Aid

Cameron’s announcement today that some of the aid budget should be diverted to peace-keeping should come as no surprise. After the multi-lateral aid review was completed two years ago, the direction was written on the wall, as the World Development Movement pointed out at the time.

DFID cut aid spending to aid agencies that support agricultural development in favour of emergency relief, and reduced anti-poverty programmes in some of the poorest countries, like Niger, Angola or Cambodia in favour of countries deemed to be a high security risk.

This is short-term thinking at its worst. The best way to combat insecurity and encourage peace is to spend money on health, education and ensuring greater equity for the world’s poorest. Economic insecurity is exactly what puts countries at risk over the longer-term. If we divert aid spending away, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Cameron’s spurious direction points out why the target of 0.7 per cent being spent on aid is irrelevant if we’re not keeping watch on how aid is being spent in the first place. While the target is important in maintaining our commitment for greater wealth equity...

The UK government is yet again undermining grassroots poverty alleviation by channelling UK aid towards huge agribusiness. The Hunger Games, a report recently published by War on Want, criticises the Department for International Development (DfID) for working with the ‘who’s who’ of agrochemical and GM seed companies including Monsanto, Unilever and Syngenta.

In coalition with these companies, DfID is funding dodgy agricultural initiatives such as the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). This initiative in particular seeks to “trigger a uniquely African green revolution” by promoting networks of GM seed and agrochemical providers to small farmers.

The companies working beneath this banner, posing under a guise of African development, are seeking to extend their reach over emerging markets in countries like Malawi. Monsanto, a company that originally made its money from making chemical weapons but has now switched to agrochemicals, has openly declared its intention to control all of Malawi’s 30,000 tonne seed market. This transition, if it was allowed to happen, would decimate traditional seed markets, and lock local farmers further into a dependency on foreign inputs....

The UK government is increasingly emphasising the role of private companies in delivering overseas aid.  But there is a very real danger that, in taking this approach, the real purpose of aid, which is to help people out of poverty, is taking second place to corporate profit.  

Here are some examples of how aid money is benefiting big business: 

UK aid money helps multinational companies dodge tax

1. £11 million of UK aid money has gone to the World Bank to help set up ‘special economic zones’ (also known as export processing zones) in Bangladesh specifically aimed at attracting investment from foreign companies.  

o Multi-national, high street names like Nike, Walmart, Adidas, H&M and Gap have factories in these zones in Bangladesh and were granted ten year tax holidays when they set up.  

o However, unskilled factory workers in these zones earn on average less than £1 a day, have few employment rights and are banned from joining a trade union. 

o...

As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your 
MP Richard Burden has a key role to play in our campaign.

The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there 
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.

Please email Richard Burden MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.

As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your 
MP Richard Harrington has a key role to play in our campaign.

The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there 
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.

Please email Richard Harrington MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.

As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Jeremy Lefroy has a key role to play in our campaign.

The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.

Please email Jeremy Lefroy MP now to help stop big business cashing
in on aid.

As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your
MP Alison McGovern has a key role to play in our campaign.

The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.

Please email Alison McGovern MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.

As a member of the International Development Select Committee, your 
MP Sir Malcolm Bruce has a key role to play in our campaign.

The Committee he sits has the power to decide whether or not there 
will be an inquiry into how our overseas aid budget is spent.

Please email Sir Malcolm Bruce MP now to help stop big business cashing in on aid.

WDM’s landmark Pergau Dam legal victory in 1994 meant that the promotion of UK exports to developing countries, or ’tied aid’, was no longer legal. Now, however, UK government aid policy is showing a worrying trend towards once again prioritising a pro-market view of aid over the needs of the world’s poorest people.

Whether it's technical assistance to secure tax incentives for foreign investment in south Asia, or promoting public-private partnerships in health, education and water, the private sector now seems to be central to UK aid programmes.

But is the role of aid to promote market-oriented policies or should greater emphasis be placed on public provision and the role of governments? Or should we move beyond aid as a charitable act and instead see it as a form of international wealth redistribution to be used by recipient countries to pursue their own development goals?

Deborah Doane, director of anti-poverty group the World Development Movement, said today that the UK government’s aid spending inquiry should scrutinise the growing private sector cash-in on development aid.

The new development secretary Justine Greening said on Sunday that her department would review its spending on consultants, following revelations that UK-based ‘poverty barons’ are making hundreds of millions of pounds from the foreign aid budget.

Deborah Doane said:

Increased scrutiny into the spending of UK aid money on consultants and contractors is very welcome. But this is only one part of a bigger picture, which shows the increasing involvement of the private sector, including multinational corporations, in the delivery of the UK aid budget.  

Methods such as public private partnerships that have been discredited here in the UK are being promoted by the UK government in developing countries. We need a wide-ranging and independent inquiry to look at the growing private sector involvement in development aid, and how effective this approach is in meeting the needs of the poorest people, compared to approaches that focus on strengthening the public sector. Aid should be given by the UK as a contribution to global equity, not as a...

Last month, our director, Deborah Doane, blogged about the worrying noises coming out of DFID lately on aid. Indeed, the past few months have seen proposals like moving towards a ‘sovereign wealth fund’ model of aid that would see ‘returns for the UK taxpayer’. And Andrew Mitchell has been busy recasting aid as something that we give because it is in the UK national interest, rather than as a purely altruistic gesture.

Ostensibly, the idea behind all of this is to sell the idea of increased foreign development assistance to the British public, who are assumed to be sceptical of foreign aid in a time of economic crisis. It appears the logic is that people will be won back to the idea of aid if only it can be proved that ‘we’ are somehow getting something out of the deal.

Thankfully, a new report by the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Overseas Development Institute appears to show what many progressive voices have been saying for a long time – most people don’t want aid to benefit us, they want to see it leading to real benefits for the poorest: