Department for International Development

  • 15 Jul 2014

    William Hague, Angelina Jolie and British imperial decline

    There was a reason why outgoing foreign secretary William Hague teamed up with the film star in the campaign to end warzone rape.

  • 4 Apr 2013

    MPs have warned that Pakistan gets a lot of British cash, but doesn’t collect enough from its own citizens. Are they right?

  • 30 Nov 2012

    Rwanda will see its aid budget reduced amid allegations it is helping rebels in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo. Who else gets our money – and are their hands clean?

  • 22 Nov 2012

    Suddenly, the British government changes policy on Rwanda

    The Foreign Office had been reluctant to blame President Kagame’s government for the surge in fighting in the east of the DR Congo. That changed when it emerged Rwanda was behind the M23 rebel group which seized Goma.

  • 29 Nov 2011

    In their 2010 manifesto the Tories say: “We will legislate in the first session of a new parliament to lock in this level of spending for every year from 2013.” Clearly, no such legislation has been forthcoming.

  • 20 Oct 2010

    Our International Editor looks at how the government’s spending review will affect the Department for International Development and the pattern of aid Britain’s spreads around the world.

  • 12 May 2009

    “Good governance is based on three things – capability, responsiveness and accountability,” the Department for International Development (DfID) declares on its website. The government department which funds anti-corruption programmes in developing countries goes on to say that it uses this assessment, as well as “promoting good governance and transparency, and fighting corruption – to make…

  • 8 Apr 2009

    Dead aid to Africa's North-South Corridor?

    DFID, the UK aid department, asked me to volunteer to come down here to Lusaka in Zambia to help “facilitate” the launch of the North-South Corridor project for which they and other donors have thus far raised $1.35bn. It involved four presidents, the head of the WTO, a DFID minister, an EU commissioner, international banks,…

  • 8 Apr 2009

    Lusaka deal to boost landlocked Africa

    Why is Africa poor? Here’s one reason – to ship copper from Zambia to a port in South Africa (the nearest) takes three weeks and costs $6,000 per week. The same journey in Europe takes 48 hours and costs a fraction of that. Bureaucratic border crossing, rotten and rotting railways, disintegrating roads… They all speak…

  • 7 Apr 2009

    To mark the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has released photographs depicting the lives of survivors. These pictures come straight from DFID, and are not a product of Channel 4 News journalism, but they do tell an interesting tale of those who suffered, survived and have had…

  • 20 Mar 2009

    Zambia is reckoned to be the 13th poorest country in the world. Sixty-four per cent of the people live in poverty. More than one in six children die before their fifth birthday, and if you live to the age of 42 you are doing better than average. Britain is the largest bilateral donor to Zambia,…