Over twenty years and ten rounds of assessments, the Open Budget Survey has tracked how governments manage public money: what they disclose, who they consult, and how they are held to account. Transparency has improved globally, but the results show a persistent gap between formal improvements and the accountability mechanisms that would make them matter.

The 2025 edition of the Open Budget Survey (OBS), covering 33 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, finds that despite fiscal and governance challenges, the region has made modest progress in accountability— which can be bolstered to build public trust.

The OBS 2025 round, covering eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa region, reflects continued—though uneven—progress across all three pillars (transparency, oversight, and public participation), driven by sustained civil society engagement despite constrained political environments. These trends show that public budgets remain one of the few institutionalized arenas where accountability can still operate.

Governments across the Western Balkans and Türkiye are making progress in opening up their budgets, but transparency alone is not enough to build trust. The 2025 Open Budget Survey finds that accountability systems remain too weak to ensure that public money is used in ways people can see, question, and trust. While EU-driven reforms have improved transparency, gaps during budget execution limit access to information and opportunities for scrutiny, leaving room for significant executive discretion in how public funds are spent.