CSR Response: Darling Continues Robust Investment in Anti-Poverty Programs

10.09.07

The Africa advocacy group DATA says Chancellor Alistair Darling is making a smart investment by announcing robust increases in development spending in the next three years.

According to the Chancellor’s statement in parliament today, the budget of the Department for International Development (DFID) will increase by approximately 11% per annum to 2011. The government has also promised to direct a large proportion of those funds to anti-poverty programs in Africa.

“Britain has played a global leadership role in the fight against poverty and today’s statement confirms that the fight remains a major foreign policy priority,” said Oliver Buston, DATA’s European Director.

“The Chancellor doesn’t take these decisions lightly. He has seen from the evidence that well-targeted aid programs are working. All those in Britain who support the anti-poverty movement should also be reassured that their money is making a real difference to millions of peoples’ lives.”

• Britain provides financial support to Uganda where the proportion of the population living in poverty has fallen from 56% in 1992/3 to 31% in 2006.
• Taxpayer funds have paid for six million school places in Ethiopia
• Mozambique, one of the poorest countries in the world, and which receives British aid, is on track to halve extreme poverty by 2009.
• Through the Global Fund, Britain has helped to put 1.3 million Africans on life-saving AIDS drugs
• Global Fund contributions pay for millions of bednets in Kenya and southern Africa – reducing child deaths from malaria by as much as 40 per cent.

“Diseases like AIDS, malaria and TB put a huge burden on the economies of sub-Saharan Africa,” said Buston. “By funding treatment and prevention, Britain is investing in Africa’s workforce. Funding school places also pays huge dividends. We know that education is crucial to increasing earnings for poor people everywhere.”

The government says that today’s figures put it on track to meet its promise to increase development assistance to 0.56 % of GNI by 2010, and 0.7% by 2013.

“Overseas development assistance is still less than half of one per cent of our national income,” said Buston, “but it is contributing substantially to a more equitable world.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, 31 July 2007, United Nations, New York
“We face an emergency - a development emergency…..Unless we act, the planet will by 2015 be suffering not less but more environmental degradation and millions of people will still be struggling on less than one dollar a day with millions of children still hungry.”