The UK’s development strategy and the new economic and geopolitical challenges

The Minister for Development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell MP, will join us to discuss how to address these challenges as well as seize new opportunities. The UK launched an international development White Paper in November 2023, setting out seven areas for action across a broad range of development themes and policy areas. The White Paper recognises the increasingly contested world we face, with a more complicated and fractured geopolitical environment. As the UK moves into implementing this vision, it will need to navigate this. The Minister for Development and Africa, Andrew Mitchell MP, will join us to discuss how to address these challenges as well as seize new opportunities. The panel will consider how to mobilise additional resources for genuine impact when fiscal and political conditions in the UK and traditional donor partners are unfavourable; how to work with new and emerging donors and balance the imperative for more funds against the UK’s commitment to its values; how to manoeuvre in the context of the wide choices of finance available to recipient countries, often with different terms and conditions; and how to balance a focus on climate mitigation, primarily in middle income countries, with finance to tackle extreme poverty and climate adaptation, primarily in the least developed countries. Panel: Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP, Minister for Development and Africa Professor Stefan Dercon, Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance Dr Emily Jones, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government Professor Ricardo Soares de Oliveira (Chair), Co-Director, Oxford Martin Programme on African Governance