The UK will have to work with other partners to manage the security and geopolitical consequences of both its own aid cuts and the decline in global ODA. With funding unlikely to return, this will mean sustained engagement with middle powers and developing countries to navigate a fractured international system.
Current spending figures suggest that the UK, in planning to cut aid from 0.5 per cent of GNI to 0.3 per cent of GNI by 2027, has sought to preserve funding for key multilateral contributions, for responses to some priority conflicts, and for cooperation with strategic emerging powers. However, this has come at the expense of bilateral spending on some countries and regions, reflected in a 12 per cent overall cut in bilateral spending on Africa, a 21 per cent cut in bilateral spending on the Middle East and North Africa, and cuts to bilateral aid for highly conflict-affected countries that include Palestine, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Syria.
A strategy of seeking to preserve some key multilateral funding is logical in the wider context of reduced global aid funding and increased strains on the international system. And with its own spending reduced, the UK may be able to have more effect – including in some of the contexts where it has cut bilateral aid – by maintaining funding to international financial institutions and humanitarian agencies, which can deliver impact at scale in a way UK funding alone would not be able to.
But this strategy – of prioritizing multilateral funding in straitened times – requires an effective multilateral system. Given the wider global aid cuts and the US’s increasing withdrawal from some multilateral forums, this means that international financial institutions, UN agencies and development banks are all under significant budget pressure. And, of course, not all problems stem from the recent cuts. The multilateral system has well-documented problems with bureaucracy and gridlock. There is a proliferation of agencies and initiatives. World Bank and other analyses find the number of organizations, projects and new initiatives in international development has increased dramatically: for example, the number of donor agencies – i.e. organizations providing funds or resources – went from 227 in 2004–08 to 608 in 2019–23, while the average size of individual grants declined between 2000 and 2023.
The priority should be a slimmed down, more effective international system, but also one where the UK is influential and plays to its strengths.
The recent aid cuts add to the risk that each of these agencies and projects will individually struggle to fill gaps or work coherently together, or that they will compete with one another to preserve dwindling funds to survive. The priority should be a slimmed down, more effective international system, but also one where the UK is influential and plays to its strengths. This requires investment beyond money – in time, diplomatic influence and in shaping an international institutional system that is changing. The UK is in a good position to work with other donors to advocate for consolidating and simplifying the international system for aid and global public goods – and to take the recent cuts as a moment to do this with a focus on preserving funding for the most urgent and critical needs. The mooted ‘Future of Aid’ summit, which the UK government is considering holding in 2026, would be a welcome moment to galvanize efforts on this, and to build coalitions with developing countries and middle-power donors – such as Australia, Canada, the European states and Japan – with which the UK shares an interest in building a functioning multilateral system in a less American world.
But UK spending cuts and the overall reduction in aid will nonetheless affect the UK’s bilateral relationships with key states in the Global South. For some, direct aid provision is becoming less important already – economies like Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, which have achieved lower-middle- or upper-middle-income status, may well be able to weather some of the global aid cuts. In fact, some analysts argue, the cuts may put pressure on these and other states to do more to mobilize their own public finances for healthcare and other basic service provision. But, precisely as many of its Global South partners are becoming wealthier, more regionally influential and more significant in geopolitical competition, the UK has all the more reason to prioritize relations with them.
Now is an opportune time for the UK to do so with tools beyond aid – particularly as competitor states such as China consolidate their influence in these regions. Attempts to counter this influence have often been piecemeal, and this might be a good moment for the UK to consider working with European allies to make a combined and refreshed offer to developing countries in light of the impacts of US tariffs, global aid cuts, weakened multilateralism and some aspects of China’s macroeconomic policies. Such an offer should focus on wider tools than aid spending: particularly, expanding preferential trade access for developing countries (ideally, in concert with other G7 allies), restructuring the governance of debt relief, and advancing shared approaches to global challenges. The aim should be to signal that Western engagement remains credible and mutually beneficial, even as traditional aid flows decline.
Nonetheless, the risk remains that the poorest states in the world – most of which are fragile or conflict-affected – are left behind as a result of cuts and new funding patterns. This is having, and will have, significant human consequences, especially for the provision of basic healthcare, emergency food aid and humanitarian relief. It could also have long-term effects on regional and global security if conflicts are neglected. The UK government should consider ways to maintain expertise and focus on these states even in the absence of higher funding, including via the current restructuring process at the FCDO.
Furthermore, the UK should review where additional funding could be allocated to these states in accordance with the wider themes of conflict prevention, conflict response and peacebuilding. Growing security threats have made higher defence spending unavoidable, marking a shift from the 2000s and 2010s when UK aid spending was at its peak. The new NATO target for defence spending to hit 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 is divided into two components: 3.5 per cent of GDP on ‘hard’ defence, and 1.5 per cent on wider security and resilience spending. As argued in this paper, security – particularly the ability to manage the risk of regional conflicts spilling over and affecting global stability – is about more than just military spending.
There is an obvious risk that the 1.5 per cent component of the target will be diluted by multiple claims that any cherished priority fits the bill of ‘security and resilience’ spending. But in a world in which global aid spending is set to decline by over $60 billion in 2023–26, and in which fragile states are likely to become areas of worsening poverty and conflict, there is still a case for ringfencing some spending for conflict prevention and stabilization. This could include for channels such as the UK Integrated Security Fund, a cross-government fund established in 2023 to address and prevent conflict and volatility using aid funding, and to ensure the UK government retains networks, influence and expertise in priority states. Additionally, it is imperative that new defence spending contributes effectively to UK security; this requires effective scrutiny of that spending, including better and more consistent accountability to parliament, and possibly a stronger role for independent monitoring, as indeed is already the case for UK aid spending.
Finally, and as argued throughout this paper, it is in the UK’s national interest to deepen strategic engagement with countries across the Global South. Developing economies are increasingly important for global governance, economic growth and technological development: the world’s economic centre of gravity has shifted steadily eastward over recent decades – a trend that is expected to continue well into the rest of this century. Many emerging powers and developing states are also adopting strategies of multi- or non-alignment, contributing to a more competitive geopolitical environment but also underscoring the need to build mutually beneficial, and sometimes transactional, partnerships. In this context, the UK cannot manage its security and geopolitical influence through a foreign policy focused solely on major powers. Instead, the UK will need to cultivate credible and strategic relationships with a broad range of developing countries that are reshaping the global order.
For the UK, there are limits to what it can do on its own to address wider risks from the global aid cuts, but there are options for working with other partners to mitigate these risks. These options are summarized below:
Work with like-minded European allies, especially the EU, France and Germany, to make a clearer offer of partnership that goes beyond aid – including closer trade, institutional and research ties – to states in the Global South.
- The British government should capitalize on its ongoing UK–EU reset. A joint statement from the May 2025 UK–EU summit acknowledged the opportunity for the UK and EU to work more closely on development and humanitarian efforts. The EU, France, Germany and other key European donors, such as Norway and Switzerland, are particularly important given their historic provision of ODA and technical expertise. The UK should consider establishing a series of track 1.5 meetings with EU officials with the aim of building on mutual interests with developing countries in ensuring stability, promoting predictable economic and trade governance, and developing shared responses to global challenges. This could be patterned after similar dialogues taking place on economic security, defence and resilience.
- UK cooperation with Europe could also focus on strengthening preferential trade access for developing countries – particularly as a counter to US tariffs, and with other non-aid support including targeted investments and collaborative research partnerships. Cooperation could build on mechanisms such as the UK’s Developing Countries Trading Scheme, and on partnerships through the UK’s Science and Innovation Network, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and Horizon Europe.
- Cooperation should also prioritize reforming governance of debt restructuring and debt relief, and should look to make international financial institutions more responsive to Global South priorities. These goals are consistent with existing UK policy positions, but require sustained political momentum and coordination with European partners to be credible – particularly on engagement with private creditors.
Work with middle powers to prioritize goals within the multilateral system and address ‘aid fragmentation’. The UK, like-minded middle powers and several emerging powers have a mutual interest in upholding a functioning international system, and have stronger economic and political means to do so when acting together.
- The UK could work with a coalition of like-minded donors (e.g. Australia, Canada, the EU and Japan) to respond to the immediate ODA cuts and address ‘aid fragmentation’ at the international level – i.e. the proliferation of duplicative agencies and siloed funding flows. The UK and allied donors maintain influence in the multilateral system, particularly humanitarian and development agencies, and this can be leveraged to enact reform. Policies are needed to rationalize multilateral programmes, minimize duplication and prioritize the most critical global public goods – particularly in health and humanitarian response.
- Work in the above areas could be pursued through the proposed 2026 ‘Future of Aid’ summit – positioning it as a forum to clarify shared objectives and provide strategic direction to global development – and continued via more established forums including the G20. Developing countries and representatives of locally led organizations in those countries should have a leading voice in such an initiative, given that they will be most immediately affected by its consequences and will likely play a central role in future partnerships.
- The UK government should engage middle powers to mitigate the destabilizing effects of erratic US foreign policy and sustain the delivery of global public goods such as health security. The UK should deepen structured policy dialogue with Australia, Canada, the Gulf states, India and Japan to identify where US withdrawal from the international system has created the most acute shortfalls in delivery of global public goods. Such discussions could focus on coordinating mitigation measures, whether through joint funding or multilateral institutions. Forums like the G20 could be valuable platforms for this. Equally, a useful template could be the success of ad hoc coalitions formed to address specific issues, where traditional multilateral formats have stalled; these successes have included Unitaid and the High Ambition Coalition, which were backed by Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the UK to fund HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria responses via non-ODA channels.
- The UK and selected allies should champion reforms to improve predictability, transparency and accountability in multilateral funding. This could include reducing the use of intermediaries and supporting locally led initiatives, as well as setting clearer, more predictable benchmarks for multi-year funding. Work could be patterned on previous exercises such as the DFID Multilateral Aid Reviews (2011 and 2015), which systematically assessed the effectiveness of institutions and prioritized funding to them accordingly. This aligns with statements by the UK’s minister for international development, Baroness Chapman, on strengthening multilateral institutions while investing in locally led responses.
Preserve expertise, resources and focus in government on fragile and conflict-affected countries.
- The UK should reinforce and preserve specialist expertise within the FCDO on conflict, mediation, peacebuilding, health security and post-conflict recovery, so that the UK can maintain capacity in these areas. Ongoing restructuring at the FCDO risks further eroding specialist capacity and expertise that are essential for recognizing and addressing the drivers of instability in priority regions (and for understanding and articulating their relevance to UK national security).
- Managing relations with major powers, particularly the US, the EU and China, is understandably absorbing significant government attention, spread across the FCDO but also the Cabinet Office and No. 10. The government should preserve a focus in the FCDO on long-term engagement with the Global South and conflict-affected states. This would ensure the UK can consistently build relations with countries that will become more powerful in future. It would also enable the FCDO to sustain long-term understanding and networks in fragile settings, mitigate against the risk of neglect, and build on ambitions set since the DFID/FCO merger in terms of integrating foreign and development policy.
- A central government assessment is needed of the security impacts of global and UK aid cuts. Such an exercise could potentially be led by national security teams in the Cabinet Office, with input from the FCDO and other departments. Additional external research tracking and assessing the implications of the cuts as highlighted in this paper, including for illicit finance, conflict risks, global public goods and geopolitical relations, would also be welcome.
- The UK government should explore whether elements of its resilience-focused defence spending should be allocated to conflict prevention, peacebuilding and conflict stabilization programmes, where there are justifiable links to the national security purposes of that spending. As mentioned, work in this area could draw on mechanisms like the Integrated Security Fund.
Tell a clearer public story about how foreign aid supports UK interests and security. Ensure greater transparency and accountability in both aid and defence spending.
- The UK government should strengthen communication on how aid spending and multilateral cooperation contribute to global stability, including a focus on outcomes, alignment with national security objectives, and the balance between bilateral and multilateral spending. UK public opinion can be malleable on aid and development, but some recent polling indicates that the public is more supportive of aid when the linkages to national security and public health are clearly explained. Currently, public communications about foreign aid are undermined by the lack of clarity and focus in UK development spending, including the problem that a very high share of the aid budget is spent on housing asylum-seekers.
- Public communications should emphasize the alignment of aid spending with national defence and security objectives. Messaging should avoid presenting aid and defence/security as competing priorities.
- The government should subject rising defence budgets to effective and independent scrutiny. This will require clearer accountability to parliament, and could also involve drawing on the model set by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact to monitor spending and ensure funds are spent effectively.
