UK aid to Malawi provided essential healthcare to millions, analysis finds

UK aid to Malawi provided essential healthcare to more than three million people and prevented more than two million unintended pregnancies over 15 years, according to a new analysis of government reports that has been shared exclusively with The Independent.

The £1.6 billion of UK support to the country since 2009 also plausibly prevented 525,000 unsafe abortions and averted thousands of maternal and child deaths, the analysis by the Center for Global Development (CGD) found.

The findings come at a time when the UK is in the process of dramatically scaling back aid to African countries that include Malawi, where aid is set to fall from £50m in 2024-25 to just £5m by 2028-29.

Other CGD findings include that humanitarian programmes in the country - which is one of the world’s poorest - reached more than 3.5 million people, while more than 400,000 children gained access to education.

Ian Mitchell, co-director of the Europe programme and senior fellow at CGD, said the review showed what long-term British aid support was able to achieve.

“Our review of Malawi shows what UK aid can achieve in one of the world’s poorest countries, saving thousands of lives and benefiting millions of people,” he told The Independent.

“Even within the reduced budget, the government should reprioritise some of the poor and under-supported countries in Africa.”

Analysis of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) accounts reveals that, going forward, the UK is set to provide 26-times (£130m) more aid to three UK overseas territories than it is to Malawi.

The CGD analysis also found that UK-backed programmes had also improved access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene, helped hundreds of thousands of people adapt to climate change and improved access to public services and justice.

However, CGD also found that UK aid has not transformed Malawi’s economy, with the country continuing to face weak investment, fiscal constraints and governance problems, even if life expectancy has increased by around 20 years since 2000.

CGD’s analysis comes as new polling from the Rockefeller Foundation suggests that there is growing public support for the idea that governments should work to address global challenges.

Polling across 35,000 people in 34 countries finds that some 57 per cent believe that their country should cooperate to solve global challenges even when doing so requires compromising some national interests, up from 55 per cent in 2025.

Nearly seven in ten people (69 per cent) say the world has gotten worse over the past year, while global support for multilateral institutions like the UN, World Bank, and World Health Organisation has also grown.

“The world is living through a period of extraordinary disruption, and this poll makes clear that people in 34 countries are starting to feel it, often for the worse,” said Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of The Rockefeller Foundation.

“But they are not asking their leaders to turn inward. They want countries to work together to prevent conflict, solve problems that cross borders, and deliver results people can see in their own lives.”

The FCDO has been approached for comment.