Interactive: What's DFID planning through 2019?

LONDON — What is the U.K. Department for International Development planning for the coming years? A stash of data released at the end of July offers rare insight. Over the course of two weeks, DFID published 35 country profiles containing a lot of compact data about what it’s doing in each recipient country — and, more importantly, what it plans to do between now and 2019. DFID does give out forward-looking information, but rarely in formats that are useful to partners or contractors, making these documents a fairly unique resource for business development teams within implementing organizations. Better yet, the Devex team has extracted useful data from the documents and visualized it in an interactive dashboard to help you analyze it more easily. The profiles don’t offer a full picture of U.K. aid spending, or even of bilateral spending by DFID. For example, absent from the figures is 500 million pounds of annual funding in “crisis reserves” — unallocated money that is distributed throughout the year based on emerging needs. The profiles also exclude 2.6 billion pounds in “centrally-managed” funding, including the recent 139 million pounds pledged to Yemen in April and 200 million pounds pledged to South Sudan and Somalia in February. Events within the U.K. could also influence the numbers. The documents don’t include multilateral funding or cross-government spending; that is, aid money spent by government departments other than DFID, which currently accounts for almost 2 billion pounds of aid. But the new profiles do offer some clues about the direction and volume of this cross-government strategy, and raise questions about these innovative but controversial funds. The U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union puts about 756 million pounds in multilateral contributions to the European Commission in question, and the new country profiles offer interesting insights on this. All in all, the data offers concrete insight into a little less than one-third of the U.K.’s 13 billion pound aid budget — about 3.9 billion pounds in annual bilateral spending between 2017 and 2020. It constitutes a key contribution to what we know so far about the future of U.K. aid. OK, so where’s the rest? The new country profiles exclude multilateral, cross-government and reserve spending — 2.1 billion pounds, 2.4 billion pounds and 500 million pounds, respectively, based on 2015 figures. They also leave out “centrally-managed programming,” which in 2015 amounted to 2.6 billion pounds. Centrally-managed funding is spent in-country, but is managed regionally and therefore not spent through country-specific budgets. For example, some spending related to the famine in South Sudan might be managed regionally from Kenya, and in this case would not be included in the country profiles. The profiles also don’t account for administrative costs, which in 2015 amounted to 390 million pounds. It’s important to remember that all figures used here are estimates based on 2015, and not adjusted for the U.K.’s economic growth. The U.K. aid budget is legally tied to 0.7 percent of gross national income, which is set to rise, albeit more slowly, through 2020. What can we tell about the future of the cross-government aid strategy? Although the U.K. aid budget is expected to rise along with gross national income, the figures here indicate flat spending from 2017 to 2020. The increase in the budget year-on-year appears to be going to areas outside of bilateral DFID spending — such as to other government departments, multilateral institutions and DFID’s development finance institution, the CDC, which recently saw its spending ceiling tripled in anticipation of future funding from DFID. In 2015 the U.K. government controversially committed to spending 30 percent of all U.K. aid through departments other than DFID by 2020. While the new country profiles don’t offer much insight into the leading non-DFID aid spenders — such as the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills — year-on-year cross-government spending has doubled since 2011, and was estimated at 19.5 percent of total official development assistance in 2015. As spending here appears flat, this means that DFID’s programs likely won’t be reduced as a result of the boost to other government departments’ aid budgets — good news for the continuity of development and humanitarian efforts; bad news for aid critics hoping the cross-government strategy would mean less influence for DFID. While the data appears flat for now, it won’t stay that way. As mentioned, DFID keeps about 500 million pounds in reserves to spend as needed throughout the year, and these funds must be spent by the end of the fiscal year in order to meet the 0.7 spending target. The portion in the graph labeled “humanitarian” spending, while appearing as the second-largest category here, will fluctuate depending on the year, the crisis and even the season. If, by a miracle, DFID doesn’t need to spend part of its reserves on crises, it will allocate the funds to other non-humanitarian initiatives, for example researching deadly diseases. What about Brexit? It’s significant that many of the EU-affiliated multilateral funds remain in place at least through 2018. In Syria and Turkey for example — now operating under a combined budget — the largest program involving the U.K. remains the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey, with 124 million pounds planned. This program isn’t scheduled to finish until 2019, and given the U.K.’s close work with the region on humanitarian response and migration support — as well as its role in the EU-Turkey Joint Action Plan — it would likely be difficult and dangerous to extricate itself from these instruments by 2019. The guidance for the program states that “work is now under way to understand the implications of leaving the EU for the U.K.’s development work. The EU continues to be a significant aid donor and is an important partner in some DFID programs.” It’s also possible that some of the European Commission’s instruments will remain accessible to the U.K. after Brexit, for example, its off-budget funds and the newer EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. Are there any big surprises in country-based DFID spending? Not really, and that’s good news. While some country budgets dropped significantly — namely Afghanistan, which fell by almost half from 300 million pounds in 2015 to 155 million pounds for 2017/18 — part of U.K. aid spent in Afghanistan is also channeled through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, managed out of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. The country profile also does not reflect all of the 750 million pounds pledged between 2017 and 2020 by Secretary of State Priti Patel late last year. Three countries affected by the current drought — Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan — see their funding reduced for both the 2017/18 and 2018/19 periods, but this may indicate that money committed to them will come through reserves or other channels. Likewise Yemen, with 82 million pounds planned in its country profile, doesn’t make the list of top 10 priority countries. It’s clear the profiles don’t take into account certain active projects, many of which likely fall under the category of centrally-managed or multilateral programing, such as this one in South Sudan, worth almost half a billion pounds. As the crisis in Syria worsens, it appears its budget has been combined with Turkey’s budget, amounting to 286 million pounds for 2017 — a slight increase on its 258 million pounds in 2015, but set to increase to a whopping 336 million pounds by 2019. Check out Devex’s interactive visualization of the data to analyze it further. We’d love to see your observations, questions or commentary below — or reach out to our data experts at analysts@devex.com for more information.