The United Kingdom (UK) has reduced by over half the amount of aid which it provides to Malawi.
UK gives Malawi £52 million (about K57 billion) per annum but the amount has now been cut to £25 million (about K28 billion) per annum, according to Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Annual Report.
In July, the UK Government led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson got Parliament’s approval to cut foreign aid budget from 0.7 percent of national income to 0.5 percent. The amount reduced this year was K4 billion.
The K29 billion cut for Malawi is expected to affect various UK funded programs in the country.
The Ministry of Finance has since said Malawi will now adjust its programming.
“This will be done by either by stopping those programmes altogether or by finding other partners to support those programmes,” said Ministry of Finance spokesperson Williams Banda.
On social media, Malawians have argued that the reduction in aid could help end Malawi’s dependency on foreign aid.
“We need zero Aid …most of the money does us more harm than good. ..politicians and other gurus divert it anyway,” commented Benjamin Mwambazi Chipeta on a post by social commentator Onjezani Kenani.
Another commenter wrote: “It’s high time we upped the ante on domestic resource mobilization, reduce losses through pilferage, tackle inefficiencies, promote value for money in procurement, curb illicit financial outflows and learn how to better prioritize our investments. We lost over K17bn in just one “gate”. If all the “gates” were sealed we could free up a lot of resources for development.”
