As Andy Burnham takes office, our Co-CEO Kris Kris Coppock shares what he’s hoping the new government will mean for international development, and for the communities we work alongside across rural Africa (originally featured on LinkedIn).
Today, Britain wakes up to a new Prime Minister. Whatever your politics, moments like this invite us to think about what kind of country we want to be, both at home and in the world.
Andy Burnham arrives in Downing Street with a conviction that has defined his years in Greater Manchester: that the people closest to a problem are usually the people best placed to solve it. He has long argued that change directed from Whitehall rarely sticks, while change built in communities, by communities, almost always does.
That principle isn’t new to us. It has been at the heart of Five Talents’ work for more than two decades, and we’ve seen the difference it makes in savings groups across rural Africa.
We don’t hand out aid. Our work is about harnessing the power of what communities already have. Through savings groups across rural Africa, members learn, earn, save and invest: the groups are run by local people, hosted by local church partners and owned entirely by their members, so when we step back, the work carries on. In Burundi, volunteer facilitators who came through the programme themselves have gone on to form dozens of new groups on their own initiative. That is what locally-led development looks like when it works.
But this new government inherits a difficult legacy in international development.
In early 2025, the UK announced that aid spending would fall from 0.5% to 0.3% of national income by 2027: a reduction of around six billion pounds a year, taking British aid to its lowest level in a generation. This spring, we learned what that means in practice. Bilateral aid to Africa was cut by more than half, with support scaled back across Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi and Rwanda, countries where Five Talents works, and where we see the direct impact of these cuts on remote communities.
Twenty years of this work have shown us what that investment achieves when it is done well, and what is lost when it is withdrawn.
Consider what development funding can do when it flows to locally-led work. In Wandi, South Sudan, literacy among our members has risen from 4% to 76%. Two thirds of members have taken a loan and 71% have started a new business or income-generating activity. Loan repayment rates across our programmes sit at 99%, a figure any high-street bank would envy.
A savings group costs a few pounds per member to establish, and unlike so much spending, it doesn’t need renewing year after year. The capital, the skills and the leadership stay in the community, compounding long after the initial investment ends. Members go on to send their children to school, withstand droughts and shocks, employ their neighbours, and start new groups of their own.
That is what makes these cuts so costly, and reinstating that investment so worthwhile. Restored to communities through savings-led, locally-led approaches, even a fraction of the six billion pounds now leaving the aid budget each year could reach millions of families: not with handouts, but with the tools to build livelihoods that last. Money invested this way isn’t just spent once; it keeps working, in local hands, for generations. It’s hard to think of a better return on investment, for the communities themselves or for the kind of stable, prosperous world Britain has every interest in helping to build.
Our hope for the new Prime Minister is simple: that he brings to Britain’s role in the world the same conviction he has brought to Greater Manchester.
To lead by trusting communities with resources and decisions. Measure success by what endures, and recognise that the surest route out of poverty is not charity handed down from on high, but livelihoods built from within.
The truth is, the women in savings groups are not waiting for Westminster. Last year alone Five Talents supported nearly 60,000 members to learn to read and write, to build micro businesses, adapt their farming to climate change and send their daughters to school. But make no mistake, this fresh start in No.10 is an opportunity to mobilise a new consensus on aid that focuses on this kind of smart investment and empowerment. It is a moment when the UK Government must renew our position as a global leader on development, and show through words and actions how aid can be a smart investment in the national interest; sharing the opportunity for communities themselves to build the economic resilience and stability we all want to see.