Parsimony and Platitudes: The UK’s Approach to a ‘Post-Aid World’

Analysis from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) offers the first ‘formal’ glimpse into the implications of UK aid cuts announced back in February. The drop from 0.5% to 0.3% of GDP by 2027 immediately proved controversial across government circles, eliciting the resignation of International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds and raising fears Whitehall would not sustain spending levels in hotspots such as Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine. Others warned of a ‘strategic mistake’, casting the £6 billion reduction as ‘dangerously counter-productive’ and damaging to Britain’s ‘standing’ and domestic security.

The latest picture – however preliminary – appears bleak, substantiating concerns from various charities that UK austerity will ‘come at the expense of some of the world’s most vulnerable people’. Coalescing with a $40 billion slump in global Official Development Assistance (ODA), ranging from emergency relief to longer-term social and economic welfare, these insights speak to urgent questions around the role of the UK – and likeminded partners – in a steadily deteriorating aid space, and the problems this raises for humanitarian, development and security outcomes.

Different Shades of Bad

Budget cuts do not always follow the same script. The fall from 0.7% to 0.5% in 2020/21 was iterative, mismanaged and badly communicated, coinciding with massive structural reforms (the so-called ‘muddled merger’ between DFID and FCO), geopolitical re-orientations (towards the Indo-Pacific and, later, Ukraine), and rapid (prime-)ministerial turnover. Although the fallout varied across different regions, rollbacks in Eastern Africa – a well-established hub for UK-Aid – were marked by supposition and poor preparation, with a ‘disparity between goals and resourcing’, and a lack of viable strategy, contributing to ‘confusion and inefficiency’ across local programmes. Theories of change were often left contrived or neglected, precipitating widespread resentment among partners and recipients alike, while stakeholders cited a loss of trust, clout and institutional memory. It amounted to an ‘act of wilful political vandalism’, one ‘balancing the books on the backs of the poorest’.

In contrast, the ongoing drop to 0.3% should – on paper – be cushioned by a longer lead time, a stable bureaucracy and greater consistency at the top. Public blowback – already limited given foreign aid’s ‘spectacular unpopularity’ – has been tempered by a ramp up in defence spending, with criticism confined to an ever more (discursively) detached development community. Some suggest the immediate effects may be mitigated by axing in-house security and administrative functions, buying time for initiatives to either scale-down, streamline or shutter responsibly. Others, including the government’s own monitors, stress ongoing multilateral and humanitarian commitments through 2025/26 as evidence of the UK’s capacity to continue ‘shaping global norms’.

These claims are contentious at best. After five years of uncertainty – rendering forward planning ‘almost impossible’ – a further 40% paring of FCDO budgets leaves any ‘soft landing’ for UK-Aid inconceivable, especially if a fifth of the residual ODA pot is poured into domestic asylum processes rather than development priorities abroad. The cuts similarly expose an apparent contradiction between rubric and reality, with policymakers touting their intersectional credentials while deprioritising support for vulnerable groups, from centrally managed WPS (Women Peace and Security) schemes to healthcare, education and social protections. As noted by Whitehall assessors, 11 of the 13 projects scrapped since February were ‘equalities focused’ (satisfying the OECD criteria for equality, diversity and inclusion being a ‘principal’ or ‘significant’ aim). Accompanying tropes around ‘value for money’ and ‘maximising impact’ would be more convincing if a refreshed ‘governance framework to provide oversight, monitor implementation, measure progress [and] share learning’ hadn’t stalled three years ago. With ministers now considering whether to shelve assurances that 80% of FCDO’s bilateral aid will support gender equality by 2030, the result is a tranche of reductions disproportionately affecting women, girls and vulnerable minorities across Sub-Saharan Africa, devoid of guiderails or clear strategic direction.

Bigger Problems

Crucially, narratives justifying this latest bout of parsimony tend to cast the UK as a ‘critical enabler’ and ‘multiplier’ in the aid space, one able to supply ‘incredible expertise’ in lieu of capital. But the framing presupposes a coherent multilateral system that can actually leverage economies of scale. Facilitation and specialisation only work if there is liquidity, appetite, consistency and coordination – ingredients that are increasingly scarce. The gutting of USAID was existential in this regard, with the agency bankrolling roughly 40% of global humanitarian activity and 29% of all OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) financing. As a conduit, contractor and crutch for various NGOs, UN organs and private firms, the freeze (and later slash) of American programming distorted development’s entire ecology. Between the 20 January and 26 February, 6,256 US operations (worth $120 billion) shrank to just 500 ($57 billion). Supply chains collapsed, trauma centres shut, and much needed emergency relief – grain, sorghum, pulses and cereals – rotted in warehouses. Sudan – host to the world’s largest hunger crisis – saw 300 soup kitchens and frontline services close within days, while 34,880 metric tonnes of food destined for neighbouring Ethiopia spoiled waiting for transit. The management and mechanics of larger interventions have also stuttered. USAID not only covered a fifth of UNHCR’s budget in 2024, but backed a raft of other acronyms – IOM, WFP, WHO and UNDP – creating an irreconcilable cash shortage. The corollary is delay, dysfunction and deprivation, with a recent report by the Lancet forecasting over 14 million additional deaths by 2030.

Unfortunately, this bolsters a broader trend; donors like France, Switzerland and the Netherlands are already scrimping, and Germany has shed €2.6 billion from its aid budget in the last two years alone. After a 9% fall in 2024, total ODA expenditure is expected to contract by another 17% in 2025 and possibly hit 2020 levels by 2027 as 11 DAC members announce cutbacks. In other words, the global circuitry that Whitehall hoped to ‘enable’ and ‘amplify’ is now experiencing exponential problems, with partners slashing their coverage and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) facing a $4.2 trillion funding gap.

Revamp or Ruin?

Speaking to the House of Commons International Development Committee in July, Foreign Secretary David Lammy referenced many of these challenges, acknowledging the need for reform not just in the UK, but across the G7 and wider UN system. His concessions are well founded. While aid has experienced ‘boom-and-bust cycles’ over successive decades, the sheer scale of this crisis demands inflection from what could soon become a ‘sunset industry’. Beset by waste, profligacy and paternalism, there is a strong case that the sector has failed on its own terms. Numerous projects are cosmetic, botched or short-lived, with much of the benefit confined to those middlemen approving licences or managing distribution. Vanity metrics often trump impact, tying success to swelling budgets and staff numbers or prioritising technical fixes over systemic change. Across various contexts, ‘non-governmentality’ – inputs by NGOs, consultancies and international institutions – risks either hollowing out or replacing the state altogether. In many ways, the enterprise now resembles a tautology, as Joshua Craze writes: ‘humanitarianism [is] a life support system for places like South Sudan . . . [the] arrangement prevents an absolute catastrophe but creates a permanent emergency; it keeps people alive but props up the very regimes that exploit them’. Critics also point to the invention of definitions, taxonomies and thresholds that make diagnosing problems uncomfortably pedantic. Patchy data stemming from political interference and poor access push analysts – however well-intentioned – into absurd ironies, where ‘population[s] can be in a situation that falls short of ‘famine’ on the severity index even while tens or hundreds of thousands of children perish from disease and hunger’.

This is not to say aid work should be written off – far from it. Indicators suggest aggregate levels of extreme poverty, maternal mortality and disease-related deaths have all fallen, while education and healthcare coverage are gradually improving. But change – as Lammy put it – is ‘long overdue’. UN appeals were under-funded well before the latest cuts, averaging a 58% uptake between 2016 and 2022 (despite low-balling the real costs). Only 3.3% of global spending is allocated to national NGOs; entities that are generally ‘cheaper, nimbler’ and more responsive than their foreign counterparts. Amid the emphasis on local ownership, experts still describe humanitarian infrastructure in Somalia, for instance, as ‘sparsely connected’, with INGOs opting to engage (sub)federal authorities over civil society. Those working on the frontlines of famine-relief are, in effect, consigned to the margins of mainstream development networks. Similar patterns are evident further west, with resources flowing to transnational organisations trapped in Port Sudan, where the army can extract ‘sizable administrative fees’ that turn ‘bureaucratic obfuscation [into] a lucrative industry’. As a result, cash rarely reaches the emergency response rooms and street kitchens actually serving immiserated constituencies across the country. Yes, rapacity, theft and logistical restrictions are inhean rent cost of warzone activity, where ‘regulatory’ outfits like HAC (the Humanitarian Aid Commission) and the Rapid Support Forces’ SARHO (Sudan Agency for Relief and Humanitarian Operations) coerce and commoditise. But these bottlenecks are also symptomatic of structural deficiencies baked into the sector itself, as donors struggle to accommodate ‘mutual aid methodologies’ that prioritise ‘community accountability ahead of traditional NGO reporting’.

Against this backdrop, the UK has pushed for greater discussion around what a ‘new aid architecture’ should look like, with Lammy arguing that the ‘time is right to be smarter and sharper about how we spend . . . money across the board’. Many concur with the idea that upheaval offers opportunity, potentially allaying the ‘atrophy’ of ‘elite ambition’ (where powerbrokers outsource their countries’ future to foreign interests) evident in (but not exclusive to) stretches of Sub-Saharan Africa. Disruption can challenge complacency, reduce dependency and – in the absence of rent-seeking – revive the social contract between ‘taxed and taxer’. Relationships could become more equitable, empowering African agency and fostering new forms of collaboration. The collapse of old donor monopolies may also breed innovation and sustainability in the long-run, diversifying funding streams and attracting private capital. As Mark Suzman, executive director of the Gates Foundation, argued back in April: ‘leaders across the global south are committing to increasing domestic revenue collection and improving the efficiency and transparency with which they serve their citizens’. In short, there are plausible pathways for strengthening aid outcomes over time.

The danger is conflating reform – or even radical overhaul – with tearing down the system before having any plan in place for what comes next. Efforts to strengthen ‘governance, gender equality, responsive policing’ and compliance with human rights – all past UK priorities – are already being set back, alongside work to resolve, reduce and prevent conflict. Practitioners warn of an impending crisis in northern Nigeria, to take one example, where WFP rations – a lifeline for at least five million children – are almost exhausted. The (superficial) relief afforded by satellite industries tied to Borneo’s aid economy (transit, security provision, procurement, storage and accommodation) also risks running dry, raising concerns over unemployment. Amid poverty, hunger and lost livelihoods, the largesse of militant groups such as Islamic State West Africa presents a (costly) alternative, allowing the exploitation of food shortages to compel complicity and recruitment. Similar dynamics are evident across ‘dozens of volatile . . . regions’, putting – as one expert explained to Politico – ‘the most vulnerable at risk’. The immediate toll may be confined to the peripheries of Western strategic interests, but they have a propensity to transform the global threat landscape ‘down the line’, exposing a fallacious trade-off between aid and security.

Thinking About Talking About a Plan…

In what some are now dubbing a ‘post-aid’ era, it is therefore paramount the UK and like-minded partners acquire a new (and coherent) theory of influence commensurate with their capabilities. Absent a USAID framework to plug into, the divisions of labour enabling niche contributions from smaller donors are no longer viable. Although alternatives may coalesce over time, obvious candidates such as the EU are heavily weighted towards development, exposing gaps in humanitarian coverage. As Volker Hauck and Sophie Desmidt note, the Global Gateway Initiative – a multi-billion-euro strategy focused on infrastructure and investment – is ‘only marginally suitable for highly fragile and conflict-affected countries’. Populist currents across Europe, and torpid negotiations in Brussels, may also sap appetite for additional contributions.

This is further complicated by normative shifts in global cooperation, described by some as a concerted process of ‘de-institutionalisation’. With states flouting ‘rules of procedure’ and deviating from the ‘established script’ of multilateral decision-making, Richard Gowan suggests the authority, relevance and resourcing of international bodies, from the UN to the OSCE and ICC, have steadily waned. Litigation is routinely condemned or ignored, creating a permission structure for ‘bad actors’, while starvation in Gaza and South Sudan, and the alleged politicisation (or weaponisation) of aid via outfits like Fogbow and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, have stoked outrage but little policy change. At the same time, peacemaking is increasingly fronted by ad hoc coalitions; expressions of ‘mini-lateral’ engagement that bypass the usual mechanisms. Sudan is a prime example, featuring a cascade of (unsuccessful) mediation efforts by European, African, US and Gulf stakeholders that tends to sideline UN officials. Whether out of convenience, competition or a lack of confidence in past convention, the market has become ever more congested, fragmented and explicitly transactional.

Unable to match the scale of ‘bail-out diplomacy’, or the expediency of ‘rentier systems’ that back individuals over institutions, the resonance and reach of UK agency appears unclear. Recent consultations with Sub-Saharan states (and societies) reflect the right ethic – ‘think with Africa, not do for Africa’ – as does a focus on ‘investment’ and ‘partnership’ (in place of donor paternalism), but the goals, mechanics and methodology of this approach must be fleshed out. Can aid’s shifting dispensation help the UK to identify mutually shared interests across different regions? How can interventions better address systemic problems alongside palliative needs? Is this a viable model for maximising impact? How do transparent, ‘meaningful’ partnerships translate into practice? What are the normative, strategic and political parameters of operation? What flexibility is there to work with ‘imperfect’ but far-reaching third parties (including those in the Gulf who enjoy access and leverage as sponsors/spoilers)? What can private-public partnerships and financial entities like British International Investment realistically offer? Which ‘trouble-spots’ and crises should be prioritised, and what does an ‘enabling role’ in conflict prevention/resolution now mean in an age of mercurial bilateralism.

Reviews of the UK’s international development strategy (commissioned in September 2024) offer a valuable opportunity for clarifying these issues, as do negotiations over the Multiannual Financial Framework in Brussels, and Lammy’s proposed conference to discuss a ‘new aid compact’. But decision-makers cannot lean on the same platitudes – ‘multilateralism’, ‘global cooperation’, ‘value for money’ and ‘delivering impact’ – in lieu of an actual plan.

© RUSI, 2025.

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