DfID faces accusations of pushing private firms over public services

The UK’s overseas aid ministry has been accused of using funds to establish private healthcare and education in Africa and Asia, bringing benefits to British and American companies.

Global Justice Now, an NGO whose declared aim is a fairer world, points out in a report that Sir Michael Barber, a former Blair government adviser, is the ministry’s chief education representative in Pakistan, and also chief educational adviser at Pearson, a company that receives government money to run private school programmes.

Sir Michael’s dual role, highlighted as a clash of responsibilities, is one of several cases listed in the report as misuses of public money.

A £355m ($535m, €494m) project initiated by the ministry – the Department for International Development (DfID) – is said to involve the private sector in education in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Nepal.

In Tanzania a DfID-funded operation is another Pearson project, says the report.

The DfID has teamed up with Coca-Cola, which claims it will promote “the economic empowerment of five million female entrepreneurs across the global Coca-Cola value chain”.

In Kenya an education project is listed as managed by the pro-privatisation consultancy Adam Smith International, aiming to enrol 50,000 children in private schools.

Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, protested: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK.

“So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health and education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality and endangers access.

“Aid is being used as a tool to convince, cajole and compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help big corporations like Pearson, but which detract from the real need to promote publicly funded services that are universally accessible.
“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID.

“This is just one example of how the UK’s aid agenda seems to be driven by corporate interests rather than by trying to meet the needs and aspirations of the majority of people in the world.”

Supporters of the protest, which has been put to the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, include the National Union of Teachers and ActionAid, the anti-poverty, pro-education NGO.

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