UK Bilateral Aid Cuts the most drastic of any G7 country
20 March 2026
The UK Government has announced that direct bilateral aid to UK partner countries will be reduced.
In the UK Government’s statement on their revised approach to international development and Official Development Assistance (ODA), the UK’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Yvette Cooper MP said yesterday that the UK Government are: “prioritising support for fragile and conflict affected areas and linking it to conflict and atrocities prevention.” The new UK strategy also increases the share of FCDO’s ODA spent through multilateral programmes.
The statement outlines how the cuts from 0.5% to 0.3% of GNI by 2027/28 which were announced by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in February will be pursued.
The cuts are the most drastic of any G7 country, more severe than those of the USA and in the period 2024/5-2028/9 equate to a 56% reduction in bilateral funding from the UK to Africa. The Government has said that it will return to spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA “when fiscal circumstances allow”.
By 28/29 the total budget for bilateral development partnerships will be £677m, down from £818m in 26/27 and that budget will additionally provide support to Ethiopia, Nigeria, DRC, Sudan, Sahel and Somalia.
Whilst the SMP welcomes the UK Government’s pledge to “ensure that women and girls are central to development decisions”, it underlines FCDO’s own Equality impact assessment of Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme allocations for 2025 to 2026 which says that were the FCDO to stop ODA programmes with health objectives in Malawi: “this would be expected to result in approximately 250,000 adolescents losing access to modern methods of family planning each year and an expected 20,000 children becoming at risk of dropping out of school because of an end to school feeding."
In line with the SMP’s charitable purpose to “…help reduce poverty, advance education, advance health, improve wellbeing and increase social justice…” the SMP condemns any planned cuts to bilateral aid to people in great need in Malawi.
Read the full UK Government statement here.