“I’m a nomad, I’m not wanted anywhere”. These were heart-breaking words from a 15-year old Burundian girl who I met in the Nduta refugee camp in the far west of Tanzania. The young girl and her sister are unaccompanied minors, their parents presumed dead having disappeared when the family last tried to return home from a previous stay in a refugee camp. I have travelled throughout the African continent for business over many years, but never seen this side before. This was my first visit to a refugee camp and you couldn’t fail to be moved by the plight of the people trapped in these conditions. They really are trapped, as refugees they are not officially allowed to leave the camp, nor permitted to work. It is a kind of holding place, where lives are on hold for many years.
The camps I visited are supported by the international aid community, including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The work done by aid agencies is essential to protect the most vulnerable people from attack, and to ensure young people can continue their education to develop skills which will enable them to earn a living later in life. Perhaps the real skill of the aid workers is providing hope in what must often feel like a hopeless situation.
Tanzania is a relatively poor country and 25 million Tanzanians still live on less than $2 a day, but it hosts around 400,000 refugees. International aid has been vital to providing the funds to host such large numbers of refugees and the UK has been the second largest humanitarian donor to Tanzania in recent years. We are fortunate that our country is not neighbour to warzones from which people are fleeing, so I am proud that we help those countries that are to share some of the burden.
This is why it is important, alongside dealing with the humanitarian crisis, that UK Aid also supports development that benefits the host population, many of whom live below the international poverty line in Tanzania’s case. The focus of DFID’s work in Tanzania has been to support access to education and our funding has enabled nearly 700,000 children to get access to decent schooling that focusses on results. UK Aid has also ensured there is access to clean water and sanitation as well as improving nutrition and access to modern family planning services.
I have always been an instinctive supporter of international aid to help the world’s most vulnerable people during their time of need, but as a businesswoman, I also recognise it can be a strategic driver to reduce corruption whilst creating economic opportunities for individuals and businesses. Now as an MP and Co-Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, I’m learning more about how the UK is leading global efforts to end extreme poverty and tackle the big global challenges of our time. Not just helping poor countries but ensuring that the world meets the targets it set for itself in 2015, achieving sustainable and equitable growth.
The size of the challenge in countries like Tanzania should not be underestimated; with mass migration just one factor in a country that is struggling to develop economically and provide employment for its own population. To achieve this, UK Aid is helping over 750,000 farmers get their produce to market and is increasing the capacity of Dar es Salaam Port by two thirds. Economic improvement is a key component to ensure that development is sustainable, as is building trusted institutions. We should not pretend that this is a zero-sum game for us – a stable and prosperous Tanzania benefits the UK as a trading nation.
The UK also helps Tanzania fight organised crime, as it is a major transit point for heroin being transported from West Africa to Europe. The anti-smuggling scheme is vital for the development of the nation, but this too helps protect Europe and the UK, hampering the efforts of drugs cartels.
Of course, overseas aid is not without its critics, and rightly so. As in many areas of Government spending, there are examples of things going wrong, and money wasted or misdirected. Yet, despite what you read in the papers, the UK is one of the most widely respected aid donors in the world, and UK Aid is the most heavily scrutinised part of the Government’s budget, even in the often unpredictable environments in which programmes operate.
The British people are generous, and time and time again show they will not turn their back on those in need. However, they rightly want to ensure their money is spent effectively. Misspent aid ultimately harms the world’s poorest the most, and continued scrutiny of aid is vital. Value for money for the British taxpayer is also value for money for the world’s poorest people, so prudence is in everyone’s interest. Having seen first-hand the positive impact of overseas aid in Tanzania, I am hugely proud that we do what we can to lift the poorest people out of poverty, develop the least developed countries and lead the world by our example.