Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how much UK aid has been spent via the European Development Fund (EDF) in Africa in each of the past ten years; how much will be spent via the EDF in the next financial year; whether the spending priorities for the EDF will be reassessed; who will determine any such future priorities; and on what basis.

The European Development Fund’s (EDF) bilateral country allocations to Sub-Saharan Africa have varied over time, but historically have been at least 80% per year, with additional EDF funding to Africa going through regional components, trust funds and multilateral partners. There are no plans to reassess the EDF spending for 2020 as the instrument comes to an end in December 2020. Further information on the EDF and allocations of funding can be found at: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS-IDA-542140-European-Development-Fund-FINAL.pdf

Between the financial years 2009/10 and 2019/20 the UK contributed £4.1bn to the EDF. We estimate that at least £3.3bn has been used for allocations to Sub-Saharan Africa at country and regional levels. Full details of our annual contributions to the EDF can be found at: https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-200236

The Withdrawal Agreement sets out that the UK will honour commitments made to the EU budget during the period of our membership up to December 2020. The UK will fund all programmes approved during the current EU Multiannual Financial Framework (2014-2020), which includes obligations to the current, and previous, European Development Funds. For financial year 2020/21, we estimate that at least £516m of DFID’s EDF payments will be spent in Sub-Saharan Africa, though fluctuations may result from the rate of EDF programme delivery and exchange rate fluctuations over the coming year.