UK pledges over $190m in aid to East Africa

UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab pledged millions in aid to various projects in East Africa during a three-day tour of Kenya, Sudan and Ethiopia in late January, writes Tom Collins from Nairobi.

Raab met Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta on 20 January and committed almost $73m to supporting his initiative to provide 100,000 affordable homes. He also announced a further $65m to support climate change mitigation strategies in Kenya.

“We have a strong partnership with the UK… and our meeting has sought to reflect on these areas of cooperation,” said Kenya’s foreign affairs cabinet secretary Raychelle Omamo.

Raab’s visit to Khartoum on 21 January was the first to Sudan by a British foreign secretary in over a decade. It demonstrates the UK’s support for Sudan’s transition to democracy after the ouster of Islamist autocrat Omar alBashir in 2019, the embassy said. Raab pledged almost $55m to Sudan to provide 1.6m people with “direct financial support”.

Raab met with Sudan’s prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, and the chairman of the ruling council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The meetings add further weight to the prime minister’s drive to bring Sudan “out from the cold” by re-engaging with multilateral institutions and rebuilding bilateral ties.

During a visit earlier in January, outgoing US treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin signed a memorandum of understanding with Sudan committing Washington to a lending deal that will help the country repay outstanding debt to the World Bank and secure a debt relief programme.

In the final leg of his tour, Raab visited a World Food Programme warehouse in Ethiopia’s northern city of Gondar which is responsible for distributing humanitarian aid such as food and sanitation supplies to those displaced by the Tigray crisis.

Raab’s aid pledges to Africa come after Britain slashed its foreign aid spending commitment to 0.5% of gross domestic product from 0.7% last November, sparking uproar from development agencies.

The trip came at a time when the UK is striving to forge stronger ties with key markets in Africa after leaving the EU. In December, the UK and Kenya signed a trade deal that upheld previous EU arrangements such as duty-free access for Kenyan exporters to the UK market.

Raab’s trip coincided with the UK’s Africa Investment Conference on 20 January, where prime minister Boris Johnson said it was his ambition for the UK to be “Africa’s investment partner of choice”.

“This trip has been an invaluable opportunity to strengthen key partnerships in East Africa, boosting trade, security and our ability to tackle global challenges including

Covid-19 and climate change,” said Raab at the end of his visit.