Updated April 1, 2026 at 3:36 PM CDT
When the Trump administration made massive cuts to U.S. foreign aid last year, Dr. Manenji Mangundu, director of Oxfam in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thought other countries would step in to fill the funding shortfalls.
Specifically, he hoped that the United Kingdom, one of the largest global donors with a long history of development work, would increase its spending.
But that hasn't happened.
Instead, the U.K. announced severe cuts to its own global aid spending by about 40% in February 2025. Then, in a statement to Parliament on March 19, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper provided more details, saying the U.K. had taken the "hugely difficult decision" to reduce its development budget in order to fund its defense spending.
The announcement comes at a time when aid groups like Oxfam are still grappling with the effects of the U.S. aid cuts. Mangundu says the consequences of the U.K. cuts will be catastrophic.
"We have no hope to reach the people who need our help," Mangundu says.
Last year, the U.K. spent over the equivalent of about $100 million (80 million pounds) on aid to the DRC, supporting protection for survivors of sexual violence and providing water and food to people. Mangundu says everything from environmental conservation to health care will be affected.
"People will not have access to medicine. People will not have access to nurses and doctors, because the U.K. government was funding all these programs," Mangundu says, adding that education programs would also be cut, leaving around 4.5 million children at risk of losing access to schools.
Since the announcement, Mangundu has heard from health officials and doctors all over the country. In addition to losing resources to treat everyday health problems, they also worry about ongoing disease outbreaks.
"We have actually cholera on the rise. Mpox is on the rise, and then we have also the cases to do with Ebola," he says.
DRC is one of many countries across Africa and the Middle East that are facing drastic cuts from the U.K. In fact, 56% of the U.K.'s aid to countries in Africa will be slashed, leaving some of the world's poorest countries at risk of further poverty and disease.
"Sierra Leone and Malawi are likely to have no or almost no U.K. support on health, even though they are one of the poorest countries in the world and have high maternal mortality," says Pete Baker, deputy director of the Global Health Policy Program at the Center for Global Development.
Countries with high rates of child malnutrition like Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia are also facing cuts to funding.
Flora Alexander, the Executive Director of the International Rescue Committee in the U.K., says the tradeoffs will have real effects. "These cuts will no doubt have a devastating impact on issues like child malnutrition and child health in Somalia, where food insecurity is always a risk," she says.
The problem is compounded by the disruption to food and fertilizer markets because of the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to Alexander.
"It feels incredibly shortsighted to make such an enormous cut to Africa," she says. "There's going to be a massive risk of increased hunger."
"Lives will be lost," Baker says.
The U.K.'s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which oversees aid efforts, told NPR in a statement that while national security is the government's first duty, "we remain absolutely committed to tackling the global challenges of hunger, disease, insecurity and conflict, but we have been clear we must modernise our approach to development to reflect the changing global context."
Cooper said in her statement in March that the U.K. will use what's left of its aid budget to prioritize "support for countries and communities facing the worst humanitarian need – those affected by war and crises." Those countries are Ukraine, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Sudan.
Baker says these are places that carry geopolitical interest for the U.K.
"You get an idea that this is a government using the aid budget that doesn't really believe in the development objectives. It's using it for tactical reasons, strategic reasons for the country."
It's a departure for a country that used to be a global champion for aid and development, Baker says, adding that the U.K. was one of the only major countries that diverted a large portion of its budget toward aid and was known for developing worldwide institutions like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance and The Global Fund, which works to tackle diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis .
"It was recognized for doing aid well and intelligently," Baker says.
A wider geopolitical shift has made these cuts acceptable for the U.K. government, he says. That shift was brought on by the Trump administration's overhaul of U.S. foreign aid, according to Alexander.
"The world's biggest aid donor enormously slashing its aid budget is, of course, setting a kind of tone and trend that enables what some people have described as a race to the bottom," Alexander says.
"You wouldn't have expected the progressive political party in the U.K. - the Labour government - to cut the aid budget by 40%, but it does feel that we are in a kind of very new era in terms of the focus on defense spending."
She fears more countries will follow suit to stop using taxpayer funds to aid in low income countries.
Mangundu with Oxfam says he's really surprised about the cuts to the DRC, because of how important its natural resources are to the U.S. and the U.K.
"Every country is interested in going to the DRC for critical minerals to mine," he says. The U.S. and the U.K. are seeking access to minerals like copper, cobalt, lithium, diamond and others. But he says those minerals should be processed in the DRC, which would create jobs for the local population. Instead, they are exported to other countries.
"So how do you expect the population of DRC to benefit?" Mangundu says.
The humanitarian and health funds, he says, at least provided people with some solace that they would be supported.
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