What does international development mean to you? Foreign aid and its discontents
According to Britain’s foreign secretary Ed Miliband, ‘international development is not an add-on to British foreign policy – it is central to it’. As Miliband has recently taken on the role of UK governor to the World Bank, he is in a prime position to play an active role in shaping global changes and has declared that he wants ‘to send an unambiguous signal that this government is serious about its global leadership on development and climate’. But these very climate policies often restrict funding for fossil-fuel projects in developing nations, pushing these countries toward renewable energy sources – but denying them cheap, reliable and large-scale power, and holding back their capacity to develop.
Regardless of intentions and rhetoric, Miliband faces a shrinking aid budget. Keir Starmer was set to reduce aid to 0.3 per cent of GDP by 2027, a sharp reduction from 0.5 per cent under the Conservatives and the 0.7 per cent reached under the last Labour government. Reform UK has made it clear that if they ever form a government, it will slash foreign aid by 90 per cent. Reform’s plans have created panic amongst aid NGOS and charities, who warn it would not cover existing contributions to global bodies such as the UN and World Bank and would shred Britain’s international influence. This domestic decimation of budgets was best exemplified by President Donald Trump’s cut of $60 billion out of US foreign aid in 2025.
Counterintuitively perhaps, while this trend is causing outrage amongst globalist aid organisations in the developed South, a quarter of Africans believe that American aid cuts could have a positive impact, giving them the opportunity for true development and requiring countries to reclaim responsibility for their own futures. If traditionally, foreign aid was sold by the West as a moral necessity, symbolising international solidarity and global responsibility, today it is viewed more cynically, even by its recipients.
Foreign aid has come with so many strings that it has become impossible for countries to direct their own development. While a quote from an unnamed Kenyan government official that ‘Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture’ may well be apocryphal, it is apt. Certainly, donor priorities have attempted to shape how governments spend money. For example, Zambia’s president, Hakainde Hichilema, has reflected that the shift was ‘long overdue’, emphasising that these cuts offer a chance to develop for self-reliance and economic growth.
A parallel spirit of autonomy powers focuses on returning responsibility to individuals rather than their national governments. This different vision of development may be especially important at a time when trade restrictions in Western countries often reduce export income and slow growth for poorer nations by limiting their access to wealthy global markets, while subsidies in rich countries can lead to ‘dumping’ in poorer countries, driving down prices. So rather than financing endless large-scale projects, some development NGOs organise initiatives that promote investment in skills and people, that enable individuals to build local industries, strengthen institutions and equip communities with the means of generating slow but sustainable economic growth.
Can developing countries build their own industries through investment and self-determination, or does globalisation now require them to depend on international assistance? Is aid really an expression of global justice, an act of righting historic wrongs, or is it simply a guise for political interference, at the expense of recipients’ self-determination? Can development be better delivered if it helps communities and individuals to take control of productive economic growth and people-powered profit? For those who believe any aid is not ‘our’ responsibility, beyond emergency help in response to disasters, what of the argument that a lack of development and drastic climate change is driving the exponential rise of migration to the West?
