Former international development minister Rory Stewart has acknowledged that a significant amount of the foreign assistance given out by the UK government is “wasteful and condescending.”
Former candidate for the Tory leadership who quit the party in 2019, he claimed that most of his time at the Department for International Development (Dfid) was devoted to the incorrect method of aiding developing countries.
He said that giving communities goods rather than cash is useless.
According to former international development minister Rory Stewart (pictured), a significant amount of the UK government’s foreign assistance is “wasteful and condescending.”
According to Mr. Stewart, who is shown, “traditionally what has occurred is we have showed up and determined what’s best for that town,” “a lot” of what he performed in his ministerial job was a “waste of time.”
The most courteous and effective method to aid people is to give them money and let them pick what their own priorities are, according to the statement, “We’ve flown wheat over from the US or Europe, we’ve purchased them goats or bicycles.”
In hindsight, he said, “A lot of what we did was pretty wasteful and paternalist.”
At 2019, Mr. Stewart served for a brief while as the International Development Secretary after spending almost three years in Dfid, which Theresa May eventually merged into the Foreign Office.
Although the UK continues to be one of the G7 group’s most significant foreign assistance givers, the government this year reduced its yearly aid spending from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office stated: “Our new international development strategy contains