Today’s newspapers feature coverage of a number projects funded by the UK’s international development budget.
It comes after annual stats were published yesterday, which detail how much the UK is spending on development overseas.
Among the schemes covered is a project to farm coconuts in the Caribbean, which is giving poor farmers a sustainable income and helping to lift them out of poverty.
All of the programmes are paid for out of the UK’s £13.4 billion aid budget, which this year alone has helped immunise 14.8 million children worldwide and given 7.1 million children the opportunity to receive an education.
DFID is responsible for 74% of this total budget.
Other departments, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, are responsible for the rest.
Some of the schemes mentioned in today’s coverage were also funded by the European Development Fund, which both DFID and other government departments pay into.
Since 2015, the UK’s international development budget has achieved amazing results, including:
- immunising over 14.8 million children, saving hundreds of thousands of children’s lives from preventable diseases
- supporting 7.1 million children to gain an education including 890,000 children in the world’s poorest in 2016 alone.
- reaching 26.3 million children under the age of 5, women and adolescent girls with food.
- helping 27.2 million people get access to water and sanitation, preventing terrible diseases.
- Since February 2012 the UK has provided over 26 million rations of food and 8 million vaccinations for victims of the war in Syria.
- In the last 5 years UK aid has helped 8.5 million girls and women access family planning in over 20 countries, and prevented the trauma of 32,000 additional still births and 19,000 additional new born deaths.
- averted a famine in Somalia, by providing emergency food assistance and safe drinking water for up to 1 million people.