FCDO Promises to Halve the Digital Divide. Where Is the Money?
The UK's Digital Development Strategy for 2024-2030 faces uncertainty as funding remains unallocated and the government's development priorities have shifted. Despite the strategy remaining technically active, it is no longer a core focus of the FCDO's current spending agenda.
Why it matters
It raises questions about the efficacy of long-term government policy commitments when funding and political priorities change frequently.
The UK’s Digital Development Strategy 2024 to 2030 is still live on GOV.UK. Four years from its deadline, I cannot find a published pound behind it.
The comfortable reading in our sector is that the strategy survived. Nobody withdrew it. We covered its launch as a real step forward, and in my reading it remains the most specific digital development strategy any bilateral donor has put in writing.
Partner governments built plans around it: the strategy documents UK technical assistance behind Nigeria’s National Broadband Plan and support to Kenya’s telecom regulator on its Universal Service Fund. A strategy that has not been rescinded is, by the usual logic, a strategy still in force.
That logic assumes the money follows the paper. In this case the paper is four years old and the money has been reallocated twice since.
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