UK aid to Commonwealth countries set to fall to £131m by 2028-29
Britain plans to cut its bilateral aid to Commonwealth countries from £546m in 2024-25 to £131m in 2028-29, according to The Guardian. The figures were reported on 3 November 2026, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, known as Chogm, which was held in Antigua that week and was attended by the king.
Bilateral aid is money passed directly from one government to another, rather than through international bodies. The projected £131m covers countries that previously had such programmes. Of that total, £68m is projected for Nigeria, leaving £63m for all other countries. Nigeria's allocation is scheduled to fall from £137m in the current financial year.
The reductions are steep for several smaller programmes. Aid to Sierra Leone and to Rwanda is projected to drop from nearly £30m in 2024-25 to £5m in 2028-29. Tanzania's allocation is set to fall from £60m in 2025-26 to £5m in 2028-29. Funding for the Caribbean Development Team is expected to drop from more than £98m in 2025-26 to £45m in 2026-27.
The cuts also reach nature conservation. According to The Guardian, at least 26 Commonwealth countries have been prevented from receiving money from the Darwin Initiative, a fund for nature protection worth about £40m a year.
The changes sit within a wider reduction in official development assistance, the formal term for government aid spending. Britain plans to cut its aid budget from 0.5% of gross national income, the total income of the economy, to 0.3% in order to fund increased defence spending, according to the House of Commons Library. The aid watchdog ICAI has estimated that UK aid will fall by about £6.5bn, or 42%, over four years, based on government spending plans, in its 2026 analysis.
According to Reuters, the UK plans to focus its reduced aid budget on countries hit by conflict. Funding for Sudan, Ukraine, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories is protected under that plan.
Politico has reported that UK government officials floated the idea of scaling back the summit, which is presided over by King Charles III. Andy Burnham, the prime minister, was set to join the king at the event, according to Politico. The Guardian has reported that slavery reparations was not on the official agenda of the meeting.
Separately, the UK and Sierra Leone will act as co-conveners, meaning joint hosts, of a strand of talks on adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis at the Cop31 climate summit in Turkey.
