti Hub, de Integridade Pública, Freedomforum Nepal, International Budget Partnership Nigeria, IBP Afrique Francophone, Transparency International Rwanda, Verité Research, Uganda Debt Network (UDN), AfroLeadership Osc, NGO Coalition on Child Rights and others, and to the European Commission and the Gates Foundation for their continued support. Later this year we turn to peer exchanges on subnational budget transparency and public participation. Follow our page as that work unfolds.

07/24/2026

When budgets are opaque, it is ordinary people who pay the price.

That is why on July 22 we launched IBP Afrique Francophone, a new regional office built to grow accountability ecosystems across the region. What began as country level work in Senegal now spans 11 countries.

Our Executive Director, Ana Patricia Muñoz, put it simply at the launch. This work was never just about whether countries scored higher on transparency. It was about whether open budgets actually improved outcomes for everyday people.

We also heard from Minister Rodrigue Chaou on the discipline transparency demands, and from our Regional Director, Maleine Niang, on the network of experts standing behind this work. Benin's own numbers tell the rest of the story: a jump from 1 to 76 out of 100 on the Open Budget Survey since 2012.

Take a look through the photos and quotes from the day, and let us know in the comments what budget transparency means where you are.

Learn more about our work here: https://internationalbudget.org/where-we-work/afrique-francophone/

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