The UK’s Digital Development Strategy 2024 to 2030 is still live on GOV.UK. Four years from its deadline, I cannot find a published pound behind it.
The comfortable reading in our sector is that the strategy survived. Nobody withdrew it. We covered its launch as a real step forward, and in my reading it remains the most specific digital development strategy any bilateral donor has put in writing.
Partner governments built plans around it: the strategy documents UK technical assistance behind Nigeria’s National Broadband Plan and support to Kenya’s telecom regulator on its Universal Service Fund. A strategy that has not been rescinded is, by the usual logic, a strategy still in force.
That logic assumes the money follows the paper. In this case the paper is four years old and the money has been reallocated twice since.
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The Strategy Is 3 Governments Old
The foreword is signed by Andrew Mitchell, Minister for Development and Africa in a Conservative government. GOV.UK carries its own banner on the page: published under the 2022 to 2024 Sunak Conservative government. The page’s political status is classified as historic, which is a routine label, not a withdrawal.
Since Mitchell signed it, four people have held the development brief. Mitchell, then Anneliese Dodds, who resigned in February 2025 over the cut from 0.5% to 0.3% of GNI, then Jenny Chapman, and now Kirsty McNeill, appointed in July 2026 by Andy Burnham’s government and, unlike her predecessor, not attending Cabinet.
The strategy’s parent document has also gone. The DDS says explicitly that it takes forward the digital approach set out in the 2023 white paper on international development.
That white paper has been overtaken by the modern development approach FCDO published in July 2026, which names three spending priorities: humanitarian, health, and climate and nature, underpinned by economic development.
Digital is not one of them. It does not appear as a priority anywhere in that paper, which was written in the same year FCDO’s bilateral aid to Africa was cut by 56% against 2024/25 levels.
So we have a strategy whose author’s government is gone, whose minister is gone, and whose framing document has been replaced. It is still the operative statement of UK policy on digital development because FCDO has not issued another one.
Four Targets Are Still Expected
The DDS commits the UK to four specific, countable things by 2030:
- Support at least 20 partner countries to reduce their digital divides by an average of 50%, halving their connectivity gap.
- Support at least 20 partner countries to transform national digital service delivery through improved digital public infrastructure.
- Create or scale at least 8 responsible AI research labs at African universities, and help at least 10 partner countries build AI regulatory frameworks.
- Support at least 50 million women and girls to participate safely and meaningfully in the digital world.
These are good targets. They are specific, they name a number, and they are the kind of commitment that can be marked wrong. That is exactly what makes their current status worth asking about.
March 2026 Funding Allocations
FCDO’s ODA programme allocations for 2026/27 to 2028/29 contain five tables. Digital development appears in exactly one line.
The Global Tech thematic directorate receives £24 million in 2026/27, £22 million in 2027/28 and £24 million in 2028/29. That is £70 million across three years, against total FCDO programme ODA of £6,815 million in the first year alone.
Set that against a single existing commitment. FCDO’s flagship AI for Development programme, AI4D, is a £53 million FCDO contribution within a £63.6 million partnership with Canada’s IDRC, running to 31 March 2029. Its most recent published annual review scored it A+.
Is FCDO Now Going All-in on AI?
FCDO’s Global Tech directorate is allocated £70 million across three years. Its flagship AI programme alone is a £53 million commitment running through the same period.
Two caveats, both of which FCDO supplies and both of which cut in awkward directions.
First, the statement’s footnotes say thematic directorate allocations do not capture all ODA spent against a theme, because country and regional programmes deliver against themes too. That is true, and it is also the problem: country and regional programmes are precisely where the deepest cuts land.
Second, I cannot confirm that AI4D sits inside the Global Tech line rather than under Research and Analysis or the Global Research and Technology Development portfolio. FCDO has not published the mapping, and it has not published a consolidated digital figure since the last time we tried to assemble one.
If AI4D sits in Global Tech, one programme absorbs roughly half of it. If it sits elsewhere, FCDO has still not shown us where digital money lives. Either way, no digital-specific allocation exists in the published tables. The connectivity target, the DPI target and the women and girls target have no visible line at all.
Where Are the Delivery Vehicles?
The DDS names its instruments.
- It says the UK will deliver a new phase of the Digital Access Programme to spread DAP evidence and innovations to further partner countries.
- It says the UK will continue with GSMA through a new phase of the Mobile for Development programme.
- It says the UK will develop a new DPI knowledge-management project, and a new Digital Sustainability Programme.
DAP’s DevTracker record still lists the programme as in implementation with a planned end date of 31 March 2030. The strategy reports DAP had reached 10.2 million people across 3,282 communities, facilitated 102 policy or regulatory reforms, and helped five partner countries cut their digital gap by over 26%. That is a working programme with published results, which is rarer in our sector than it should be.
What I cannot find is any announcement of the new DAP phase, the new M4D phase, the DPI project or the sustainability programme. Searches of GOV.UK, FCDO press releases, DevTracker and the ITU partnership page in August 2026 turned up no launch, no procurement notice, and no budget line for any of the four.
That is a negative finding, not proof. Procurement can be quiet. Programmes get designed for eighteen months before anyone publishes. I am stating what the search found and did not find, and leaving the inference where it belongs.
Did FDCO Abandon Digital Development?
I cannot document that FCDO has abandoned the 2030 digital targets. No minister has said so. No revision has been published. The strategy sits on GOV.UK looking exactly as it did in March 2024.
What I can document is this. The strategy is live. Its four targets are unchanged. The published allocations contain one digital line worth £70 million over three years, most or all of which may already be committed to a single AI programme. Its named delivery vehicles have no announced successor phases. And the policy paper that now frames UK development spending does not mention digital as a priority.
A withdrawn strategy would be more honest than this.
When a donor withdraws a commitment, partner governments replan. When a donor leaves a commitment standing with no money behind it, ministries in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana and Rwanda write national digital plans that cite UK support, budget against it, and discover the gap at implementation. I have watched that specific failure mode play out enough times to recognise the setup.
What FCDO Should Publish
Three things, and none of them requires new money.
- State whether the four DDS 2030 targets stand. If they stand, publish the allocation. If they do not, say so and let partner ministries replan.
- Publish where digital development sits in the March 2026 allocations. Which directorates, which country programmes, what total. The footnote saying thematic lines do not capture everything is only acceptable if FCDO shows what the everything is.
- Publish the status of the four named DDS delivery vehicles: the next DAP phase, the next GSMA Mobile for Development phase, the DPI project and the Digital Sustainability Programme. Launched, delayed, cancelled. Three words each would do.
Four targets, four years, one line in the budget. Which of the four survives?
