Why we give aid to the world's poorest people

19 October 2010

The coalition government is motivated by a shared determination to erode the terrible inequalities of opportunity that we see around the world today. We are not prepared to stand by as a billion or more eke out an existence on less than a dollar a day or as women and children die needlessly in their thousands. We are proud of the fact that we are keeping our promise to spend 0.7% of GNI on aid.

Achieving miracles

Well-spent aid can achieve miracles. Aid has already helped eradicate small pox and brought polio to the edge of extinction Last year alone the UK brought food to 13 million people on the brink of famine, vaccinated 4 million children against measles and provided clean water to 2.5 million people. That’s real value for money.

We want to be the best, most transparent, cost effective aid organisation in the world, delivering life saving aid on behalf of the UK taxpayer. 

Results, transparency, accountability

However, in the current financial climate, we have a particular duty to show that we are achieving value for money. Results, transparency and accountability will be our watchwords and will define everything we do.

We are in the process of setting up an aid watchdog to scrutinise every penny we spend, and have introduced a transparency guarantee to put all information about funding on our website.

We are determined to get 100 pence of value for every hard-earned taxpayer pound spent on development. We are reviewing all our bilateral and multilateral programmes to ensure we focus our resources where we can get most impact.

In our interests

We believe that promoting global prosperity is not only a moral imperative but also in our national interests. Whether you are talking about drug-resistant disease, climate change, economic stability, migration or conflict, development represents tremendous value for money.

If we don’t tackle the root causes of these problems now, we’ll spend much more in future in trying to deal with the symptoms. In short, it is good for our economy, our safety, our health and our future.

Some examples of what UKaid has achieved:

	Maternal health in Nepal Thanks to UKaid, mothers in Nepal like Sangita are able to give birth in a safe environment with a trained midwife.
	Malaria in Nigeria How UKaid is getting life-saving bednets to poor people in Nigeria.
	Pakistan floods How UKaid funded relief packages have helped families move back to their villages.
	Food crisis in Chad How we're working with Action Against Hunger to tackle malnutition and alleviate the Chad food crisis.
	Empowering communities in Afghanistan Helping Afghan people decide for themselves how to tackle poverty.
	Trade in Kenya How UKaid is helping farmers in Africa get their fruit and veg onto UK shop shelves.
	HIV and AIDS in South Africa UKaid means South African health clinics are helping HIV positive mothers have HIV negative children.
	Education in Nigeria How UKaid is helping to train teachers like Habibah and get more girls into school in rural Nigeria.

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