I’m afraid I agree with those who have called the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with DfID an ‘act of vandalism’, rather than welcoming it as the ‘long overdue reform’ that Boris Johnson says will ensure ‘maximum value’ for taxpayers.
Mr Johnson’s comment that aid recipients have looked on DfID as a ‘giant cashpoint in the sky that arrives without any reference to UK interests’, was to say the least insulting. It encouraged headlines (already recycled many times) to be dragged out in support of the merger. The trapeze, acrobatics and juggling lessons funded by British taxpayers (claims last sighted in 2015 and 2017 in publications such as The Daily Express, The Sun, and The Daily Mail) have been dredged up as evidence of wasted cash.
The idea of aid for trade has long been controversial. The fundamental concept? We give water; they buy our cars. In its current incarnation, DfID hasn’t worked like that, but rather for the common good – for development. Mr Johnson will keep DfID’s £15bn budget intact, with the UK committed to continuing to spend 0.7% of national income on aid projects. But - he wants the aid to be given only with our national interests at heart.
The remit for DfID is wide, but sustained poverty reduction has been a major factor in all that it does. I fear that will be threatened by the merger – because what does the UK get back from that?
Wearing another hat, that of the chair of ZamScotEd, a very small charity based in Argyll that supports the education of some of Zambia’s poorest children, can I tell you why even juggling lessons are worth funding without asking anything in return?
Our charity is a member of Scotland's International Development Alliance. Like us, members are non-government organisations working in many developing countries in many different ways. To illustrate the ‘crime’ of ‘funding juggling lessons’, let me tell you about one organisation that gets street kids playing football and doing acrobatics in Tanzania. Those children are attracted from surviving on food picked from the rubbish dumps of Dar es Salaam into sporting teams and given skills they enjoy. From there, the majority go on to school, to jobs, and to contributing to their society.
Many of the children attending the secondary school ZamScotEd initiated on the outskirts of Lusaka are former street kids, (and yes, learning to perform traditional music and acrobatics, though not with DfID money).
By engaging the poorest of children, funding the means to give them skills, then channelling them into an education that can transform their lives, we help to achieve the UN’s first sustainable development goal – the elimination of poverty. Catholic Social Teaching says: ‘The common good is the sum of those conditions of social life which allow social groups and their individual members relatively thorough and ready access to their own fulfilment.’
(Vatican II)
What do we get back? Fulfilled people less likely to migrate. Countries with educated populations able to govern well for the benefit of the peace of the whole world.
But those educated people will also be able to negotiate trade deals that are fair and just – now there’s a concept for Mr Johnson to juggle with.
(Picture courtesy Yes! Tanzania)