International aid from official donors has fallen for the first time in five years, dropping by 7.1% in real terms in 2024, according to preliminary data.
The government has been urged to rethink its fiscal strategy in the light of its decision to raid international development budgets to fund a boost in defence spending.
Cutting the aid budget during the Covid-19 pandemic was “not a good signal” to the UK’s partners around the world, the Conservative Party conference was told.
The government reduced its aid spending so quickly that officials do not know the effect the cuts will have on long-term value for money of UK aid projects, the National Audit Office has said.
The government will reform the body that scrutinises its aid spending as it merges its international development department with the Foreign Office, the foreign secretary has announced.
Development organisations have criticised the government’s decision to merge its Department for International Development with its Foreign Office, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Campaigners have hit out at suggestions the Department for International Development could be rolled in the Foreign Office, warning it would “diminish” the UK’s global influence.
More than 700 million people worldwide still live in extreme poverty but it is possible to leverage scarce development resources to help change that, says the World Bank’s Akihiko Nishio.
Rising global hunger, aid shortfalls and baby foods full of sugar - all in the Numbers Game from the September 2019 edition of Public Finance magazine.
A government scheme to “turbo charge” private investment in developing countries’ infrastructure projects has been criticised as making an “opportunity” out of human suffering.
Between 2010 and 2017 60% - £4.6bn - of the UK’s support for energy in developing countries went towards fossil fuel sources, according to analysis by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development....
Concentrating UK aid on large middle-income countries risks reducing the focus on poverty and the government’s new “leaving no one behind” philosophy, a watchdog has said.
“Fundamental weaknesses” in a £735m UK aid fund to help the poorest countries have left it neglecting its international development goals, a watchdog has claimed.
The UK’s new international secretary Rory Stewart has got off to a good start but there is still much he can do to improve the department, says the ODI’s Simon Gill.
The United Kingdom’s aid budget faces cuts if rival candidates to lead the ruling Conservative Party turn it into a “political football”, an MP has claimed.
Calls for a multi-billion-pound cut in the UK’s foreign aid budget and the abolition of the Department for International Development are a “recipe for disaster”, NGOs have warned.
