Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to his Department's publication entitled UK pledges support for over a million people in East Africa, published on 24 May 2023, what recent steps he has taken to ensure humanitarian support is being delivered through local actors.

Local Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) play an important role in delivering UK funded humanitarian support in East Africa and beyond. We work and consult closely with local NGOs to aid their planning, delivery and ability to access funding.

In Ethiopia in 2022 the UK provided £7.6 million to the UN's Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund (EHF) which supported a range of international and national NGOs. Similarly, the UK-funded 'Building Resilient Communities in Somalia' programme has supported a number of local NGOs alongside international civil society organisations. More broadly, the UK funds a number of Country based Pooled Funds (CBPF) and in 2022, nearly 22 percent of funding allocated by CBPFs went directly to national NGOs.