International development: funding schemes - letter from Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development - Scot Gov
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Letter from the Minister for Culture, Europe and International Development, Neil Gray MSP, to the Convenor for the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee, Clare Adamson MSP.
Dear Convenor,
Scottish Government –international development – funding schemes
With reference to the Committee’s recent report of your inquiry into the Scottish Government’s international work, in his letter to the Committee of 6 June, Cabinet Secretary Angus Robertson has provided a written response to the issues raised therein.
That written response provided information on a range of questions and matters raised by the Committee, including in relation to the Scottish Government’s international development work. In relation to the Committee’s interest in our funding schemes under our International Development Fund (“IDF”), the Cabinet Secretary had indicated in his letter that we would provide that information separately. This letter therefore responds specifically to the Committee’s particular interest in understanding the breakdown between, and rationale for, current international development grants as between competitive and non-competitive grants. In that regard, I have broken down our grants as falling into 4 broad categories:
1. Competitively awarded grants (c58% in financial year 2021-22)
2. Non-competitively awarded grants – core funding to networking organisations
3. Non-competitively awarded grants to public institutions/match funding
4. Non-competitively awarded grants (Covid specific)
As set out to members in the recent Parliamentary debate on this topic, the large part of our IDF funding has continued to be awarded competitively.
At present, for example, as the Cabinet Secretary explained in his letter, even as we are programming for 2023+, we have continued to support so far as possible through the pandemic our three African country development programmes in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda to their planned conclusion. All of these cohorts of projects were awarded competitively, the Rwanda and Zambia projects in 2017 and our Malawi projects in 2018. All are now running until 2023.
We also have an ongoing co-funding arrangement with Comic Relief as another donor, providing pooled funding for our joint Levelling the Field 2 programme. We have worked collaboratively with Comic Relief since 2012 on a series of programmes, with our joint funding arrangement providing a leverage of our own contribution. We set out pooled funding approaches with other donors in our 2016 Strategy, as one of our ongoing ways of working.
The focus of our joint funding in Levelling the Field II (2021-24) has been using Sport for Change approaches to fund small civil society organisations (CSOs) in-country to: ensure women and girls and safe, equal and respected; and promote women and girls’ decision-making power and inclusion. As part of our co-funding agreement, Comic Relief run the competitive funding rounds for Levelling the Field 2, with local CSOs in our 3 African partner countries invited to apply directly through this competitive process for small project grants.
Last year (financial year 2021-22), our spend on our above Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda programmes totalled £5,187,905. Our contribution to our Levelling the Field 2 Women’s Empowerment Programme via Comic Relief was £591,667. Therefore total funding of £5,779,572 was awarded competitively to a range of organisations for projects in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda (just under 58% of our total IDF). It should be noted that this percentage is smaller than normal, due to the Covid impact on our programme since March 2020, and in previous years would have been around 65%. Funds released due to Covid were re-allocated, as set out below (at 4. non-competitively awarded grants (Covid-specific)).
As I had set out in my letter of 2 March to the Committee, supporting global citizenship in Scotland has remained a key focus for our programme.
Therefore, in financial year 2021-22, we provided core funding to: Scotland’s International Development Alliance; the Scotland Malawi Partnership and its sister organisation the Malawi Scotland Partnership; the Scottish Fair Trade Forum; and we also co-fund with Education the Development Education Centres (DECs) in Scotland. The total core funding represents 8% of our £10m IDF, allocated annually in core funding to a range of civil society networking bodies to support global citizenship/grass roots organisations in Scotland.
These networking organisations have been funded to date on a non-competitive basis, as a legacy of initial funding arrangements from 2005 onwards. This is a historic arrangement.
Two further key areas where, over the last 6 years, we have also continued to award funding from the IDF on a non-competitive basis in line with our 2016 Strategy, are:
We also have a project with Beyond Borders, a Scottish based NGO which has a unique skillset in delivering a UN Security Council Resolution 1325 Fellowships Programme.
All of the above received IDF funding in financial year 2021-22 on a non-competitive basis, in light of each of their specific expertise.
Finally, due to the Covid outbreak and need to support our partner countries quickly and effectively we awarded two strategic grant agreements in financial year 2021-22:
I hope that the Committee finds this further information on IDF funding helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Gray
T: 0300 244 4000
E: scottish.ministers@gov.scot
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