On the Road With the Minister Tasked With Defending Britain’s Painful Aid Cuts to Ghana
It is mid-afternoon on an overcast day in a suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital. A crowd, including two government ministers, a World Bank director, diplomats, NGO workers and camera-wielding media, has descended upon a classroom where pupils sit around tables playing with plastic bottle tops.
This is a catch-up class for out-of-school children, aged between eight and 16, run by Ghana Education Outcomes Project that is almost entirely (85%) funded by the UK government. The resulting circus is because Jenny Chapman, the UK’s development minister, has come to see the impact of her government’s diminishing aid budget.
Accompanying her on the visit is Haruna Iddrisu, Ghana’s minister for education. “I want to thank the British government for its continuous investment in Ghana’s education,” he tells her from across a table with children sat around it. “We are particularly concerned [about] the declining international development assistance to Africa, and to Ghana. It does have implications.”
He goes on to speak about possible lost “opportunities” for the “youngsters” sat between the two officials and how the Ghanaian government has already had to plug the yawning gap left by shrinking aid budgets. Lady Chapman listens, maintaining a slight smile, and gently nods.
Chapman was appointed after the British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement in February that the UK aid budget would be cut from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% in 2027, its lowest level as a percentage of national income since records began. It was a complete reversal of Labour manifesto pledges and the party’s historical commitment to helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.
Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister at the time, resigned in protest. “These cuts will remove food and healthcare from desperate people – deeply harming the UK’s reputation,” she wrote in her resignation letter to Starmer. “I know you have been clear that you are not ideologically opposed to international development. But the reality is that this decision is already being portrayed as following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.”
Seven months later, Chapman, a close ally of Starmer who played a key role in his leadership campaign, is overseeing the cuts, a role that some in development circles have labelled “a poisoned chalice”.
Chapman does not see it this way and has come to Ghana, her first trip in the role accompanied by a member of the British media, to see “what development could look like”. She says: “This is the best job in government. And I think that we can do a huge amount and change things for the better … As soon as Anneliese said what she did, I thought, ‘I can do that.’”
According to figures for 2024, Africa is the largest regional recipient of UK aid, at nearly £1.5bn. The UK’s official development assistance (ODA) spend was £14bn, a decrease of more than £1bn (8%) on 2023; 20% of that money was spent on refugees or asylum seekers in the UK.
UK official development assistance to Ghana has reduced over recent years. In 2023, it was £13.9m, down from £47.1m in 2019.
Decisions have already been made to protect aid going to Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza and there will be a reserve fund to respond to future crises. The UK has also committed funding to global organisations with a proven track record of impact, such as the Global Fund, World Bank and Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.
News has begun to emerge detailing some of the individual projects that will be axed, such as cash handouts to villagers in Malawi to adapt their homes to the climate crisis. A £95m project to boost welfare payments in Jordan and a £120m scheme to improve education in Pakistan have also been scrapped.
“We will have less money to spend on traditional programming and I don’t pretend otherwise,” says Chapman. “That is a reality that’s being confronted in very many countries now. There is going to be more pressure on those budgets … Continuing in the way that we have done isn’t the right answer.” In May, she told MPs that “the days of viewing government as a global aid charity are over”.
Criticism of the cuts is widespread. A report launched on Wednesday by the International Development Committee says they will have a “devastating” impact on women and girls and that they show the UK is “stepping back from the world stage at a time when engagement and collaboration are most needed”. A government impact assessment warned in July that “reductions to health spending risk an increase in disease burden and ultimately in deaths, impacting in particular those living in poverty, women, children and people with disabilities”.
What would Chapman say to this and to people upset that Labour broke manifesto pledges in relation to rebuilding the UK’s reputation on international development? “I don’t think we have,” she says. “See, I think people who think that have a very narrow view of what international development is.”
She wishes she had more money to spend and admits, “I probably would have said something similar about a year ago, but you’ve got to deal with the world as it is and countries have changed a hell of a lot in recent decades and want to have more control.”
The president of Ghana, John Mahama, who was reelected into office in December 2024, told the UN during his first term in 2016, that “Africa does not need your sympathy or development assistance”, but rather it wanted a “fair chance to trade with the rest of the world”. His comments have been echoed by other African leaders.
Chapman’s tightly choreographed, whistlestop tour in Ghana, a country with one of the largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa, was meant to showcase some of what can be achieved.
Successes include a tax partnership between HMRC and the Ghana Revenue Authority, which has generated an additional £100m annually. HMRC staff helped Ghanaian counterparts track down assets belonging to high-net worth individuals and tax them appropriately. Representatives from six other African countries have visited Ghana to learn how to do the same.
Chapman saw the work of Atlantic Life Sciences, a biotechnology and pharmaceutical manufacturing company, that has received UK support to develop products such as snake venom anti-serum. She also visited Tema general hospital, supported by the Global Fund to fight HIV/Aids, malaria and tuberculosis. The UK has been the third-largest donor historically to the fund, which is often lauded for saving tens of millions of lives.
However, while infectious diseases are still present in the country, the main health challenges in Ghana, and across the continent of Africa, are non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes and hypertension. “NCDs have overtaken infectious diseases,” says Dr Robert Amesiya, regional director of health service for the Greater Accra Region, over a soundtrack of traditional drumming at Tema hospital. “Malaria, HIV and TB are still challenges even though a lot of efforts have been made. There is a gap [in support] for NCDs, which are preventable.
“[The withdrawal in aid] will now put a lot of burden on our government … which has some budgetary restraints. There is no alternative to keeping the health of the population. The government will have to cut funding from other areas.”
Outside the classroom for out-of-school children, Iddrisu has a similar message. He decries cuts to aid budgets but reiterates how grateful he is for the partnership with the UK. When confronted with the reality that the money might dry up, he says: “We will manage.”
Chapman, meanwhile, heads off to attend more meetings and a dinner before she, and three staff who came with her from the UK, retire to one of Accra’s most luxurious and expensive five-star hotels.
