LONDON — By September, the U.K.’s highly renowned Department for International Development will be gone — scheduled instead to become part of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
The timing of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s announcement came as a surprise, but little else about it did — Johnson has long been critical of the department and in favor of a merger.
The departmental reorganization will be extremely challenging and, because of DFID’s size, without precedent, according to Rachael Calleja, senior research associate at the Center for Global Development. “There are a lot of unknowns in this case,” she said.