Britain spends three times more aid on housing refugees than it sends to Africa

Foreign Office figures show aid to Africa fell to 1.1bn in 2022, compared with 3.7bn of budget spent on refugees in UK

The UK spent more than three times its overseas aid budget on housing refugees in Britain than on helping to alleviate poverty in Africa in 2022, figures from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office show.

The official provisional figures for 2022 show that spending on refugees increased from 597m in 2020 to 1bn in 2021 and reached 3.7bn in 2022. No other major country in the world is cutting its mainstream aid budget to cover the cost of housing refugees in this way, said the aid campaign group Bond.