United Kingdom’s 2012 budget must stick to aid pledge…and should confirm 0.7% investment in aid to join countries’ leading efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MGDS), says a recent global development report.
The 0.7% figure translates into 1.6p in every pound of government spending.
According to the report, which featured Sierra Leone’s recent healthcare delivery effort (in the above photo of a baby being given a pneumococal vaccine in Kandor village, Bo), was supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to gauge the impact of British aid in developing countries.
Sierra Leone remains heavily dependent on donors’ aid which currently accounts for 19% of the country’s Gross National Income (GNI) and an even higher percentage of the national budget, according to the British.
Thus, the country is among the world’s 49 poorest countries that are "… unlikely to meet any of the Millennium Development Goals before 2015," according to a four-year (2011-2015) operational plan report by the British department for overseas development, DfID in Freetown.
It noted that the Government of Sierra Leone knew that they had to both make the most of existing development assistance and also to ensure they develop new, more sustainable sources of income, in particular revenues from minerals (including the potential for hydrocarbons) and agriculture.
DfID has seven priority areas: health; water and sanitation; education; governance and security; wealth creation; poverty, hunger and vulnerability; and humanitarian assistance.
In January 2010 the United Nations development agency, UNDP warned that the country was beyond the mid-point between adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the target date of 2015, adding that "despite progress towards achievement of some of the targets, numerous goals and targets are likely to be missed unless additional, strengthened or corrective action is taken urgently."
In May 2010, the International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, commissioned the Bilateral Aid Review (BAR) to take a comprehensive and ambitious look at the countries in which DfID works. In parallel, through the Multilateral Aid Review (MAR), DfID assessed how effective international organisations it funds are at tackling poverty.
On the 1st March 2011, the key outcomes of the reviews were announced, including the results that UK aid will deliver for the world's poorest people over the next four years.
