Africa suffers brunt of UK aid cuts

The UK Government has revealed details of its plans to cut foreign aid, with support for children's education and women's health in Africa facing the biggest reductions, reports BBC News. The government said in February it would slash foreign aid spending by 40% – from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% – to increase defence spending to 2.5% after pressure from the US. A Foreign Office report and impact assessment show the biggest cuts this year will come in Africa, with less spent on women's health and water sanitation. Bond, a UK network of aid organisations, said women and children in the most marginalised communities would pay the highest price. But the government said spending on multilateral aid bodies – money given to international organisations like the World Bank – would be protected, including the Gavi vaccine alliance, and it said the UK would also continue to play a key humanitarian role in hotspots such as Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine. The Foreign Office said bilateral support – aid going directly to the recipient country – for some countries would decrease and multilateral organisations deemed to be underperforming would face future funding cuts. It has not yet announced which countries will be affected. Bond said it was clear the government was ‘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'. 'It is concerning that bilateral funding for Africa, gender, education and health programmes will drop,' Bond policy director Gideon Rabinowitz said. ‘At a time when the US has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back.’