This article was originally published on Devex. Read it here.
In 2018, British NGO Street Child of Sierra Leone, or SCoSL, came to head teacher Samuel Koroma’s* primary school in Sierra Leone. The U.K. government-funded education improvement project renovated his school, provided teacher training for Koroma and his team, and set up income-generating activities that ensured parents could afford to educate their children.
Over four years, SCoSL’s Right to Learn supported more than 20,600 children to enter education in Sierra Leone and built or renovated classrooms in 40 rural primary schools. But the project has become a casualty of aid cuts from the U.K.’s Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office, which has begun to wind down investment in its former colony.
“Britain has been the big donor in Sierra Leone,” said Street Child U.K. CEO Tom Dannatt — for all NGOs in the country, not just his own. He founded Street Child in Sierra Leone in 2008 and expanded it to more than 20 low-income and disaster-affected countries.
SCoSL Country Director Kelfa Kargbo told Devex over the phone that, despite 13 years of partnership with FCDO — and before that, the Department for International Development, or DfID, which merged with another department to become FCDO in 2020 — from January next year, it will receive zero FCDO funding. That nixes about 65% of the organization’s total budget, Kargbo said, and he expects he will have to lay off up to 30% of his local staff. “It will have a devastating effect on access to education and for out-of-school children. We are now not able to reach the great number of remote communities that need our support.”
This year, FCDO begins a gradual transition towards reducing total official development assistance from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3% by 2027. FCDO’s annual report noted that its foreign aid spend for Sierra Leone fell by 46% this year, from £29.7 million ($39 million) in 2024-2025 to £16 million ($21 million) in 2025-26 — a steeper drop than any other African nation. The FCDO’s global budget for “education, gender & equality” fell by 42%.
Devex contacted FCDO to request specific education budget figures for Sierra Leone for these years, but the department did not provide them. However, its own equality impact assessment of ODA allocations concluded that with in-year reductions to education spend envisaged in Sierra Leone would likely have “adverse impacts on children.”
The income-generating activities implemented by SCoSL, such as seed banks at schools like Koroma’s, have helped such educational facilities become financially self-sufficient, Kargbo said. In this example, the NGO provides seeds to families, who must return an equal number of seeds the following year, plus extra seeds as interest. The school sells these at market rate and uses the profit to pay teachers’ salaries and fund school repairs. The crops grown also support families and teachers.
Lamin Foday, SCoSL project coordinator in Kenema district, told Devex that as long as the seed scheme is well managed, it can sustain the school even if the NGO needs to withdraw support. However, he cautioned that climate change had negatively impacted harvests in recent years, complicating the situation.
“There is no chance in the short- to medium-term of the type of funding we have enjoyed over the years coming back,” Street Child founder Dannatt told Devex. He said he hopes to attract new philanthropic and private sector funders by emphasizing the organization’s focus on emergency response, rather than education. He has been able to replace some of the lost FCDO budget for Sierra Leone with investment from the Qatari foundation Educate A Child and the German Agency for International Cooperation, GIZ — but said it is impossible to replace the funding “backbone” FCDO formerly provided.
Dannatt claimed that since 2013, when SCoSL first received British aid, it had “made a very material impact on well north of 100,000 children.”
“When we say as a country: ‘We don't want to do that anymore’, people can make their own judgment, but certainly I feel that's sad and bad,” he said.
Dannatt said income-generating projects mean some of SCoSL’s impact can continue without FCDO funding. SCoSL said it will have to replace family business grants — which offer families financial support to start small enterprises and develop a steady income, allowing their children to stay in school — with loans that generate interest to cover operating costs.
FCDO told Devex that it plans to continue its partnership with the Ministry of Education in Sierra Leone. Partnering with Mott MacDonald, FCDO put £45 million ($59.6 million) toward the Sierra Leone Secondary Education Improvement Programme, or SSEIP, starting in 2016, and launched a follow-up in 2022 with a reduced budget of £25 million ($33 million). However, an education insider in Sierra Leone told Devex the program had lost FCDO funding and sourced a replacement investment from the Mastercard Foundation. Neither Mott MacDonald nor Mastercard responded to Devex’s requests for confirmation of this. Devex reported in October that Mott MacDonald had wound down its development arm. As a result, it is unclear how FCDO will continue its work with the Sierra Leone government.
Meanwhile, the same source suggested FCDO will not replace its in-country education adviser Kate Jefferies when she leaves next year. FCDO did not respond to requests for clarity on this point. But it did say it was working through detailed decisions on how the ODA budget would be used, and that it planned to publish indicative allocations for the next three years in the coming months.
“Since 2016, the U.K. has been delivering programmes to improve classroom learning for over 1.1 million children in Sierra Leone, including girls and children with disabilities,” an FCDO spokesperson wrote by email, adding that “we’re committed to driving investments in education systems around the world to ensure no child is left behind.”
Koroma hopes the funding cuts will not leave his school behind. He finds it hard to accept that SCoSL may have to withdraw. “The school structure needs maintenance and we need learning materials,” he said. “I’m not sure if the government will help. We are pleading to this organization to continue supporting the school.”