Abstract The Sustainable Development Goals endeavour to leave no one behind. This note tests whether or not donors have traditionally acted on this rhetoric by examining if aid targets areas of poverty within Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda. Unlike prior research on aid targeting, the analysis covers aid from nearly all donors and does not aggregate variables into spatial regions. Instead, I measure the distance from geotagged survey data tracking poverty to aid projects started just after each survey wave. I show that projects are placed closer to richer people. This effect holds within countries and within first‐level administrative regions. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.