A decade after the United Kingdom’s development institution, British International Investment, or BII, overhauled its strategy to sharpen its development focus, a new report from Bond, the U.K. network for development NGOs, said it is increasingly concentrating its funds in a small group of middle-income countries and falling behind on some of its commitments on climate and gender.
The report, funded by Oxfam, said that while BII has expanded in size and reach — tripling its annual commitments since 2015 and boosting its investment in Africa — an increasing proportion of investments are concentrated in a handful of middle-income economies such as India, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya. Together, those five countries account for 53% of BII’s portfolio.
In a comment to Devex, a BII spokesperson said that “over half of [our] investments in 2024 went to the poorer and most fragile countries we invest in,” but added that “at the same time, it is essential that we accelerate the reduction of emissions in Middle Income Countries to safeguard the development gains that have been made.”
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About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
