Boris Johnson’s Africa summit

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Hi John,

Yesterday’s UK-Africa Investment Summit was a prime example of Boris Johnson’s attempts to hijack the aid budget for the benefit of big business.

The prime minister spent £15.5 million of aid money on the conference, held in a luxury hotel in the shadow of London’s Canary Wharf. It brought together British businesses and financiers from the City of London with heads of state from more than a dozen African countries. Some UK civil society groups were invited, but African civil society was excluded.

We took a stand against the summit – protesting with allies outside and signing a joint letter to the government with 12 other NGOs.

The summit wasn’t about breaking aid dependency or tackling the climate emergency. It was the latest in a long line of efforts by recent governments to spend aid to boost British business interests and set up post-Brexit trade deals. Over £6.5 billion worth of business contracts were announced at the summit – of which at least £1.5 billion involves fossil fuel production. Meanwhile the prime minister sent out press releases proudly announcing an end to spending parts of the aid budget on some forms of coal power – but these investments haven’t been made in over a decade, and don’t include the government’s indirect funding of coal infrastructure through private equity funds.

The government’s smoke and mirrors approach to climate action hides a chilling reality – a new scramble for Africa beneath the veneer of international development.

Already, more than 6,500 of us have signed the petition calling on Boris Johnson not to hijack the aid budget and maintain an independent Department for International Development. Can you join the campaign today?

Sign the petition

An investment summit with a £15.5 million budget, hosted in the shadow of the City of London and African civil society excluded, doesn’t sound like progress to us. This sounds like a return to the bad old days with aid being diverted away from the most marginalised communities.

CDC, the government's investment fund for international development which had a huge boost to £6 billion from the aid budget in 2017, has indirectly funded hundreds of millions of pounds worth of fossil fuel projects in recent years. The government is saying this summit will help to tackle climate change. But at a summit where BP, Shell and other fossil fuel giants have been invited to do business deals, it is difficult to see a case for any UK aid to go directly or indirectly to fossil fuel projects. To face up to the reality of the climate emergency, this and all other government support for fossil fuel projects should be ended.

This is why Boris Johnson wants to merge the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office – to have more events like these which are focused on building the UK’s economic power. This isn’t development as we know it – this is Empire 2.0.

Please sign our petition to help stop the corporate hijacking of aid now.

Sign the petition

Thank you,
Daniel Willis
Global Justice Now

PS. You can read more about the corporate takeover of aid in the links below:

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/news/2020/jan/15/open-letter-government-uk-africa-investment-summit

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/foreign-office-dfid-merger-overseas-aid-uk-trade-global-development-a9260396.html

https://leftfootforward.org/2020/01/why-were-saying-no-empire-2-0-at-boris-johnsons-africa-summit/

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/01/making-development-a-business

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-ais-commercial-deals

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