Policy paper

BEIS official development assistance (ODA): what we are doing

Updated 26 September 2019

This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government

1. Overview

The UK’s official development assistance (ODA) aims to create a safer and more prosperous world by tackling the global challenges of our time – poverty and disease, mass migration, insecurity, conflict and climate change – all of which are in our national interests. The aid budget also helps extend the UK’s global influence. In 2013, the UK became the only G20 country to achieve the UN target of spending 0.7% of Gross National Income as ODA and has consistently met this target for each subsequent year to date.

The UK Aid Strategy 2015 outlines the government’s approach to aid spending. The strategy aligns the government’s global efforts to further the sustainable development and welfare of developing countries while placing international development at the heart of our national security and foreign policy.

2. Detail

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) uses its overseas aid budget to support and deliver the 4 strategic objectives of the government’s aid strategy:

1. strengthening global peace, security and governance
2. strengthening resilience and response to crises
3. promoting global prosperity
4. tackling extreme poverty and helping the world’s most vulnerable

BEIS uses its ODA budget in 2 main ways, on:

• research and innovation
• tackling climate change

BEIS ODA is distributed under these themes by allocation to the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), the Newton Fund, and International Climate Finance (ICF), which are ring-fenced research and innovation (GCRF and Newton) and climate change (ICF) spend. BEIS ODA spending across the three funds is delivered through a mixture of strategies including country specific approaches and thematic approaches. Some of BEIS ODA is delivered via direct procurement, following the processes set out within the BEIS Procurement Policy, a significant proportion is provided as grants to delivery partners or multilateral funds, which follow their own procurement processes (subject to BEIS due diligence) for any downstream contracts.

For further information:

• BEIS Allocation of ODA (PDF, 136.5 KB)
• BEIS ODA Country & Sector Strategies (PDF, 86 KB)
• BEIS ODA Procurement Policy (PDF, 111.9 KB)

BEIS ODA spending on research and innovation aims to reduce poverty by generating and putting into use knowledge and technology to address development challenges and advance development for the poorest people and countries. The aid strategy recognises that the UK’s world leading research and innovation system has a critical role to play in tackling global challenges which most significantly impact upon developing countries. BEIS research and innovation ODA supports cutting-edge research to address the problems faced by developing countries and works to build science and innovation capacity in partner countries. The BEIS Research and Innovation Statement of Intent (PDF, 224KB, 7 pages) sets out what BEIS aims to achieve through its ODA research and innovation funding and how we will achieve it.

Climate Change is one of the biggest threats to our national and economic security and we need to act now in order to avoid more detrimental and costly effects in the future. ODA spending on climate change by BEIS in partnership with DFID and Defra via the International Climate Finance is helping the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people to build resilience and cope with the increased risk of floods and droughts caused by climate change. It is also promoting sustainable economic development, improving healthcare and education as well as enabling businesses to grow, creating jobs and improving incomes for the poorest communities.

3. Core policy interventions

BEIS has 3 core policy interventions to deliver on the objectives of the UK Aid Strategy:

3.1 Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)

The primary aim of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) is to use the UK’s research and innovation strengths to identify solutions to global challenges. The GCRF, launched in 2016, will invest £1.5 billion between 2016 and 2021 on collaborative research and innovation through UK universities and research organisations, delivered by the Research Councils, the UK Academies, funding bodies and UK Space Agency.

3.2 Newton Fund

The primary focus of the Newton Fund is on building partnerships with specific countries identified as emerging science economies to support their research and innovation capacity to solve development challenges. The Newton Fund has a total budgeted UK investment of £735 million. For the spending review period of 2016 to 2021, the UK budget committed is £585 million, with partner countries providing matched resources.

3.3 International Climate Finance (ICF)

The International Climate Finance (ICF) is the UK government’s commitment to developing countries to help them address the challenges presented by climate change and benefit from the opportunities. Delivered in partnership with DFID and Defra, the ICF invests in a broad range of activities across the globe to support sustainable economic growth, build resilience to the impacts of climate change and help sustainably manage natural resources such as forests. The UK government will provide £5.8 billion from the existing ODA budget to the International Climate Finance between April 2016 and March 2021, including at least £1.76 billion in 2020. This is in addition to the support for the current phase of the ICF which is £3.86 billion between April 2011 and March 2016.

4. Transparency and International Aid Transparency Initiative Standards

BEIS invests in transparency because it helps build trust, improves accountability, guides better decision making and helps to tackle corruption. Open and accessible information can support citizens to understand the development decisions that affect them and help build the knowledge they need to hold their governments and development actors to account. It also provides development organisations with access to information on programmes being run by other organisations.

BEIS is proud to be working towards the commitment given in the UK’s Aid Strategy (UK Aid: Tackling Global Challenges in the National Interest - November 2015). The Strategy stated that “The government will aim for the first time, for all UK government departments to be ranked as ‘Good’ or ‘Very Good’ in the International Aid Transparency Index, within the next 5 years.

BEIS publishes ODA data in an open, accessible format, using the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) open standard, in XML format. BEIS organisation and activity datasets can be found on the BEIS IATI publisher page. BEIS segments data by both recipient country and thematic area based on the strategy of the overarching funding.

Data is presented in a more visual form on the Development Tracker. D-portal gives a view of all IATI data by recipient country, sector or publisher.

BEIS publish the following information on a monthly basis:

• details on international development projects including budgets and financial transactions
• information on sectors, recipient countries and delivery partners.
• all core project documentation, this includes, where applicable, business cases, annual reviews, completion reports, and evaluations.

A small number of exclusions will apply to sensitive information, based on the key principles of the UK’s Freedom of Information Act.

5. Further information

• UK aid strategy
• Sustainable Development Goals
• UK Official Development Assistance
• OECD Official Development Assistance guidance