23/07/2025
Africa to be hit hard as UK foreign aid cuts revealed
(BBC) The United Kingdom 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.
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 with increased risks, it says, of disease and death.
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 Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan.
Baroness Chapman, minister for development, said: "Every pound must work harder for UK taxpayers and the people we help around the world and these figures show how we are starting to do just that through having a clear focus and priorities."
The government said the cuts follow "a line-by-line strategic review of aid" by the minister, which focused on "prioritisation, efficiency, protecting planned humanitarian support and live contracts while ensuring responsible exit from programming where necessary".
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.
"The world's most marginalised communities, particularly those experiencing conflict and women and girls, will pay the highest price for these political choices.
"At a time when the US has gutted all gender programming, the UK should be stepping up, not stepping back."
Foreign aid has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, with the one cabinet minister admitting the public no longer supports spending on it.
Source: BBC
