Alice Hopkin was a Special Adviser to a Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary. Her report for the Coalition for Global Prosperity titled ‘Aid That Works for Britain: Lessons from Giorgia Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa’ is published today.
Most people groaned when I told them I was spending my summer working up some new international development policy. They became more interested when I said I was taking inspiration from Giorgia Meloni.
While the UK has spent years arguing about whether foreign aid should be 0.7, 0.5, 0.3 or 0.1 per cent of national income, Italy’s most successful modern leader has been asking a different question: what should Italian development policy actually be for?
Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa explicitly connects development with issues her voters care about: illegal migration, energy security, jobs and economic growth. Britain cannot simply copy it, given our geography and different migration flows, but the method behind it proves how sterile our own debate has become.
It was the Conservatives who reached the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid in 2013, during austerity, when domestic departments were absorbing substantial cuts, sometimes up to 30 per cent. In contrast, the development portfolio was protected and grew by roughly a third in one year. Two years later, the target was locked into law through a Liberal Democrat Private Members’ Bill.
We are one of only three countries with a strict 0.7 per cent commitment on the statute book, alongside Spain and Belgium. None are currently meeting it.
Britain’s political foundations for the rise were remarkably weak. By 2020, two-thirds of Britons wanted the aid budget cut. Among Conservative voters, the figure was a mammoth 93 per cent.
What followed was predictable. The Conservatives eventually reduced spending to 0.5 per cent. Labour announced a further reduction to 0.3 per cent. The Conservatives now propose 0.1 per cent, while Reform would impose a £1 billion cap. We have spent more than a decade fighting over the percentage while paying next to no attention to the strategy. Even if the Conservatives spend only 0.1 per cent on aid, surely we still need to do it differently?
Governments repeatedly said aid was in the “national interest”, but rarely organised it around trade, migration, energy security or geopolitical competition in a way the public could recognise. That is why Meloni’s plan is worth studying. Italy has the smallest development budget in the G7, yet she has taken that modest resource and built a recognisable foreign-policy strategy around it.
The Mattei Plan places development under prime-ministerial leadership and six pillars: energy, agriculture, water, infrastructure, health, and education and training. It combines development spending with investment, guarantees and private finance, and reports annually to Parliament.
Most importantly, Meloni has been explicit about why Italy is doing it.
She argues that Europe should help create the economic conditions in which young Africans can build prosperous lives at home rather than feel compelled to migrate. At the same time, Italian investment strengthens energy security and creates commercial opportunities.
There are legitimate questions about whether the Mattei Plan will reduce migration, and my report does not pretend otherwise. Projects launched in 2024 cannot yet plausibly be credited with changes in Mediterranean flows. But alongside tough enforcement, the Plan addresses the longer-term challenge of a young, under-employed African population.
Meloni has understood that mutual benefit is not incompatible with development. Helping another country become richer does not cease to be worthwhile because your own country benefits too. That is what can make development politically sustainable.
Britain also begins with advantages Italy could only dream of. The Commonwealth comprises 56 countries and 2.7 billion people, with ties that reduce barriers to trade and investment. Through British International Investment and UK Export Finance, Britain already has institutions capable of mobilising private capital alongside public money.
My report proposes three broad changes:
First, stop treating the percentage of national income spent on aid as the principal measure of development policy. The 2015 legislation placing the 0.7 per cent target into law has become detached from political reality. Rather than continuing the fiction, 0.7 per cent should become an aspiration when fiscal conditions permit.
The binding obligation should instead be an annual report showing exactly what spending achieves: jobs created, vaccines delivered, children educated and, where relevant, visas and returns.
Second, Britain should launch ambitious, future-focussed and mutually beneficial bilateral deal. I’ve call them Advanced Development Partnerships.
Commonwealth allies such as Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria could be among the first candidates, bringing together trade, British investment, export finance, technical expertise and education around agreed objectives.
The aim is not simply to transfer aid money, but to help countries create industries, process more of their own natural resources, expand trade and create jobs. That is development, economic and foreign policy working together, and should be emphasised as such with a relevant Cabinet committee.
Third, stop pretending every country can be treated through the same development model.
Britain’s migration geography is fundamentally different from Italy’s. Italy receives migrants directly across the Mediterranean from North Africa. Britain’s small-boat arrivals reach us after travelling through Europe and originate disproportionately in states such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Iran and Somalia.
Where conventional economic partnership is impossible because of war, hostile governments or absent institutions, we need a different apparatus: humanitarian assistance, diplomacy, returns agreements, security cooperation and support for neighbouring countries hosting refugees.
That work should bring the FCDO, Home Office and MoD together rather than leaving migration, development and security policy in separate silos.
For too long, supporters of international development assumed that protecting a percentage would protect the policy. The opposite happened. Once political consent disappeared, the percentage proved remarkably easy to dismantle.
A development strategy supported by the public and defended by Parliament is worth far more to the world’s poorest than one admired by specialists but consented to by almost no one.
Meloni understood that the answer to scepticism about development was not to defend the old model more loudly or cut it entirely. She built a different one from scratch.
Britain already has the institutions, relationships and tools to go further. What we have lacked is the political will to shake things up.
If anyone can do that, it’s Kemi Badenoch. Her commitment to reducing government silos and doing things radically differently could actually be the thing that saves the development sector.
Alice Hopkin was a Special Adviser to a Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary. Her report for the Coalition for Global Prosperity titled ‘Aid That Works for Britain: Lessons from Giorgia Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa’ is published today.
Most people groaned when I told them I was spending my summer working up some new international development policy. They became more interested when I said I was taking inspiration from Giorgia Meloni.
While the UK has spent years arguing about whether foreign aid should be 0.7, 0.5, 0.3 or 0.1 per cent of national income, Italy’s most successful modern leader has been asking a different question: what should Italian development policy actually be for?
Meloni’s Mattei Plan for Africa explicitly connects development with issues her voters care about: illegal migration, energy security, jobs and economic growth. Britain cannot simply copy it, given our geography and different migration flows, but the method behind it proves how sterile our own debate has become.
It was the Conservatives who reached the UN target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid in 2013, during austerity, when domestic departments were absorbing substantial cuts, sometimes up to 30 per cent. In contrast, the development portfolio was protected and grew by roughly a third in one year. Two years later, the target was locked into law through a Liberal Democrat Private Members’ Bill.
We are one of only three countries with a strict 0.7 per cent commitment on the statute book, alongside Spain and Belgium. None are currently meeting it.
Britain’s political foundations for the rise were remarkably weak. By 2020, two-thirds of Britons wanted the aid budget cut. Among Conservative voters, the figure was a mammoth 93 per cent.
What followed was predictable. The Conservatives eventually reduced spending to 0.5 per cent. Labour announced a further reduction to 0.3 per cent. The Conservatives now propose 0.1 per cent, while Reform would impose a £1 billion cap. We have spent more than a decade fighting over the percentage while paying next to no attention to the strategy. Even if the Conservatives spend only 0.1 per cent on aid, surely we still need to do it differently?
Governments repeatedly said aid was in the “national interest”, but rarely organised it around trade, migration, energy security or geopolitical competition in a way the public could recognise. That is why Meloni’s plan is worth studying. Italy has the smallest development budget in the G7, yet she has taken that modest resource and built a recognisable foreign-policy strategy around it.
The Mattei Plan places development under prime-ministerial leadership and six pillars: energy, agriculture, water, infrastructure, health, and education and training. It combines development spending with investment, guarantees and private finance, and reports annually to Parliament.
Most importantly, Meloni has been explicit about why Italy is doing it.
She argues that Europe should help create the economic conditions in which young Africans can build prosperous lives at home rather than feel compelled to migrate. At the same time, Italian investment strengthens energy security and creates commercial opportunities.
There are legitimate questions about whether the Mattei Plan will reduce migration, and my report does not pretend otherwise. Projects launched in 2024 cannot yet plausibly be credited with changes in Mediterranean flows. But alongside tough enforcement, the Plan addresses the longer-term challenge of a young, under-employed African population.
Meloni has understood that mutual benefit is not incompatible with development. Helping another country become richer does not cease to be worthwhile because your own country benefits too. That is what can make development politically sustainable.
Britain also begins with advantages Italy could only dream of. The Commonwealth comprises 56 countries and 2.7 billion people, with ties that reduce barriers to trade and investment. Through British International Investment and UK Export Finance, Britain already has institutions capable of mobilising private capital alongside public money.
My report proposes three broad changes:
First, stop treating the percentage of national income spent on aid as the principal measure of development policy. The 2015 legislation placing the 0.7 per cent target into law has become detached from political reality. Rather than continuing the fiction, 0.7 per cent should become an aspiration when fiscal conditions permit.
The binding obligation should instead be an annual report showing exactly what spending achieves: jobs created, vaccines delivered, children educated and, where relevant, visas and returns.
Second, Britain should launch ambitious, future-focussed and mutually beneficial bilateral deal. I’ve call them Advanced Development Partnerships.
Commonwealth allies such as Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria could be among the first candidates, bringing together trade, British investment, export finance, technical expertise and education around agreed objectives.
The aim is not simply to transfer aid money, but to help countries create industries, process more of their own natural resources, expand trade and create jobs. That is development, economic and foreign policy working together, and should be emphasised as such with a relevant Cabinet committee.
Third, stop pretending every country can be treated through the same development model.
Britain’s migration geography is fundamentally different from Italy’s. Italy receives migrants directly across the Mediterranean from North Africa. Britain’s small-boat arrivals reach us after travelling through Europe and originate disproportionately in states such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Iran and Somalia.
Where conventional economic partnership is impossible because of war, hostile governments or absent institutions, we need a different apparatus: humanitarian assistance, diplomacy, returns agreements, security cooperation and support for neighbouring countries hosting refugees.
That work should bring the FCDO, Home Office and MoD together rather than leaving migration, development and security policy in separate silos.
For too long, supporters of international development assumed that protecting a percentage would protect the policy. The opposite happened. Once political consent disappeared, the percentage proved remarkably easy to dismantle.
A development strategy supported by the public and defended by Parliament is worth far more to the world’s poorest than one admired by specialists but consented to by almost no one.
Meloni understood that the answer to scepticism about development was not to defend the old model more loudly or cut it entirely. She built a different one from scratch.
Britain already has the institutions, relationships and tools to go further. What we have lacked is the political will to shake things up.
If anyone can do that, it’s Kemi Badenoch. Her commitment to reducing government silos and doing things radically differently could actually be the thing that saves the development sector.