Today’s release of Stats for International Development for 2019 give an interesting, and slightly worrying, snapshot of the priorities for the Government on #UKaid (1/9)

The big headlines are: more money for the Prosperity Fund, an increase towards bilateral aid away from multilateral aid, increases of spending to upper/middle income countries, and small decreases in spending on health/education

The last one of these is not great, but not a hugely dramatic drop for health and education (0.4 and 0.7% respectively). The first three are the ones to pay attention to.

The significant increase to the Prosperity Fund is worrying, given that this cross-governmental organisation scores badly on transparency, effectiveness and poverty focus - it doesn’t provide #realaid

The shift away from multilateral aid (down from 36.5% to 32.5%) towards bilateral aid (up from 63.5% to 67.5%) is also concerning . Multilateral aid tends to do better at transparency, effectiveness and poverty focus than bilateral aid.

Lastly, that more money is going to Upper Middle income countries is not a good sign. These are countries that have less need for aid than the world’s poorest countries where spending has a greater impact.

Of course, all of this spending was before the FCDO came into being, or Covid-19 turned everything upside down, but the pandemic makes it all the more important that we spend our precious aid money well

Now, with cuts to the UK aid budget, and a global pandemic, it’s essential that every penny achieves maximum impact against poverty. That’s why all aid must be real aid, making a real change for the world’s poorest people (9/9)