Annual Report 2008 - Making it Happen

The UK is leading the way in the fight against poverty. We estimate that the Department for International Development helps to lift 3 million people out of poverty every year.

The UK’s development aid will continue to increase over the next three years, and by 2010 will have more than trebled in real terms since 1997. This investment will ensure we deliver the promises made by the UK at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, and help countries to accelerate their progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

How well is DFID working? What are we doing to help the billion people around the globe who live in extreme poverty? These are questions that need to be asked, and deserve a straight answer. DFID’s Annual Report 2008 sets out what we did between April 2007 and March 2008 to bring about changes for the better in the developing world.

The report gives a full account of where we spent public money over the last year, and where we have pledged to spend it in coming years, to tackle the challenges that we face.

For example, DFID has:

• provided improved access to water and sanitation, strengthened nutrition and essential health care to 1.5 million people in Zimbabwe;
• through our contribution to UNICEF helped provide nutritional support to 80,000 acutely undernourished children;
• through its support to the Government of India’s universal elementary education programme, helped get more than 27 million more children enrolled in school between 2003 and 2006;
• through its humanitarian assistance in Africa contributed towards the delivery of emergency nutrition, health, shelter, protection and livelihoods recovery programmes reaching approximately 30 million people;
• through its contribution to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund helped ensure that 5.4 million Afghan children are now gaining an education, over a third of them girls.

Development: Making It Happen is a comprehensive account of an important year for DFID with more attention given to how effectively and transparently aid has been delivered. It is a record of the work that we have done, and a statement of the work that we will do, to keep our promise of ensuring better lives for the world’s poor.

Copies of the report are available from The Stationery Office priced £41.20, Tel: 0870 600 5522, Email: customer.services@tso.co.uk, quoting HC492.

Achievements

Alongside our Annual Report this year, take a look at some of the ways in which DFID is working to help eliminate world poverty on our achievements page.