Boris Johnson and the aid budget

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Hi John,

We need your help. The government is attempting to repurpose international development to suit the interests of big business and the City of London. We can’t let this continue.

Aid hit the headlines over Christmas with reports that Boris Johnson wants to scrap the Department for International Development and merge it with the Foreign Office. While some reports suggest he is having second thoughts, it would only be the most visible sign of a disturbing trend.

For several years the government’s policy on global development has not focused on people or planet, but increasingly on the UK’s economic interests in the global south. Instead of reaching the most marginalised communities in the world, too much development funding is now being used to invest in things like private school chains, environmentally-damaging industries and private healthcare companies around the world. These include:

Hundreds of millions of pounds of UK aid invested in private school chains in Africa and Asia since 2016
£144 million given by the UK’s development bank to a company that operates coal-burning cement factories in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda, plus another investment in a heavy fuel oil power plant in Benin
£22.5 million invested in an upmarket private hospital in Zimbabwe which treats international patients

Not only do these projects have questionable development impact, they undermine efforts to tackle climate change, reduce inequalities and build strong public services in the global south. We have to take a stand against this.

Can you sign our petition to keep DfID independent and oppose the corporate takeover of international development today?

Sign the petition

The Department for International Development has been an independent government department since 1997. Despite its flaws, having a separate department with a mandate to tackle global poverty makes it harder for aid spending to be subsumed into other government priorities – as happened in the ‘bad old days’ of aid tied to contracts for British companies.

The idea of scrapping the department has been widely condemned by opposition MPs, civil society and even senior Conservatives. But a final decision remains to be made, and the direction of travel is clear.

Following the election, Johnson’s government also announced a ‘Prosperity Fund’ which will use £150 million of aid money to ‘enable future trade’ – including generating better market access for UK businesses – in countries like Brazil, India, Nigeria and South Africa. Aid is to become a sweetener to secure free trade deals after Brexit.

On 20 January, the prime minster himself will host a UK-Africa Investment Summit in London with 20 heads of state. The summit has been nakedly designed to promote the City of London as a development finance hub and to position the UK as the largest investor in Africa. The event seems to be less about development strategy and more about the expansion of the UK’s economic power over the continent of Africa – a move that smacks of neo-colonialism.

We must oppose these moves and call for an end to this financialised, private-sector model of development. British financial institutions and the Foreign Office are not the best placed organisations to judge how development funding should be spent. For “Global Britain” read: Empire 2.0. Instead of more markets, we need to show global solidarity.

Please sign our petition against the corporate takeover of international development now.

Sign the petition

Thanks for everything you do.

In solidarity,
Daniel Willis
Campaigner, Global Justice Now

PS. You can also read and share my article on this for the Independent:
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/foreign-office-dfid-merger-overseas-aid-uk-trade-global-development-a9260396.html

Notes

1. Aid groups warn Boris Johnson against combining DfID with Foreign Office, 19 December 2019

2. Aid watchdog right to sound alarm at UK’s 'Global Britain' aid agenda, 23 October 2019

3. Reimagining aid: why DfID must prioritise UN development goals over British financial interests, September 2019

4. More than 100 charities join senior Tories in urging Boris Johnson to abandon plans to axe foreign aid department, 16 December 2019

5. Rowan Williams warns against scrapping overseas aid office, 29 December 2019

6. Senior Tories turn on Boris Johnson over plan to abolish department that helps world's poorest after election win, 16 December 2019

7. No 10 to scrap plans for Whitehall shake-up as it vows to cut waste, 7 January 2020

8. Reshuffle could hand Dominic Raab a second ministry, 8 January 2019

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