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Keeping our promises on the MDGs: DFID's progress so far

The following quick facts and figures provide an account of the UK's progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. They show our progress as of June 2007, at the mid-point between 2000 and 2015.

Poverty

  • DFID estimates that its aid lifts 3 million people permanently out of poverty every year.

Education

  • The UK has committed £8.5 billion towards education to 2015, with £1 billion a year from 2010 onwards, including £150 million to the Fast Track Initiative.
  • In Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya, abolishing primary school user fees has helped more than one million extra children in each country to enrol in primary school.
  • In Afghanistan, 5.5 million children are now back in school, which is more than the entire population of Scotland, and 100,000 new teachers are in place.
  • In Tanzania, half a billion dollars of debt relief has contributed to 31,000 new classrooms, 18,000 new teachers and 1,000 new schools.

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HIV, AIDS, malaria & other diseases

  • Every second, 15 UK funded condoms are used somewhere in the developing world (54,000 every hour). DFID has funded more than 1 billion condoms since 2001.
  • In Zambia, DFID support, through debt relief, has led to free healthcare for 5 million rural people.
  • Two million people are now on anti-retroviral treatment, which helps to slow the progression of HIV to AIDS.
  • Since 2002, the UK has delivered more than 4.8 million mosquito nets to Malawi, which now protect more than 60% of under-five year olds in some districts, up from 8% in 2000.
  • In Bangladesh, improved immunisation, with support from DFID, has helped save the lives of 2 million children in the last two decades.

Environment, Water & Sanitation

  • Funding worth £800m for the International Environmental Transformation Fund will help countries respond to climate change.
  • DFID has helped bring clean water to almost 2 million more people in India; doubled the clean water supply to poor homes in Basra, Iraq (to 100,000); and brought drinking water to an extra 170,000 people and sanitation to an extra 225,000 people in Pakistan.

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Aid, Trade, Growth & Global Partnership

  • The UK's official development assistance (ODA) has trebled since 1997, from £2.1 billion to £6.85 billion a year in 2006.
  • The UK is the world’s second largest bilateral donor government.
  • The UK led the negotiations at Gleneagles in 2005 for a new deal to deliver an extra $50 billion in aid, $1 billion a year in debt cancellation, and HIV and AIDS treatment for all who need it by 2010.
  • 21 developing countries have had all of their debt ($38 billion) wiped out.
  • Spending on health and education has nearly trebled since 1999 - from $5.9 billion to $16.5 billion - in the 28 countries that have benefited from debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.

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Other ways that DFID is helping to fight global poverty:

Humanitarian aid

  • UK gave £550 million in 2005/06.
  • UK aid is working in more than 20 countries around the world, meeting humanitarian needs.
  • In Sudan, UK aid has provided food, water, shelter and education to over 5.5 million people.
  • The UK has been instrumental in establishing the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), which has helped 8 million people in Kenya, the Horn of Africa, Sudan and Lebanon.

Conflict

  • DFID has supported peacekeeping activities in Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Darfur.
  • DFID has returned child soldiers to childhood in the Democratic Republic of Congo and promoted peace there and in Angola, Sudan and Rwanda.

Governance and corruption

  • DFID supported the first democratic elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for 40 years.
  • The UK Government has led the international fight against corruption. A new unit is in place dedicated to this and the Metropolitan Police have already seized £35 million of fraudulently obtained assets.
  • In 2002, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative was launched; the Medicines Transparency Alliance in April 2007; and the Construction Sector Transparency Initiative in June 2007. All will tackle corruption, increase transparency and aim to make these industries more beneficial to poor countries.

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Last updated: 01 August 2007