Nordic countries

Where it is on record

Aid is drawn at each country's interior point, sized by seven years of commitments; the CRS carries no coordinates, so a country point is the honest place. Power units with a Nordic owner sit at Global Energy Monitor's coordinates in the map's status colours. Debt owed to the Nordic countries is off until switched on.

The five providers are summed in the bubbles; the per-provider split is in the chart below. Norfund's and Swedfund's company investments, and Norway's and Sweden's investment stocks, have no country-level open series, so the ground footprint is what GEM's owner field holds.

Aid activities: OECD Creditor Reporting System

Each of the five reports to the OECD at activity level: Danida, the Finnish foreign ministry, Iceland's agency, Norad and the Norwegian foreign ministry, Sida. Together they give 9,163 distinct titles for 18,216 records, grants to governments, multilateral trust funds and NGOs, with climate, energy access, governance and humanitarian aid the recurring purposes. Norway's and Sweden's records are the largest.

The purpose codes are the reliable part. The descriptions often name a region or a town (7,228 records mention one), but the CRS carries no coordinates, so the aid is drawn at country points and kept off the project map.

Records that build something

Purpose codes for transport, energy, water and the facility codes of health and education, plus titles that mention building, renovating or drilling: 5,206 records, USD 6,410 m, over the seven years.

Power units with a Nordic owner

The map's power layer carries an owner field; this table is those records filtered for a Nordic company. Scatec dominates: its solar plants under Egypt's and South Africa's procurement rounds, its hydro in Uganda, Rwanda and Mozambique, and a release-and-restart history that the status column shows. Norfund and Finnfund hold stakes beside it, KLP and Frontier Energy as investors, Wärtsilä as an engine supplier that kept a plant, and Equinor in two pipeline segments.

Country-year series: investment stock, net aid, debt

Three official series describe Nordic money in Africa one country and one year at a time, the first only in part. The OECD's FDI positions carry African partners for Denmark, Finland and Iceland; Norway and Sweden report none at this level, so their investors (Norfund, Scatec, Equinor, Swedfund) are visible only in the owner field. The DAC2a table gives net ODA by recipient, summed over the five. The World Bank's debt statistics give what each government owes creditors in the five, which is little: these are grant providers.

Direct-investment stock by partner country

Net ODA by recipient

Over 2010–2024 net ODA from the Nordic countries to Africa came to USD 42.24 bn; Tanzania received the most.

Debt owed to the Nordic countries

World Bank International Debt Statistics, counterparts 003, 018, 020, 008 and 010, summed: all public and publicly guaranteed debt to creditors there, the state and its banks together (series DPPG, as on the debt page), with the bilateral official part beside it. Sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed borrowing only.

How to read this page

One record is

In the aid tables, one CRS activity as each of the five reports it. In the energy table, one GEM power unit, one pipeline (its segments counted) or one cable, as the map carries them. In the series, one country and one year.

Status

GEM and TeleGeography records use the map's own mapping. Aid activities have no status.

Money

CRS commitments and disbursements are in current US dollars as reported. Net ODA is current prices. FDI stock is the OECD's net position, immediate counterpart, summed over the reporters that publish African partners. Debt is the World Bank's public and publicly guaranteed stock owed to the lender's creditors, the state and its banks together, as the debt page counts it, with the bilateral official part, the state's own claims, beside it. None of these is a project value and none is added to the map's lenders.

Location

Aid and the series are drawn at the country's interior point. Pipelines and cables are the map's routes, thinned; power units carry GEM's coordinates.

Not here, and why

• Norway's and Sweden's investment stocks by African country are not published at the OECD's level; the national statistics publish Africa as a region.
• Norfund's, Swedfund's, IFU's and Finnfund's portfolios are published as company lists with amounts per investment on their own sites; the site does not read them yet. Norfund's is the largest and would add Globeleq's plants.
• The five providers' IATI files carry locations for many projects; the site does not read them yet.
• Submarine cables: the map's cable layer names no Nordic owner on an African landing.

Sources and licences

• OECD, Creditor Reporting System, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as providers (DAC codes 3, 18, 20, 8, 10), pooled, activity-level microdata through the SDMX API; OECD terms of use, free reuse with attribution. OECD, DAC2a, net ODA by recipient (measure 206), current prices. OECD, FDI positions by partner country (BMD4), Denmark, Finland and Iceland outward, summed.
• World Bank, International Debt Statistics, source 6, counterpart areas 003, 018, 020, 008 and 010, summed; CC BY 4.0, release of 3 Dec 2025.
• Global Energy Monitor, Global Integrated Power Tracker and Global Gas and Oil Infrastructure Trackers, as the map draws them; CC BY 4.0.

Download

Everything on this page, with the aid aggregates by country, year, purpose and agency, the series per country and the filtered energy records: nordics.json.