How the government should spend the foreign aid budget

By Alex Singleton | 19 June 2005

When Britain's Labour party came to office in 1997, it was a huge break from the party's past. Instead of trying to do everything, New Labour chose what one might call the People's Priorities. It realized it could not intervene everywhere, running shipbuilders, car manufacturers, telecoms and the like. It could not splurge money on everything. It chose instead to focus on health and education.

It seems to me that the UK's Department for International Development could do with this type of New Labour-style prioritizing. At the moment, DFID spends its budget on absolutely everything, from promoting women's participation to African land reform to the creation of church networks to helping disabled people to adult education to discouraging drug use. For every bit of spending by DFID, there are people who can make a case why that spending should occur. But that is to ignore the opportunity cost of the spending. Discouraging drug use in developing countries has considerable merit... until you realize that you could save more lives by spending the money on fighting malaria.

After each election, the Department for International Development should pick a small number of specific priorities, perhaps three, and focus on those exclusively for the next five years. My suggestions would be: clean drinking water, HIV/AIDS, and malaria. If DFID wanted to change its priorities mid-term, it would need to get an Act of Parliament to let it.

For further reading on how governments can prioritize their spending on international issues, the Copenhagen Consensus provides a useful guide.