On 15 September, Kirsty McNeill sat for her first scrutiny session as Minister for International Development and Africa. Across 78 questions, nobody in the room said digital development, connectivity, or digital public infrastructure. Not the minister, not the permanent under-secretary, not one MP.
Three weeks ago I argued that FCDO had a published 2030 digital commitment and no visible money behind it, and treated that as a budget problem waiting for a budget fix. The transcript of McNeill’s session says something harder.
Digital development is being reclassified out of development, and there is a worked precedent inside the same department for where reclassified sectors end up.
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78 Questions on International Development
McNeill’s oral evidence session ran through Africa, Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ebola, water, education, climate finance, women and girls, children, civil society, communities of expertise, the FCDO restructure, ICAI, and relations with the EU and the US. Nick Dyer, the interim permanent under-secretary, sat alongside her.
The only thing in the digital family that arose came from McNeill in passing. She told the committee the AI Minister is aware of both the potential of AI for development and its risks, and already wants to work with her on it. AI for development is now an offer arriving from another department.
Two answers settled questions that were open when I last wrote.
- On the March allocations, McNeill told the committee they are not up for being reopened, which fixes the Global Tech thematic directorate at £24 million for 2026/27 against total FCDO programme ODA of £6,815 million.
- On direction, she confirmed continuity with Baroness Chapman’s Africa Approach and with the four shifts.
She also gave the government’s answer on Africa. Asked whether the bilateral cuts fall disproportionately on the continent, McNeill said FCDO expects the proportion reaching Africa to hold steady once imputed multilateral spend is counted.
That is a real answer on the Africa total. It is no answer at all on the four digital targets, which no multilateral has agreed to deliver on the UK’s behalf.
Absence from one transcript is weak evidence by itself. The committee sets its own agenda and had a great deal to get through. What gives it weight is that this is the body that checks whether FCDO delivers published commitments, and FCDO has four published digital commitments due in 2030. Nobody asked about any of them.
WASH Went Away First
Brian Mathew MP raised water, describing UK backing for WASH as decimated. Dyer’s reply is the most useful passage in the transcript for anyone working in digital development.
He said that around six years ago FCDO moved away from direct service delivery in water towards strengthening systems and leveraging finance. Then: “We are unapologetic about that.” He went on to describe the World Bank’s Water Forward commitment as where the scale now sits.
Read the sequence.
- Direct service delivery becomes system support.
- Grants become expertise.
- Money gets leveraged through multilaterals.
A decade later an MP tells the department a sector the public actually understands has been gutted, and the department answers that the World Bank is doing it now, and says it would make the same choice again.
Digital development is at the start of that sequence.
Two of the four shifts in the July 2026 modern development approach are service delivery to system support and grants to expertise, in those words. The Digital Development Strategy already routed digital infrastructure through British International Investment and Mobilist before any of this, which we noted at its launch without seeing where it led.
Dyer also told the committee the research programme has been cut by 50%, and that FCDO has shut some of its centrally managed programmes. He did not name the Digital Access Programme, which is centrally managed.
My prediction: within five years, FCDO’s answer on connectivity will be the one it now gives on water, that the World Bank and private capital are handling it.
Digital Went Two Places
Here are three ministers, in one month, issuing three framings of digital technology as:
- A UK export capability.
- A frontier safety problem.
- A cause of loneliness in Britain.
None of them is about a person in a low-income country getting online. So where did digital go?
Trade, at post level.
On 2 September, FCDO commissioned the Siun Community Self-Built Connectivity Hub in Ogun State, one of ten community hubs under the Digital Access Programme, implemented by the Initiative for Digital Inclusion. The FCDO official who spoke was Grace Bell, First Secretary for Economic Partnership. The press statement came from FCDO’s communications lead for Growth, Trade and Investment in Nigeria.
The same week, McNeill opened the UK-Angola Investment Forum and described what the UK brings as “expertise in finance, infrastructure, technology and innovation.” The infrastructure she then listed as already delivered: hospitals, roads, electricity networks, flood defences, and the Lobito Corridor railway. No connectivity.
This was set up in December 2025, when Chapman launched the Africa Approach with seven principles and put digital in the seventh, alongside “music, sport, and design.” In the same speech she backed Mission 300 to reach 300 million people with electricity by 2030. Electricity got a number and a date. Internet access got a policy training programme for diplomats.
Security, at Cabinet level.
On 19 September, McNeill told an audience at SOAS that the digital revolution is “making us sick and it is making us sad”. Then on 22 September, Andy Burnham told the UN General Assembly the UK will put AI at the heart of its G20 presidency, with the leaders’ summit in Manchester in November 2027.
The next day Ed Miliband addressed the Security Council on AI, setting out safety testing, transparency from AI companies, and resilience, and citing the AI Security Institute. The harms he named were jobs, child protection, cyber security, biosecurity, national security and financial stability.
The ICT4D Efforts Left Out
The GSMA, with FCDO funding, reports that 96% of the world lives inside mobile broadband coverage while 3.1 billion people still do not use it. Handset cost, digital skills, and content people can actually use are what hold that gap open.
Neither frontier AI safety standards, nor investment partnerships close it, because operators have already priced those users and walked away. The four DDS targets sit exactly in the space between the two agendas the UK has chosen.
The Digital Access Programme is still working that space. Its programme record runs to 31 March 2030 and hubs are operating in Kaduna, Kwara, Abia and Ogun. The delivery continues. What has gone is anyone in London who is accountable for whether it adds up to 20 countries.
My Four Predictions for FCDO
Three weeks ago I predicted the UK’s G20 presidency would centre on debt architecture. Nope. Burnham announced an AI agenda that contains no connectivity, no DPI, and no low-income-country capability.
Here are four more predictions I make with a heavy heart:
- The Digital Development Strategy will not be withdrawn or replaced. It will reach 2030 with no progress report published against its four targets.
- No Digital Access Programme successor phase will be announced from London. Hub openings will continue to be announced by High Commissions.
- Connectivity and DPI will appear in UK G20 workstreams as adjacent to the AI standards agenda, with no ODA allocation attached.
- Within five years, FCDO’s public position on connectivity will match its current position on water.
I only wish someone had asked a seventy-ninth question: what is to become of FCDO’s digital development efforts now?
