UK aid spending cuts deal another blow to African nations
A UK Foreign Office report and impact assessment reveals that Africa will be the most impacted by the UK foreign aid cuts this year, according to the BBC on July 23rd.
In February of this year, the UK government pledged to reduce the percentage of gross national income spent on foreign aid from 0.5% to 0.3%, a 40% reduction. This will result in an increase to 2.5% spent on defence.
The report specifies that Africa will suffer the most from these cuts, specifically with less money being spent on women’s health and water sanitation, according to the BBC.
Aid organizations have already criticised the UK government’s decision, stating that the cuts will impact the world’s most vulnerable people.
Education will also be affected. Street Child, a British-founded charity, told the BBC that British aid has been a significant backer of children’s access to education in Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which will now end.
A UK network for international development organizations, Bond, stated that the UK government is deprioritising funding for “education, gender and countries experiencing humanitarian crises such as South Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, and surprisingly the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan, which the government said would be protected.”
Those who have been protected from these cuts include the World Bank’s fund for the world’s lowest income countries.
The African nations that will be affected by the cuts have already suffered due to international aid cuts, especially in the U.S.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) previously provided over 40% of all humanitarian aid globally, but the funding cuts carried out by President Donald Trump have been catastrophic.
The Bond policy director stated that “at a time when the U.S has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back.”
Research suggests that the cuts to US foreign aid could cause over 14 million deaths by 2030.
Countries including Somalia and Kenya are suffering hunger crises due to funding cuts, not just from the U.S but also the UN.
Foreign aid in the UK has come under increased scrutiny recently with Douglas Alexander, current Trade Minister and previous Minister for International Development, stating in June that the public no longer supports spending money on foreign aid, according to the BBC.
BBC/Maghrebi
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