Anglican Alliance director calls for rethink of plans to cut spending to the poorest countries
The UK government's aid arm, the Department for International Development (DFID), in its report "Changing Lives, Delivering Results" has proposed cutbacks in funding for some multilateral agencies, and also cuts in spending to some developing countries. Director of the Anglican Communion's Anglican Alliance for Development, Relief and Advocacy Sally Keeble has today asked for a meeting with DFID officials to go through details of the proposed cuts which would have a serious impact on people in some very poor countries.
In a letter to Secretary of State for International Development, Andrew Mitchell, she writes: “In particular the decision not to fund work in Burundi, Lesotho, Niger, Cameroon, Angola and the Gambia puts pressure on some of the poorest countries, which have very particular challenges in terms of , geography and in some instances conflict. Lesotho, for example, has suffered major loss of its adult population through HIV and Aids and its geography makes economic diversification problematic.
"The position of Burundi has been put to your department recently by Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi [Primate of the Anglican Church of Burundi]. The direction of relatively small amounts of money away from these countries will have a disproportionate and negative effect. I would ask that you look again at the detail of the priorities for spending so that the lowest income countries may be given an opportunity to meet the concerns of DFID about their capacity to deliver, or that funds could be delivered through different, and more effective mechanisms.
"It would be especially helpful to have a meeting with your officials to go through the details of the methodologies that led to the conclusions to withdraw funds from these very low income countries, and to know what opportunities there might be to restore funding."