This session of the International Development Committee is on the UK’s partnership and development relationships with Nigeria. Chris, we are very glad that you are joining us remotely. Can you let us know your job title and your involvement with Nigeria?

Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everybody. I am Chris Chijiutomi, and I am the managing director and head of Africa at British International Investment, which is obviously the UK’s development finance institution. Within my area of responsibility—the African continent—Nigeria is one of our key priority countries, and BII has been investing there for the last 75 years. We have quite an extensive portfolio of investment in Nigeria, totalling just over $590 million and employing over 54,000 people across Nigeria, and we have been able to support about $90 million of taxes being paid by the 116 different businesses that we have invested in.

That sounds great. I know that BII has just launched its new five-year strategy. Does that change your investment strategy for Nigeria in any way? Can you please outline what your strategy is?

Nigeria remains a priority country for us within the African continent. Obviously, it is a country with over 230 million people, and it is a country where the BII has been a long-time partner. Therefore, we believe that a lot of our capital has been helping Nigeria in not only addressing a lot of barriers for businesses, but unlocking impact at scale. With our new strategy, where there is a big, continued focus on driving inclusivity and sustainable development in Nigeria, we are very much aligning ourselves with the Nigerian Government’s development priorities. We see Nigeria as a country where we will continue to invest to provide energy access for the millions of Nigerians who lack it, as well as connectivity, especially digital infrastructure. Also, with what is going on around the globe, we want to improve Nigeria’s food security, as well as financial inclusion. With our new strategy, Nigeria is pivotal within that strategy for Africa. Our broader strategy focuses on a number of key areas. One relates to us having a focus on frontier markets; 25% of our capital is going to go to markets defined under the UN’s least developed countries, the majority of which sit within Africa. This is the first time that we have committed to investing a dedicated number in those markets. The other area is that we will continue to invest with a climate lens, especially thinking about adaptation and resilience. Climate finance will continue to be big focus for us across Africa, and therefore Nigeria. It is also being able to focus on strengthening markets. We will be focusing with a market lens; rather than focusing on individual investments, it is about the market-level impact that BII is able to create with this range of tools and products, as well as working with partners, deepening our partnership with other DFIs, with Governments and other agencies, including different arms of the UK Government, which is something we will continue to do. From an inclusivity perspective, it is really around ensuring that we continue to support those that are underserved. Women-owned, women-led businesses and businesses that are owned and driven by local entrepreneurs are going to be big pillars of our new strategy, which was launched last week.

You have clearly read the strategy. Thank you for summarising it. We will pick away at some of those points as we go forward, but I want to ask you about one thing you said, which is that the investment decisions were in line with the Nigerian Government’s priorities. That is great, but Governments change. Do you think that there are risks where you align too closely, with either Nigerian or UK Government policies, on something like finance?

There is always a risk, hence why we are making sure we have close partnerships with the private sector, which we invest alongside, albeit within the framework of Government. A lot of our investment being long-term means that we typically invest across different political cycles. Naturally, it is first making sure that we understand Government strategy. Nigeria, for example, has a development plan—I think this new administration talks about Vision 30-30-30, which is about a commitment to renewable energy and will typically be beyond the current political cycle. There is a lot of talk around domestic productivity base and again, we see that as something beyond just one political cycle. Then there is supporting MSMEs, which are medium and small enterprises, as well as broader financial inclusion. The key themes that we have picked out of the development plans are typically things that we believe go through different political cycles, but we are also working with long-term local partners to, in essence, make sure that we are investing not just within a political cycle, but more long-term. Obviously, with the 75-plus years of experience we have in Nigeria, the close proximity with FCDO in-country and having the team in-country, we are making sure that we are focused on things that ride these political cycles.

Hi Chris, it is good to see you. Can you briefly set out how designating Nigeria as a powerhouse country will help to make progress towards the country’s development goals?

The term “powerhouse” was used in our last strategy. But in essence, Nigeria is a country of over 230 million people, according to the last stats from the Government. It is a country where we have deep roots as BII, as do the UK Government—the UK Government has recently designated it as a priority country in Africa. For us, with that depth of experience, and that kind of gap in development because of the sheer volume of people that Nigeria has, it is about utilising the experience that we have in terms of investing in key sectors and having a team in-country—I think that that is also important—and ensuring that we are part of the UK fabric in terms of the engagements with the British high commissioner and commission team, both in Abuja and in Lagos, the commercial capital, and in working with the likes of UKEF. It is about bringing all this together in a huge country like Nigeria, and then making sure that we are focused on the key sectors, which I mentioned earlier on: energy, digital infrastructure, financial services, the gender lens and investing in terms of women, as well as finding the right tools and partners to go into the hardest-to-reach regions in Nigeria. In the last two years, BII has increased its investment activity focusing on northern Nigeria, where we know there are huge development gaps and opportunities.

I declare an interest, or former interest: I was Chris’s colleague at BII before I came to this place. Chris, is it possible to stimulate local economies sufficiently to provide the kind of employment we are talking about for the millions of Africans who enter the job market every year?

Just to clarify, so that I get straight to the examples, what do you mean by “is it possible to stimulate”?

People like Ajay Banga of the World Bank describe the enormous need in relation to young people coming into the job market for the first time—the challenge of meeting the financing gap, essentially, because the jobs simply are not being created. Can you elaborate on whether it is possible for the likes of BII to meet that challenge?

It is a challenge that we are tackling head-on—not only BII, but working alongside a variety of partners, including other DFIs and other agencies. When you think about the potential for youth employment, it is basically a lot of sectors where you are utilising technology. We see Nigeria as a huge market for the utilisation of digital technology, be it climate tech, fintech or agritech, in solving everyday problems in Nigeria. I will give a classic example. I was born in Nigeria, and I grew up in Nigeria. Only recently did Nigeria start to open up the possibility of the underserved actually having bank accounts, rather than going through the traditional banks. BII has invested in a company called Moniepoint, which is a financial institution that is focused on the underserved—those who are below the poverty line and do not traditionally have the right access to finance. Today, that company is financing, or at least dealing with, over 4 million MSMEs on a monthly basis. A majority of the MSMEs in Nigeria that Moniepoint is serving are businesses are offering employment to the youth or entrepreneurs who need seed capital or capital to start their business. It is a challenge that we continue to address, but it is a challenge that it is not only for BII to address in Nigeria. That is why we are deepening our partnership with other institutions, including the World Bank, IFCs, the African Development Bank and other development partners in Nigeria, as well as working with the Nigerian Government in some of these areas.

Between those institutions, Chris, can development finance solve this issue? I know that you are doing your part.

Not in isolation. Solving some of these challenges requires a large part of the private sector—investment into the private sector and into businesses—but it also requires Government to continue to create the enabling environment. One key part of our strategy in the next five years is private capital mobilisation. The ability of BII to mobilise more capital into Nigeria will mean not only that development finance capital or BII’s capital will be used to create jobs or invest in companies, but that we are able to mobilise others, particularly local pension funds, local institutions and sovereign wealth funds in Nigeria. There is a role not only for BII, but for BII and other financial institutions, as well as working with Government to help create some of the enabling environment. That is where we really value a lot of the relationships we have with the FCDO teams in-country, who are working with Government to identify the areas where BII and others can unblock and catalyse.

Thank you for that. Could you give a very brief example of how an organisation like yours might work with Government to improve the enabling environment for investment?

I will use one example where we have engaged the Central Bank of Nigeria. We have talked and engaged with it around our policy for working with banks to try to put more capital into northern Nigeria. We are therefore working with and explaining to the Central Bank about an investment we did last year in a company called FCMB—really working with the regulator to ensure that the enabling environment is being created, not only for BII to invest in FCMB, but to allow other DFIs to direct capital into regions like northern Nigeria, into the SME space, and into women-owned or women-led businesses. The other thing that we have been engaging with the regulator on is around climate resilience and the importance of focusing on climate resilience in some of the investment activities that we and others undertake in the country. I would say that the FCMB example is probably the one I would use on engaging with the Government.

Coming to the individual states and to the north for example, what will be the impact on some of those individual states if Nigeria continues with low job creation?

I guess that the obvious one for me, knowing Nigeria very well, is that we know there is a lot of insecurity in the north of Nigeria. We know that in the north of Nigeria there is a major lack of employment for women. If we can channel the right type of capital to support businesses, those businesses can then grow, and they can then create more jobs. Those jobs can then help to diversify the economy there and potentially take some of the people being recruited into the conflict regions and get them to focus instead on productive employment. One investment that we did last year was in an agribusiness called Babban Gona. This agribusiness is supporting a large base of smallholder farmers in the north of Nigeria. That is an example of the type of thing I am discussing. That investment should then help with some of the insecurity challenges and job challenges in that region.

I feel like we could talk about the next question for hours, but is financial—?

Could we have some other Members asking questions?

Yes.

Thank you.

Following on from that, Chris, how does the displacement crisis that we see in the north impact on BII investment choices, and indeed on the capacity for businesses to operate, given that people may or may not be moving about within the region?

While addressing displacement directly is not something that we see as part of our role as a DFI, our investment focuses on investing in businesses that support economic resilience and create economic opportunities. In northern Nigeria, one of the challenges over the last 30 years or so is just the lack of sustained economic activities. By investing in businesses that can grow in the north, you are essentially taking away some of the displacement pressures that we currently see in that region. Naturally, this region, because of the insecurity, is also not the easiest of regions to do business in. One of the key things that we are also very mindful of is making sure that we pick the right partners that will see development in this region for the long term and are aligned with us in terms of our patient capital, and therefore will stay with this region to continue to drive and promote economic resilience. Ultimately, that will then help to create economic opportunities that should take some of the pressures off, say, Borno state, a specific state in the north of Nigeria where there are a lot of terrorism activities. It is about the ability of people in that state to have job opportunities and future opportunities there.

I very much understand the theory of what you are saying. Do you think there is any evidence on the ground that that is working, in the sense that job opportunities or business opportunities have either reduced the number of people who have moved or induced people to come back to their local area?

Specifically in northern Nigeria, I mentioned an investment in a company called Babban Gona. We made an investment of $7.5 million into an agritech business in September last year. It is probably too early yet, but this is a business focused on creating opportunities to support smallholder farmers in the north. Again, we are not yet 12 months into this investment. Maybe if we come back in about a year’s time, we will be able to measure what benefit an investment like that has done for them. It is too early for me to give you a number now, based on the fact that we only invested in this specific business in the north in September 2025.

But will you do that in relation to that investment? Will you look to see whether it has had any impact on people who might have been drawn into the terror organisations or people who might have been displaced if the investment had not been made?

Again, displacement is not something we specifically look at as a DFI. We look at metrics such as the type of jobs we have created since the business has taken our capital on. Those metrics, in terms of the development thesis of the investment, are something that we typically take time out to review post-investment.

I want to turn to climate change. How are you mitigating the potential impacts of climate change across Nigeria, particularly given that rising temperatures might mean that you are not able to operate in certain places? How are you ensuring that the investments that you have made are climate-proof and that the people you invest in will still be able to continue, even as things get hotter and hotter, through droughts and things like that?

We typically do a climate resilience assessment on the investments we make. That is one way to understand the broader climate impacts of the investment on the ecosystem in which it is operating and also on the communities and the sustainability of those businesses. More broadly, I mentioned Nigeria’s development plan. Renewable energy plays quite a big role in that. BII is focused on investing for climate mitigation in line with Nigeria’s own aspirations. We invested in a company called InfraCredit, which provides guarantees to support decarbonisation. It takes companies that are off-grid off diesel generators and utilises renewable energy to power them, either at individual level, at community level or even at market-commercial levels. There is a market in Abuja that we have helped to fund through working with InfraCredit. On adaptation and resilience, Babban Gona is really supporting farmers. It is focused on helping farmers with weather data, especially in the north of Nigeria, where there are big effects from droughts. It is helping them to understand when to plant and the different types of seeds to plant so that they have climate resilient crops or produce coming out of the region. It is also helping with storage. One of the challenges with the high temperatures in some of these regions is the transportation of these goods from the north to the south of the country. That is one level. We are focused also on understanding the impact of flooding in some of these regions through broader adaptation and resilience assessments. That is very much on the farming side of things, but also when we are building infrastructure projects, this is again a climate resilience assessment that our climate team is making on these investments. We apply that climate finance lens across the different subsectors in Nigeria that we invest in.

This week, Bond, the membership organisation for development groups, put out quite a critical commentary on BII’s investment choices. One of the criticisms was that you heavily invested in companies owned by billionaires. At the beginning of the session, you said that almost $600 million was being invested in Nigeria, but a third of that is invested in Indorama, which is owned by an Indian billionaire. I understand why that might be the case—you are looking at investments at scale and bringing in other investments—but Indorama produces fossil fuel-based fertilisers. Those fertilisers damage and degrade soil through acidification, and create high occupational health risks; farmers using this fertiliser are getting respiratory, skin and neurological problems. It also leads to heavy metal accumulation in the food chains. I am interested in how you are balancing the stated commitment to climate investment, adaptation, mitigation, resilience—whatever it is—with those very practical issues of BII still investing in fossil fuel. This is something that, for as long as I have been Chair—for the last six years—we have been raising with BII, about the investment in fossil fuels. How do you manage those conflicts within your investment portfolio?

In recent times in Nigeria, we have not invested in fossil fuel energy. For example, a big focus of our investment in Nigeria has been around the renewable space, so a lot of the companies we have invested in are, directly or indirectly, supporting decarbonisation in Nigeria. Indorama is one I know well; I have been to the plant and I have seen the operations. I also knew the area before Indorama—being born in the south of the country. This is an area where gas was just being flared. I have friends and family members who have grown up in that area, and they used to tell me that, whenever it rained, the kind of acid burn or smog issues produced in that part of Nigeria—Port Harcourt—was horrendous. After Indorama came into Nigeria—the project was concessioned by the Nigerian Government—it has been able to use gas that ordinarily would have been flared and created emissions, and utilise that to create a product that is actually helping Nigeria, and places outside Nigeria, in terms of food security. If I just look at where we are today, with the middle east crisis, there are a lot of countries in east Africa and southern Africa suffering from lack of fertiliser, whereas, on food security in Nigeria, we should be proud, as BII and the UK Government, of the role we have played with the investment in a company like Indorama—cutting emissions, but also helping the agenda of food security in Nigeria with the production of fertiliser that is then being used. Like all these things, I think you can look at it in a variety of ways. The first thing is that our focus in Nigeria is around climate finance-eligible transactions. That is what we focus on in Nigeria. At the same time, we have to balance things like financial inclusion and food security. A partner like Indorama, with what it is doing in Nigeria, is actually saving tonnes of CO2 that ordinarily would have been emitted into the atmosphere, by using that gas to produce fertiliser that is helping the average Nigerian.

But rather than creating a dependency on a fossil fuel in a different form, would an investment into a seed biobank—producing or supporting seeds that are more climate-resilient—not be a better investment?

No, I think that would be a complementary investment rather than a better investment. Again, we are looking at other sustainable approaches; we have investments outside Nigeria in things like biodigesters, which obviously produce fertiliser that is then used on the ground. Again, in working with partner Governments, food security in Nigeria is very important. Nigeria has fuel that is available, which ordinarily would have been burnt into the atmosphere, and Indorama is playing a key role by converting that into fertiliser, employing lots of Nigerians who ordinarily would not be employed in that region. Again, from knowing the region very well, a lot of the kind of level of insecurity in that region—also in terms of militancy—has been mitigated by the fact that this company has continuously grown and therefore created continuous employment and, ultimately, tax benefits back to the Nigerian Government and the population.

Ultimately, your investment is from British taxpayers—and the return on investment from money that you have invested over the years—so do you think it is a good use of taxpayer money to be funding a company that is owned by a billionaire and is making all of these good returns?

We look at this beyond returns. It is the jobs this company is creating in Nigeria. Nigeria is 230 million people and is growing. A company like this is very much focused on developing the local ecosystem. Its market level impact is developing and giving quality jobs to Nigerians. When I visited the factory, the control room was being operated by chemical engineering graduates from a local Nigerian university who ordinarily would not have had the opportunity. When we look at investments, clearly it is beyond the profit these businesses are doing. It is the broader impact and also the alignment with the development plan of Nigeria.

A significant share of investments in Nigeria go to banks and financial intermediaries to support small and medium-sized enterprises. What percentage of that investment actually goes to the SMEs?

I will have to write back to you on the exact percentage, but I will talk to you about what we typically do, which is a bit different from most. Yes, we see banks as route to market and route to a lot of these SMEs. When we provide a facility like we have just done on the FCMB facility to northern Nigeria, we are providing a facility that is very much directed. It is directed in the sense that there is a 30% allocation that we have indicated has to be ringfenced for women-owned businesses; 70% of that, minimum, has to be diverted to northern Nigeria to expand the MSME customer base of the particular banks. So it is really around making sure that it is directed and that we have the right metrics to measure that the capital is not just going for general use but rather that it is going into specific areas. Then it is around doing field visits to find out and engage with customers around ease of accessing the facility—is it really increasing the MSME client base of the particular bank?

You have said that you will write to me with the answer to that question; that would be great.

In terms of our overall portfolio, yes.

It is basically how much money is going to the people that it says on the tin it is going to, rather than to field visits for bank managers. Chris, thank you ever so much. We really appreciate you taking the time and answering so many questions. Witnesses: Baroness Jenny Chapman and Cynthia Rowe

Minister, could you start by introducing yourself and your brief and then your colleague?

I am Jenny Chapman, Minister of State for International Development and Africa. I am here with Cynthia, who is the Development Director in Nigeria.

Thank you both very much for joining us. Minister, we were originally expecting the Director of Africa to be joining you, and we had some questions specifically on Sudan. Would it be all right if we put those to you in writing?

Yes, sure. I think that might be my fault, because I did speak to her yesterday. She asked, “Do you want me to be there?” and I said, “No, Cynthia and I can cover it.”

We are not apportioning blame.

No, I just want to explain, on her behalf, that she will have meant no discourtesy by that, and I am sure she would be very happy to answer.

Brilliant; we will get those over to you. Minister, there is another bit of housekeeping. On 24 March, you and the Foreign Secretary were in front of us. We asked you for country allocations. Understandably, you said that you wanted to allow your teams to speak in person to the Ministers in their country. One assumes that that has been done, so when will we get the country allocations?

Soon. I believe the usual phrase is “in the fullness of time” or “in due course”.

We expect better from you, Minister, rather than falling on that.

Yes, I know. It is not quite ready. We are working on it and we will get that done. The very latest you will get it will be the beginning of July, but we will endeavour to do it before then.

We would be hugely frustrated were it to be the beginning of July. It would probably make this Committee start doing active work on its own around the world to try to find where the cuts are landing.

Well, we don’t want that.

I think it would be much better, Minister, if you could let us have it and the reasoning behind it, so that we could understand before jumping down rabbit holes.

Message received, Chair.

Good afternoon, Minister. In 2024, the UK signed a strategic partnership with Nigeria. Could you say why that happened and what success would look like for that partnership?

Given that Cynthia will have been intimately involved with the partnership, I will give my answer and then I am sure she would be happy to give much more detail to it. One of the reasons we have arrived at our strategy for development generally and the Africa approach is the work that has been led by the team in Nigeria. When I was first appointed, a letter was sent to me by heads of mission and development directors on how they thought we should go about making the decisions that we needed to imminently because of the cut to ODA. My thinking has been directly informed by what has happened in Nigeria. I very much favour the strategic partnership approach because it brings together all our work, whether that is on development, diplomacy, defence or trade. It makes it greater than the sum of its parts. When you have a country as big and complex and with as broad a connection to the UK as Nigeria, it makes complete sense to bring all that together and have those conversations in a strategic way with the Government of Nigeria. It also helps us work better across Whitehall. Sometimes, as we have discussed before, you can have different things going on from different Departments out of sight of each other. It is about maximising on the work that we do; Cynthia, you were there.

I was. I can tell you a little bit more about that. It was something that the Nigerians really wanted from us. Exactly as the Minister said, it was about setting out our strategic stall. That was our moment to look at what our shared ambitions were. One is mutual growth. Another is security and stabilisation as a binding constraint on development, for example. It is also a vehicle in which we can anchor some of our other agreements, such as the trade agreement we have with Nigeria, the strategic defence partnership and the migration, justice and home affairs dialogue that we have with them. That was a way of docking into that. It is biannual, so every two years we track progress—if possible, at ministerial level.

There is a big debate in development about continuing to support middle-income countries. Tough choices have been made about spending. In that context, how comfortable are you with the continued funding for humanitarian work in Nigeria? What efforts can be made to encourage the Nigerian Government to fund its own humanitarian need?

I do not think we have any choice about being engaged in a deep way with Nigeria, given our historical connections and the people-to-people links. It is always going to be a close relationship for us. On the nature of that relationship, there are some concerning statistics around the humanitarian need. I do not know whether you are one of the parliamentarians who was able to visit, but the needs are quite severe in terms of the displacement of people, nutrition and food security in particular. There has also been flooding. I do not think the time is right for the idea that we can just step back entirely. Your question suggests that that is what we ought to be working towards, and that there should be Government-led intervention when humanitarian need emerges. I think that is absolutely right. How we get there and how long that takes is one of the key discussions we have with the Nigerian Government. The responses to food insecurity are going to involve the provision of nutrition, and I hope it is increasingly going to be about local production of food and nutrition so that jobs and a market can be created in Nigeria and some of that longer-term resilience can be achieved.

Minister, are you concerned that the international community continues to meet all of this humanitarian need at a time when there are significant illicit financial flows leaving Nigeria?

There is a lot in that question.

Unpack it for us, Minister.

There is definitely a strand of work around illicit finance and governance generally. We have conversations at every level. We can have those conversations through the multiple channels we have because we are close to the Government of Nigeria, and it is important that we continue to do so. Of course, we are not comfortable about illicit finance, and we have work to do on that here in the UK as well, although it is very different in nature. We are very keen to talk to the Nigerian Government about that and other concerns around human rights, governance and all those issues. I think you have a choice. Your question suggests that the alternative to what we are doing is to withdraw and not to continue supporting humanitarian action. I think that would be the wrong choice for us. The right way to go about this is to think very much in the long term. We continue with intervention to support people today, and we are helping to feed children in Nigeria. Do we still want to be in a position where we and the international community are doing that and the Government of Nigeria is not doing so to the greatest extent that they can in, say, 10 years’ time? Obviously, that would be a failure. The ambition of the Government of Nigeria is to take more of a lead in taking responsibility for that. I think that is a realistic ambition. However, we have to work alongside them to help them get there. That is what partnership involves, and that is very much behind why we are doing what we are doing. Does that unpack your question, Noah? It is a complex country, and there is no getting away from that. However, the approach we are taking by intervening when we need to because there is immediate concern, but combining that with long-term work on resilience and Nigerian leadership, is the right way to go about it.

Nigeria is an amazing country. It has an abundance of oil and gas, which we heard about in the previous panel, but also if you stick anything in the ground, it is going to grow. However, it does not have the infrastructure to take the produce to the people. A lot of the natural wealth is going out of the country and not staying in. The questions you have just answered were about Government. I wonder where you see the role of civil society, because I do not really think that you are saying it is up to the UK to try to act alone to influence the Government to be better at wealth distribution. Where do you see the role of civil society within all this—and with the cuts, do we still have money to support civil society?

We do still have money to support civil society. Cynthia is responsible for devising a portfolio of work in Nigeria that I am sure will involve civil society. Whenever you want to work on any of the issues that we have just referred to in response to Noah’s question, civil society is central to how we might want to approach many of these issues. The impact you get from working with organisations locally is incredibly good value as well. Don’t forget that one of our four shifts was from international intervention to locally led, and that is all about working with civil society organisations. It might be good to hear some examples.

That would be great.

I would be happy to add to that. For me, there was a step back at the beginning. There are two parts to this. One is that we are working with the reformist Government, and there are opportunities at the moment for some real shifts. We saw that when this Administration came in. You know about the big shifts they made, and many of you saw them at first hand. As it is at such a large scale, we have broken things down to focus on where we can. In terms of growth, which is going to be the engine of getting beyond aid, we are looking at particular sectors. That is lined up with the UK’s industrial strategy and our trading agreements with Nigeria. Going back to the illicit financing question, some of the work we are doing is around institution strengthening. We have helped to get Nigeria off the FATF grey list. There is a bunch of work on how we get more systemic governance into the system—not across the system, because we cannot possibly reach everything, but the bits that really matter to the UK and to Nigeria. Civil society plays more of a part at the ground level, but we also support them to, for example, engage with the National Assembly in Nigeria. They both look at things like public financial budgets. We have been working on that in particular states in the north. Transparency has gone up. There is also lobbying on how and where the money is spent. One of the constant conversations we have with the Nigerian Government is about how this is not just about growth for growth’s sake; it is about growth that provides jobs for people and that is felt by citizens across the country.

On that topic, you mentioned that some of these interventions are incredibly good value for money—one of the Committee’s favourite topics—and you mentioned the work you have done on illicit finance and institution building. How easy is it to quantify the impact of the interventions you are talking about vis-à-vis, say, the sort of humanitarian work you described?

I think that is quite hard. I will give my answer, and then Cynthia can give you a proper answer. It is quite difficult. HMRC and tax are relatively simple. Tax revenues have gone up $24 billion because of the work we did with HMRC, which is a big deal. However, this sort of work is often much more long-term. It is not like providing food to feed this number of people; it is different. We had a session previously on how to quality assure and measure some of this. That is my answer; Cynthia, what is the proper answer?

It is a really difficult area, as you know, and there are lots of different figures around it. We talk about the increased revenue as a way of understanding what we are doing, and we look at where the revenue is being allocated and spent as much as we can—it is not our country; it is up to the Nigerians what they do with that. I hesitate to mention any figures, because there are just so many in the system and they are often very specific.

If you wanted to write to us, that would be helpful.

Okay. We can do a bit of digging on that.

It is very nice to see you again, Cynthia. We found our visit very useful, particularly your help. Following on from that, to go into my question, the thing I learned most about the structure of Nigeria was about the states and the governors. Although it was clear that you, the high commissioner and others had a very good relationship with the Nigerian Government, essentially the Nigerian Government are not able to deliver a lot of things themselves, particularly in relation to health matters, for example, because of that very complex structure with the governors and the states. In terms of our activities in providing technical assistance and support to the Nigerian Government, what are we doing at state level when, ultimately, that is what will impact on ordinary people in Nigeria?

I know that you work at state level, Cynthia, so I will let you answer.

Yes, we work at both federal and state levels. Exactly as you said, it is really important that we engage with the states, as they are the people who are going to make it happen. In the past, up until now, we have focused on the poorest states in the north, on six states in particular, in a number of ways: one way is on public financial management, which is helping them to increase their revenue and to strengthen their systems. We have been working with them, for example, on how they access climate finance and World Bank funding, acknowledging that we have a small amount of ODA and we want to try to use that to leverage their access to larger funds. That is part of what we do with them. On the federal side—taking health, for example—we work with the federal Ministry on strengthening the basic health system. There is a very reformist Minister, as you know. At the state level, we are doing things such as modelling climate-resilient clinics and schools—putting in solar power, making them heat-proof and waterproof. Having modelled that with our smaller amount of ODA, for example, they will now take that up and roll it out nationally. The World Bank has taken up our model as well. That is how we are achieving scale at some of the state levels.

Are you doing that proactively, in the sense that you look at the situation and think, “Well, we could do this.”, or do they ask you for it? What is the balance between proactivity and reactivity?

We have strategic agreements with some of the states. It is called a mutual accountability framework: we sit down together with the states—not just the Government, but civil society and people who hold them to account—and we agree with them what we call offers and asks. What is it that they want to work on, in terms of their priorities, and what can we offer to help make that happen? I meet the governors every quarter, or every half-year, to set out what we are going to do and then track that progress.

As the Minister indicated, we appear to have a good relationship with the current Nigerian Government. Do you think the partnership would survive a change of Government, either in Nigeria or even in the UK?

We could point to a few examples that are live in the news at the moment where that can be difficult, but I think we would make every endeavour to make that work.

Yes, we are. Part of it is that we are engaging with everybody. We are really conscious that we are coming up to the 2027 elections. There is already a lot of political froth. As a matter of course, we make sure that we are talking to all parties and to civil society, and that we support the election cycle, not just the election, so that a group of Nigerians are holding Nigerians to account. That is the plan.

Turning to nutrition, and specifically malnutrition, I found it quite remarkable that you could visit Lagos and Abuja and not know that one of Africa and the world’s worst nutritional crises was happening in northern Nigeria, because there appears to be an institutional inability to talk about it. Does that not impede our ability to do something about it?

My sense is that it does not impede our ability to work on it, in the way that it does in other countries—I do not want to name them. I do not detect that there is concealment. There is no obstacle to collecting data on nutrition in the same way that there is in other places. It is possible for us to work on nutrition alongside other agencies, and to do the longer-term resilience work. My sense is that the Government of Nigeria wants us to work alongside it to address those issues, but I absolutely agree—and you see this in many countries—that your sense of a place in the capital, or in a major city, is very different from the sense you get when you venture further afield and see the way that many millions of people live day to day. It can be very jarring.

Are you satisfied, though, that the Nigerian Government accepts that the malnutrition that is prevalent in parts of the north is a contributor to instability and therefore needs to be tackled as part of bringing stability to the north?

I would say yes, based on the conversations I had during the visit. But I think there is always sensitivity, and there is a whole politics around these issues that we need to understand and to be respectful of if we are to have any success in doing what we need to do to address them. It is not unusual for such issues to be a very complicated conversation. You know that there are conflict and climate issues in the north. Malnutrition does not happen on its own. It comes as a consequence of many other things, and it has many drivers. In the conversations that you can have with the Government of Nigeria, sometimes you focus on one or other of those issues instead.

Why would you do that? Why would you focus on one or the other?

Because it depends on who you are talking to. If you are talking to somebody in the Government of Nigeria and they want to talk about conflict, you talk about conflict. You may also talk about malnutrition and the consequences of it, but it is diplomacy, isn’t it? If you want to have influence, you have to start from where the person you are speaking to is. You do not necessarily get to begin with your agenda. That is all I meant.

But they are speaking to you as the Development Minister.

And also the Africa Minister. I see my job as being part of a long-term relationship with a partner Government, not as being somebody who turns up and tells them what I think they ought to know. That can happen, but it is not usually where you begin. Cynthia, you are in Abuja having these conversations, day in and day out.

Yes. It is exactly as the Minister said. There are sensitivities around it, but that does not mean that people do not recognise it. There is a public-facing narrative but, both in public and in private, you can have these conversations. Conversations are one thing, but I do not just take words; I look for action. Very practically, we are working with the Government in two ways. First, we are bringing together our defence, our counter-terrorism, our humanitarian, our conflict resolution and all our UK levers at mission. Through our strategic defence partnership, we are talking to the Nigerians about this as a full package. They really see security as a binding constraint and a threat to the country if it is not dealt with. Secondly, we are doing some really interesting work on how we exit from the crisis. Private sector development is the way out. There is not enough aid to cover this, so how do we get out of it? We are looking at a public-private partnership that enables Nigerians to process their own food grains for their own populations, and we are looking at helping them to produce nutrient-dense food, specifically for malnutrition. That deals with the value chain, as well as some lifesaving and more long-term assistance. I look for action as well as words, and there are some things happening.

Can I drop in some pretty stark figures? UNICEF estimates that 1,000 children a day could die from severe acute malnutrition by the end of the year if funding continues to decline. It is estimated that 3.5 million children are suffering from acute malnutrition across the country, that 9.5 million people are in need of food assistance in the north-east and north-west, and that just under 1 million of them are getting the support that they need. The scale of this is massive.

That is exactly right. Over half the population is in poverty, and the idea that you can resolve this with ODA programming is just wrong. We have to be more ambitious than that. The way that we do this, as Cynthia said, is by growing their economy, growing the tax revenue and working out how they invest that tax revenue into basic services and their health system. They are doing it, and that is far more sustainable than any kind of intervention or programme that we can deliver bilaterally or through the UN. Having said all that, you don’t just sit back and wait for that all to happen, because it takes time. You do what you absolutely need to do in the meantime, inadequate though it is.

That comes to the wider question, which we have discussed in the context of other crisis-affected areas, such as Yemen: what development work can be meaningfully done in an environment of such heightened insecurity and instability?

I think you can do a hell of a lot in Nigeria that you would never even dream of attempting at the moment in Yemen. We have a reforming Government that wants to work with us. Yes, there are tough conversations and the challenge is enormous, but there is a willingness to engage. There is competence, and growing capability. They have expertise in Government, and they are reaching out and want to work in partnership. You also have ever-strengthening institutions, although there is a long, long way to go. On our prospects of achieving anything close to that in Yemen, it is just a very different context. If what you are saying is, “Isn’t it really difficult, complicated and challenging?”, yes, it is.

Against that backdrop, how would you rate how you are doing?

In a way, how we are doing is kind of by the by. We are only as good as our ability to work in partnership with the Government. It is their country, and they are responsible. We are a partner to them. Cynthia is too modest to say this, but I think this is probably one of the strongest teams that we have in the network. I think the work that they are doing is groundbreaking, innovative and impactful. They are doing incredibly well. It takes time to know exactly how well you have done, and the job is never complete, but the work that is being led in-country by our team is pretty good, in all humility.

We were impressed by the team when we met them—I certainly was, and I think the other members were too.

I am glad you said that.

When Nick Dyer was here, he told us that the global response to insecurity in the Sahel had effectively failed. What impact is that having, and what impact will it have over the coming months and years, on the instability in Nigeria?

I think it is one of the biggest challenges. Nick obviously said what he did, and I worry too about the Sahel and the failure of the international community to coalesce around a strategy, alongside those countries, to improve the situation. That is deeply worrying. The best thing that the UK can do is stick close to our partners in the region who we have close relationships with, and Nigeria is one of those. The reason that defence and security is such a key plank of our partnership with them is because they feel it too. These issues are difficult, and there is no immediate or quick fix for them. But stepping back, economic development and growth, alleviating poverty and strengthening governance in Nigeria, just as in Ghana and other countries, is fundamental, and that we can do. What we cannot do is pretend that the UK has a solution in a box to all the problems in Mali, Niger and the rest of the region, because frankly, that will take a co-ordinated international effort, which, as Nick said, is absent at the moment.

With your Africa Minister hat on, what needs to change to unlock that international effort?

That could be another session; a lot needs to change. You have Islamic extremism, Russian influence, incredibly weak states and an absence of levers of any kind in many of these places—the UK certainly does not have any.

A lot of what you are describing is what is happening within the boundaries of the Sahel and so on. What is missing at the international level for the international community to be able to get a grip on this issue? What would you like to see?

You would probably need a resolution to the war in Ukraine, a resolution to Israel-Palestine and definitely an end to what is happening in Iran right now. Then there would be a fighting chance for the international community to get to the next thing on the list.

So you think it is primarily a lack of focus and interest.

Yes, I do. I can understand it—this is not me being critical—but do I regret it? Yes, I do. It has been deteriorating in front of our eyes for years, and for whatever reason, the international community has not focused on this part of the world in the way that it could have done. But we are where we are.

Minister, have you tried to direct the international focus to the Sahel?

I talk about it, but the idea that anyone can do that right now, with all the other challenges—

So you are just not getting the cut-through that you are looking for.

Is there a single global leader who does have this high on their radar?

I don’t know, James, honestly. It is almost in the “too difficult” box. We talk about Sudan and how we wish that the international community had more focus on it. We know that one reason that it does not is the interconnected nature of the conflict in Sudan with the regional geopolitics, but it is also because of conflicts in other parts of the world. We know that. You could say the same about Myanmar or the DRC. It would be wonderful if we could give sufficient attention to the areas of the world that really need intervention from the international community. I think this is why you hear from the AU that they want to lead and devise the solutions to the problems that they understand best. I can see why they get to that conclusion.

This question may be more for Cynthia. Thinking about displaced people, because obviously millions of people have been displaced within Nigeria as well, what work has been done to understand the impact of that and its potential to further undermine stability within the region?

I think everyone is acutely aware of how difficult that situation is and what it could mean. Huge numbers have been displaced—there are something like 117 million forcibly displaced people across Nigeria, which is a big number. We have already talked about economic growth, and you mentioned the connection between development and displacement. We are working on and testing some things—Nigeria is in many ways a good place to test things, because there is such a willing set of partners there. For example, we are looking at whether we can bring in the private sector to work directly with displaced communities. There is one business that has set up a global call centre in one of the communities, which is pretty amazing. Those in the Nigerian private sector know how to navigate the risks themselves much better than anyone else could. That is one part of it. The other is trying to address the drivers. There are two big things that are going on. One is the Islamic terrorism and the north-eastern picture around the Lake Chad basin, and the other is the banditry and crime in the north-west. We are trying to make sure that we are working with the Nigerian forces to push those back, and that is MOD colleagues. That is part of the picture, and then we are coming in very quickly with, for example, agricultural programmes, where we can, to provide livelihoods and alternatives to recruitment into crime, for example.

I guess that is all about stopping the instability or preventing further instability, but to what extent has there been an assessment of the risks of that displacement and what that might mean over the coming years? Has that piece of work been done, or is it implicit in the fact that so many people have been displaced?

We do regular reviews of the situation. We have a regular report that we look at, and we review the situation. We track and monitor the trajectory. That happens regularly as part of all of our programming. As part of that, we look at drivers, and it is different depending on where you are in the country. So yes, we track it, and then we adjust accordingly. Did that answer your question?

It did, yes.

We are struggling to gather any detailed information about the integrated security fund programming across Nigeria and the Sahel. Can you give us a brief overview of it?

I do not want to do that right now because I am not fully briefed on it—I was not expecting that question—but I would be really happy to do a session on the ISF generally and the Sahel in particular if you want. But I do not really want to give you an overview that is not complete or accurate.

Minister, that is not calming our nerves.

No, I understand.

We do have a lot of concerns about the ISF in terms of who has oversight of it and what its priorities are now, but that is being compounded by what we are hearing about the conflict prevention team. Last week, on 23 April, there was an article in The Guardian about the funding being cut for the conflict and security monitoring project, which is run by the Centre for Information Resilience and gathers data that basically enables us to uphold international law on war crimes. That has led to a lot of concerns about where that data goes, particularly in relation to the documentation of conflict in Gaza, and how that will impact on forthcoming court cases. Can you give us any reassurance either that the Guardian article was incorrect and that body is still there, or on how that data will be held and captured going forward?

The centre of expertise that we are building will include the work on conflict prevention, and I am confident that that work will be done very well. We need to look again at the work that we do on conflict prevention. This is not in any way meant to be critical of the work we have done, but given the changing nature of conflict, I think it is time that we look again at exactly what we do and what works best, and that we refresh it all and bring it all together in the community of expertise, which we are doing. That is ongoing, and it is a good piece of work The ISF is partly paid for by ODA, and some of it does operate in Africa. I am not the best Minister to answer all of your questions on it as a whole, but I am very happy to go away and make myself the best Minister to answer your questions on it. It has been a very important instrument in the past. The beauty of it is that it does work across Government. It has been refocused; it runs out of the Cabinet Office, as you know. ODA does contribute to it, in a small way, but I think it is probably a good idea, if you are concerned about it—I think you have mentioned it in previous hearings as well—

As has the JCNSS—they are very concerned about it.

It is not for me to suggest what you do—I can just write you a letter—but I would be really happy to have a more in-depth conversation on it, perhaps bringing a Minister from another Department as well, if that might be helpful.

That would be very helpful, because with the previous Minister who was in front of JCNSS under the previous Government, it was quite shocking the disregard she had for the value that that scheme—a very slight scheme, in the scheme of things—was able to bring. If I may push back, Minister, I disagree with your assessment of the conflict prevention unit. In their present form, they have only been in place for a couple of years. They are phenomenal—really astoundingly good—so it concerns me that you are not recognising that.

No, I did not say that, Chair, with respect.

That is what I heard, so would you like to clarify?

I would like to clarify that. I think that we need to bring together all the work we do on conflict prevention, which is not just in that team; it is much more widespread than that. What we understand about conflict and its drivers, to me, means that we need to bring in a much more diverse range of expertise at an earlier stage to work on it, whether that is looking at early warnings, early intervention, some of the work we do on data collection and how we work with agencies. Personally, having spoken to organisations like Geneva Call and the Red Cross, which do a lot of the getting their hands dirty with this stuff, the UK has a very good track record in all this. We have a responsibility to bring all that much more up-to-date thinking together, alongside the excellent work that you refer to. That has to come together in this new community of expertise, but it has to be much wider in scope than just that one team. That is what I am getting at.

Just to reiterate: it is not about conflict, but about atrocity prevention. The indicators could be domestic violence or hate crime.

That is exactly my point—that is exactly right—which is why we need to bring in that expertise at the earliest possible stage.

May I press you on the specifics? What is the future of the international humanitarian law unit and the conflict and security monitoring project, which is run by the CIR?

I will look into the—

I hope that the article is incorrect.

It probably is incorrect, but I have not read it, so I do not want to say that with too much certainty. Usually, what has happened with these stories so far is that, because a unit is being moved into a community of expertise, the story says, “This unit is being disbanded. We’ve stopped doing this work.”, which is absolutely not true. On the issue of the CIR, and that particular data, I will write to you and get you a proper response, just to make sure.

That would be hugely helpful. Thank you very much.

On the SPRiNG programme, which is FCDO funded, experts regularly raise the importance of localising responses to instability. The SPRiNG programme funding, however, goes almost entirely to a private sector contractor. Are you content that Tetra Tech works sufficiently closely with local organisations?

I am—but, Cynthia, you see it in-country.

I am happy to answer that. Yes, is the very short answer. The team works really closely with Tetra Tech to make sure that they are engaging in the best possible way. It is the most efficient way that we have of reaching out to a number of smaller organisations. One of the things that we really focus on is localisation, because that is the only way that we are going to be able to sustain beyond aid, which is what we are all aiming for. The SPRiNG programme not only connects into the ISF—we use it alongside ISF because we want to bring everything together. They work directly with communities, as well as with the justice systems now, and it is those communities where we are getting results. We get women into peacebuilding and look at protection for women as well. We are looking at mechanisms for communities to talk to each other and resolve their differences at an all-community level. Tetra Tech has to do that to be delivering for us properly.

On ODA allocations, at the same time that humanitarian need, displacement and the threat of insurgent groups are rising, international funding for Nigeria, including through UN agencies, is falling. Are you concerned that those problems will spiral out of control without significantly increased funding?

It is always nice to have more money, and if the Treasury were to give us a load more money right now, we would spend it really well—including in Nigeria. But as has been implied by our conversation so far, the long-term way to improve the situation in Nigeria and the other countries where we work is by trying to get beyond aid and to do the work we need to on domestic resource mobilisation. That is going very well in Nigeria, and the billions raised that way are getting invested into public services. That is how you resolve the humanitarian need in the end. Of course I am worried about the situation, particularly in northern Nigeria, and about the impact of the lack of resources. But I do not think that just increasing the aid budget for humanitarian response in Nigeria is going to provide a long-term improvement in the lives of people in that country. We need to work in a much more sophisticated and ambitious way alongside local leadership. That is how we will make a lasting difference, and that will save many millions more lives in the end.

I would add that we are actively working to transition the humanitarian response to the Nigerian Government. I was with the Minister for Humanitarian Affairs last week, and he is absolutely determined to take on the leadership and responsibility for trying to exit the crisis. We have a really determined partner. Aid will not cover it, so it has to be the other way. We have a pooled fund which the Nigerians will be leading and we all put into that. We are trying to make it as efficient as possible. We are also doing things, examples of which I mentioned earlier, regarding how you bring down the cost of expensive imports of nutritious food or the cost of RUTF. The answer is through local production of that food—then you are also releasing more money into the system. The UN system itself is being downsized pretty quickly.

Centrally managed programmes are being cut by 42% across the board. Has an equality impact assessment been done on the impact of this across the Nigeria programming?

We published our impact assessment on our allocations for CMPs last month.

Has the Committee seen that?

We received the original one that came out before Christmas.

No—we published one alongside the allocations on 15 March or so.

We will follow that up and I apologise.

I am all about letting you guys have what you want.

Country allocations, please.

Noted. However, we did publish. If you do not think that what we did quite covers what you want to know, I am sure that we could look at that.

Basically we are asking: on Nigeria specifically, have you figured out the impact?

Oh, I see. We did impact assessments on CMPs broadly; we did not do it country by country. We can look at that, but at the moment, because we are building the communities of expertise now, there would be a lot of guesswork and projections in that task because we do not yet know what Cynthia will say she wants from CMPs in Nigeria. In the old world, CMPs would do things in Nigeria, and you would not necessarily know about it. Now, we want to have development directors and heads of mission much more in the driving seat, and certainly knowing what is happening in their countries. The internal workings of how a community of expertise relates to a country team are happening, but it is difficult to know exactly what CMPs will be needed in Nigeria, on gender or anything we would be looking at for an equalities assessment.

Are you saying, Minister, that we will not know the baseline from which to do a true equalities impact assessment across both local and central programming, because of the way work has historically been commissioned?

You have a baseline, because we know what we did last year. Once everyone has got their portfolios done and agreed, we will know what the next three years ought to look like, and the communities of expertise are doing portfolios too, so we will be able to map all that. I do not think we could do that today, because we are still working out exactly what posts want. What I do not want is to have communities of expertise based in London that have been designed entirely around things that people working in Whitehall think are important. It has to be designed around what country teams want. That is still being done because they have not all done their portfolios yet.

Listening to you, it feels as though the concept and the detail of the communities of expertise have moved on in the month since you were last in front of us. Can you give us more of an idea of what it is and what it looks like?

Some of them are more advanced than others. Every week, I have a meeting with a different team—last week it was technology, this week it was governance. It is about trying to figure out, alongside the teams, exactly how they will have a good relationship with posts, what they think the demand in the system looks like—

Sorry, Minister, but are those departmental teams or are they thematic?

The teams are in-country. The idea is that the central resource responds to the needs of the post, or the network more generally. We do not want to have capability at the centre that there is then no demand for in-country. The philosophy behind what we are trying to do, which is rather like the one we heard about in Nigeria, is to be driven by the political economy analysis of that place. We are not trying to do to countries things that map to us, but that they are not invested in, because you do not get a lasting impact that way. It is about getting the right capability built in London, and having a proper, quality understanding of what posts want. I would be lying if I said that that was done and that we knew exactly what would be involved in it, because we do not, but it is a really exciting, interesting challenge, probably, for posts—although I cannot put words in your mouth. On the first visit I did, which I will never forget, the development director met me off the plane and said, “Well, you’ve got a devil of a job, haven’t you? You’ve got to make all these cuts. What do you think you’re doing? You’ve made us go through this exemptions process.” I said, “What would you do, then?” and she said, “I’d cut all centrally managed programmes.” From her perspective, as a very, very experienced development director—I will tell you who it was afterwards—they were not responding to what she needed. She could not see what they were doing and felt that the resource could be used far better if targeted at things that would actually have an impact in that country. We cannot afford that any more, so the whole thing needs joining up. That is easier said than done, but we will do that. Now that we have done all the allocations, in the next few months, we can put complete focus on making this next phase work very well.

I am afraid I still do not understand what it is. I remember that the former ambassador or high commissioner of Myanmar was recognising early indicators that made him think atrocities were on the horizon. He basically telephoned in and said, “Please help!”, but they did not have the people to look at the data and understand the indicators. Would one of the resources be the conflict and atrocity prevention team, which you mentioned, being dialled in?

Yes, exactly.

Another example could be that Ministers somewhere were saying, “We are having real problems with crop rotations because of climate adaptations. We do not know when to do this. We’ve got some beetle, and that’s our biggest problem, because it’s eating all the food.” Then post would dial in and there would be someone, who might be in Kew gardens, who could be put in. Is it like a practical help team?

Yes—exactly that.

And then there will be some money that goes alongside it?

Yes, there is money. Posts can also use their allocations to buy resource. Your example there is brilliant, because I bet when that request was made for support with atrocity prevention, it did not happen—but I bet there was resource going into some other stuff in that region that may not have even been known about by the person making that request. There is a real issue about prioritisation and making sure the scarce resource we have is spent in the best way possible. I would much rather that that request had had a positive response. In terms of the way we will work, I am not saying everybody gets what they want on every occasion, but more of the power to demand action will come from post in the future. On the technology one, an example is the conversation I had with the Nigerian Finance Minister two weeks ago. The first thing he wanted to say was, “We want to build a data centre in Nigeria because you are getting too far ahead of us with AI. We don’t like that. We want to have capability, so we need a data centre.” It is a fascinating question how on earth you go about that, and where you even start. With a request like that, obviously the UK does not go around building data centres—even in the UK.

There is time, Minister.

Yes. So you have to talk to them about energy, infrastructure, water, skills—fascinating conversations where the community of expertise will be able to crowd in knowledge from our development expertise in King Charles Street, but also go to DESNZ or DEFRA. But on that sort of challenge, they might also want to go to Google or the higher education sector—they might want to look at a university partnership. The reason they are called communities of expertise is that they are there to act as an entry point to the whole UK ecosystem. There are a lot more new entrants now who want to get involved in this work—they could be philanthropics or in the financial sector, whatever it might be. It is a real mind shift in how they work. I think this is really exciting.

If I can elegantly drift you back to the actual question, Cynthia, for example, gets her allocation, does her equality impact assessment and realises—this is hypothetical—that she is no longer supporting older people with disabilities in the north-east. How could she go about addressing that? She might be able to get in touch, and then a disability specialist could give advice about how to engage with community groups, about connections or about other projects that have done this. Is that the sort of thing?

Yes, that could be how it works. Really, the power lies more than it did—not entirely, but more than it has in the past—in the expertise we have in our development directors. It is a very different way of working for some people. In Nigeria, they have led the way in working in this way. Obviously, Nigeria is a bigger country; there is a larger team. There is a very valid challenge around how you do this kind of thing in a very small post where you do not have the size and the capacity and you need to work in a slightly different way. It is all about that: being able to prioritise based on the needs of the place rather than our need to feel like we are doing something.

Can I move us along and ask you to hold the needs of the place rather than the needs of FCDO or of the Government in these questions and answers?

Minister, you are describing something that you have not been happy with, and you do not think was working. When do you think you will be in a place where you will be sat in front of us saying that the new structure and community approach are sufficiently developed, and that the idea of wasting money on centrally managed programmes and so on is no longer a concern to you?

I did not say they were not working; this is the feedback I had. It is not that they were not working or were not doing brilliant things—

When do you think you will be being told?

Very soon. I think it is going to take probably a year to get all the communities of expertise completely fully formed, organised and functioning as well as they possibly can. It is not just about building capability here; there is a learning and development need with some teams who have not worked this way in the past, and it is also about building the networks here in the UK. We have a really well-established network in, for example, health with Gates, Wellcome, universities, GSK and all that. With some of the others, it is slightly more complicated, and it might take a bit longer where we are doing something new that we have not done before and we have to build new relationships and partnerships. I am realistic about that, but we should start seeing the benefit very quickly. It means that, in order for posts to be able to make a demand that is based on evidence, they have to get their portfolios completed and signed off. That is starting to happen; Nigeria was one of the early ones.

Their draft was not quite signed off yet. I can talk about what we are doing as well—shall I do that?

Yes.

Minister, I am aware of time.

I will quickly go to two areas: disability and gender mainstreaming. That decision has been taken, and I think that is happening in Nigeria. To what extent are you concerned that funding reductions will impact those two areas—gender and disability?

It should not disproportionately—it will impact it; I am not going to pretend, but not disproportionately. Because so far, the teams are doing a good job with the mainstreaming, our percentage of programming that has gender as a significant or primary factor will increase. That is good.

What it means—it is a good thing to do—is really prioritising down on what we are doing. There are no programmes big enough to tackle 100 million, or half the population of Nigeria. We are just going to focus on the areas where we really think it is going to make the biggest impact. That includes growth, and that is about women’s participation in the economy. It is not just about small programmes that give people small livelihoods; it is how you get women involved in growing the economy in a really significant way. You heard from BII. I think they probably told you about the at least 30% that they are using; that is about access to finance for women and so on—I will not repeat what they may have said. That is on the growth side. On the security side and the humanitarian side, it is about two things. It is about women in peacebuilding—we know that peace last longer if women are involved in it—and it is about protection and safeguarding of women and girls. It means that we are really honing down. On systems building, it is about how you make sure the systems are delivering for women and girls. We are lucky enough at the moment to have a social development adviser who has helped us go right through our portfolio to make sure that we are also going to pull out metrics, so that it does not just disappear into a black hole of goals. We are going to have metrics where we can show what progress we are making. I still have to ask the Minister to sign it off.

You can ask her here. You were talking about gender, but what about disability?

Yes, it is GEDSI—sorry, that is a horrible acronym. Overall, we build all of that in.

When we were in Nigeria, we heard a lot about the Reserved Seats for Women Bill, which the UK Government, through FCDO, has very much supported. What is the progress with that? What difference do you think it will make, should it pass into law?

It is something that we have been pushing really hard on, and it is something that many parts of the Nigerian system are not very comfortable with. It is conservative as far as women in politics is concerned, and you know the statistics. I can say that it has got further than it ever has before, and we will keep pushing on it. Our approach is not that this is coming from us as the UK, but that this is about Nigerian home-grown organisations actually lobbying for it. Civil society and non-governmental organisations are at the forefront of this, not us. We are just helping provide a platform for it.

What do you think its effect would be, should it get into law?

Should it go in, it is special seats for women, so there should be more female representation in the Houses.

It is tiny, isn’t it? Is it 3% or 4%?

It is really small, and there are no female governors—I say that with hesitation as there was one, or there might have been one. It is very small.

It is surprising; of the Nigerian diaspora, every woman I have met is incredibly powerful and articulate, and it is such a modern society. It is an anomaly.

And there are women in business. In the private sector, there are very powerful women all over that.

What conversations has the high commission been having with state governors and lawmakers? We talked about some of it when you were with us, but what is the level of those conversations? I think the requirement was for all the states to effectively agree to the adoption of legislation. What conversations is the high commission having at the minute?

We have public conversations, and we have private conversations. We talk to the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the Administration themselves and the politicians, as well as NGOs and CSOs. They are probably thoroughly sick of us going at it at all levels.

It makes so much difference to a country when you have—even if it is not equality—the proportion of women sat around the table being at a least a third. The impacts that it will have on the economic growth and potential of Nigeria is enormous.

I could not agree more.

When the Foreign Secretary was here with you, Minister, she was very robust on the UK’s continuing wish to stand up for LGBT+ rights around the world. Given that Nigeria is one of the countries where same-sex activity is still criminalised, how are you ensuring that FCDO programming is accessible and responsive to the needs of not just the community but its allies?

I am not passing this to Cynthia because it is too difficult; it is just that she does the programming in Nigeria, so it is probably better for her to answer. On a general point, when we come across this situation, we have to deal with it as best we can. Obviously, we stay completely true to our values throughout, and trying to gently and respectfully—and to good effect—encourage change is an art that our diplomats are, unfortunately, well used to. As far as programming goes, I will hand over to Cynthia.

For all of our programming, we are really clear that it should be accessible to everybody, and we make sure that there are pathways to do that without identifying people. Obviously, people often do not want to identify themselves in these situations. For us, we are clear about what our values are in the programmes, and that our partners understand and extend that through their delivery. We are really clear in our own narrative when we are talking to other politicians and so on. It is really difficult. The last thing we want is to be seen as imposing a set of values from outside, because that often causes a backlash and we do more harm than good, so we choose when we talk privately and when we do not. I shall stop there.

To follow on, in almost neighbouring Ghana, there have been what I would certainly regard as very negative developments. Is there any sign of that sort of movement in Nigeria, in terms of criminalisation going further and more restrictive laws being proposed?

I would say not from the Nigerians.

There are two parts to my question. First, Cynthia, it is lovely to see you again. Thank you so much for looking after us as a team when we came out. WaterAid tells us of cuts to WASH programmes as a result of UK funding cuts. Does the Department—I am specifically thinking of your work in Nigeria—consider WASH programming a priority across Nigeria?

We have had this conversation about scale, IDA and the World Bank and how we could continue to do WASH bilaterally, but it would be a bad use of money, because we are never going to get the infrastructure development we need to provide reliable WASH services for people if we do it that way. We need to leverage and work with the Government to get services that are permanent. That is generally what I think.

That is exactly right. The real question is how we get this at scale, and there are a couple of ways of doing that. One is the World Bank, which has roughly £3 billion-worth of investments, and that includes WASH—they cover education, governance, infrastructure and health. They are the people, along with the Nigerians and domestic financing, who will get it done at scale. With our bilateral programme, we have modelled some of the good practice and that is being taken up by the World Bank, so we are providing that. We have sort of snuck our standards and approach into that.

We saw a very good example of the work you had been doing with the school and clinic we visited, although I appreciate that it probably will not be repeated.

But Cynthia is explaining that that work was done by us. We cannot deliver that to 29,000 schools and health centres across Nigeria, but the World Bank can, and that is what is happening. We are a major funder of IDA, apart from anything else, but the expertise we have been able to use to demonstrate how you do that—the project you saw—is now being scaled. That is the right use of our bilateral money, and that is how you get the benefit to reach far bigger communities. WaterAid was brilliant in that it has been working alongside the World Bank as part of the Water Forward initiative this year. I understand that it is a campaigning organisation too, and it wants to tell us that we should be spending more on WASH, and that is totally fair and legitimate, but what gets lost in translation is that you really make a difference on this by using the MDBs and leverage to deliver this stuff at scale. It is extra great when we put in not just money to the MDBs but our expertise as well. Being able to reach 29,000 facilities is something we could never have done on our own.

The second part of the question is perhaps a challenge. Women and girls bear the biggest burden of poor WASH access. Is that another example of the Department’s rhetoric on prioritising women and girls being undermined?

No—you are not listening, or I am not getting it across very well.

Minister, I think he is listening. He might not understand.

I am obviously failing to get this across. By using our money to model and demonstrate what a good facility looks like, which you went to see and agreed was good, that has now been multiplied many times to reach 29,000 facilities across Nigeria. We could never do that on our own, so I think that is the opposite of turning our backs or forgetting about women and girls. That is enabling our work to reach millions more women and girls. That is what I am trying to say. I am obviously a very poor communicator on this.

And Brian is a very good listener. Globally, we are seeing the impact of the cuts to USAID and now some of the horror stories are coming out, particularly around health. Have you seen any impacts of the reduction of USAID in Nigeria?

Yes, because they were a really large bilateral funder. They were the largest bilateral funder in Nigeria, so obviously with the cuts, there is an impact. I will not comment on US policy, but what I can say is that we as a community are trying to mitigate what we can, together with the Nigerians.

What areas are you needing to put mitigation in?

They were very much in humanitarian, although they have come back into humanitarian in a different way, and health is obviously a big area for USAID. On health, we have Gavi and the Global Fund, and the Nigerian extra input of domestic financing. One of the things we are still working on is how we look across the whole development landscape and take stock of where we are. We cannot fill the gap—it is not possible—but we are looking at what we can do to change the way we do things, which is some of the stuff we have been talking about already. Part of it has also been about civil society and non-governmental organisations, so local partners who used to be part of the scene. We are working on localising as much as possible. For example, through the humanitarian fund, a lot of our funding goes down to local organisations. Again, we are not plugging a gap, but we are trying to find a way to get some robustness and a bit more resilience into the system.

Have their cuts impacted how you are prioritising your funding going forward?

No, in the sense that we—

You have not had to pivot away from something as a consequence.

No. We are really clear that our agreement is with the Nigerians, and we are really clear about the shared priorities around that. We focus on the Nigerian context.

It is just that if, for example—you mentioned health. If the Nigerian Government said that they now have a massive gap in their vaccine distribution, you would not then pivot to cover that gap because the Nigerian Government were asking you for it.

If the Nigerians are saying that something is really important, we will look at it. Health is really important to them, so that is an area we are working on. What we cannot do is fill the gap. That is why we are looking at other ways to do it, including things like manufacturing vaccines. For example, we are helping the Nigerians to look at local production of vaccines and health commodities.

Thank you. Minister, Cynthia, we are very grateful for your time, as ever. We would definitely like to take you up on your offer regarding the integrated security fund, or conflict prevention, atrocity prevention—however we are going to package it. We think that it is one of the big drivers of internally displaced people, and indeed displaced people around the globe. We will be doing our report on Nigeria, which we will get to you hopefully before summer recess. If there are any more specific questions as we draft the report, is it okay if we come back to you with those in writing?

Yes, that would be great.

Thank you very much. Committee members, any additional questions? Sam?

I will need to watch the session back, because otherwise I will end up asking something you have already been asked. It is great to see you, Cynthia—and you, Jen, but I see you all the time. It wasn’t less good to see you.

Sam, that was not quite the avenue I was expecting you to go down. Thank you, everyone.