The UK’s Approach to Africa, developed in 2025 under former Foreign Secretary David Lammy following consultations with African partners, outlines a pragmatic vision for partnership in which trade and investment links take centre stage.
This ambition reflects an acknowledgement of Africa’s increasing economic and strategic weight. With expanding consumer markets, significant long-term growth potential and a central role in future supply chains, the continent has become an arena for intensifying global competition.
However, the Approach remains a framework for engagement rather than a full strategic reset of UK-Africa relations. And Africa is unlikely to be among new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first foreign policy priorities. Burnham also faces a challenging fiscal environment, with the government’s latest spending plans reducing bilateral funding for African countries to help finance higher defence spending.
Yet Africa is an area where relatively modest strategic delivery and a clearer approach could yield significant political and economic dividends for the UK over the long term. Burnham’s government needs to define a clear ambition for the UK’s engagement with Africa and translate it into a credible, differentiated offer that advances both African priorities and UK interests.
For the UK to meaningfully contribute to the realization of Africa’s economic potential, it needs a more joined-up approach. This should combine sharp commercial strategy, new outreach to business leaders and investors, and existing work across multiple government departments to produce investment opportunities.
Germany’s more integrated, trade-oriented approach offers a useful lesson. It links development finance, industrial policy and private sector mobilization – as seen in the ‘Marshall Plan with Africa’. Rather than a single programme, this framework has underpinned various reform partnerships with select African countries, combining policy reforms with targeted finance to improve the investment climate and attract private capital to those countries. Its emphasis on reform incentives, investment promotion and coordinated financing demonstrates the value of a clearer government-wide offer to businesses and African partners.
Rather than replicating Germany’s model, the UK can adopt its underlying discipline: setting sharper priorities, strengthening cross-government coordination and presenting a business-oriented offer focused on areas where UK and African countries’ interests align.
Critical minerals offer a clear example. Resource-rich countries, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Namibia and others, are seeking to move beyond the extraction of raw resources towards greater industrial development and value creation. The UK and its partners are looking to build more resilient supply chains for minerals that are essential to the energy transition and emerging technologies, as set out in the UK Critical Minerals Strategy. This alignment of interests presents an opportunity: not simply to secure access to resources for the UK, but to build partnerships that support investment, skills development, infrastructure and local economic transformation.
The UK can also make more strategic use of its public finance institutions and multilateral partnerships to mobilize private investment. UK Export Finance (its export credit agency), British International Investment (its development finance institution), and related instruments can help de-risk projects, boost co-financing and support commercially viable investments that might otherwise stall. At the same time, harnessing the depth of the City of London’s financial markets and asset managers will be essential to turning these investment pipelines into large-scale capital flows for African infrastructure, energy and industrial projects.
The Simandou 2040 programme in Guinea demonstrates the potential of this approach: a UK Export Finance guarantee of £1.8 billion is supporting a portfolio of infrastructure projects aligned with the Simandou iron ore development, helping to catalyse wider international investment in transport, energy and administrative modernization.
Fiscal realities have already made it necessary for the UK to pursue more selective engagement. The UK government’s latest spending plans amount to a 52 per cent reduction in regional bilateral aid to Africa over the next three years as part of wider cuts to fund higher defence spending. These changes will drastically impact long-term programming and are likely to affect the perceptions of the UK’s commitment on the continent.
Yet they do not represent a total disengagement. The UK has maintained strategic partnerships with regional heavyweights including Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. It remains active on Sudan through humanitarian assistance and diplomacy. It has also continued security and stabilization engagement in conflict-affected regions through instruments such as the Integrated Security Fund.
The UK’s credibility as a partner will ultimately depend on whether it is seen to follow through on its stated plans. This in turn requires preserving the diplomatic capacity needed to understand political developments, identify opportunities and maintain trusted relationships across the continent. Recent budget pressures and organizational changes have already constrained aspects of the UK’s presence in Africa. Further reductions to diplomatic missions should be avoided; they would weaken the in-country expertise, trade and investment capacity, and trusted networks that underpin effective commercial engagement.
As engagement becomes increasingly economic, now is also the time to decisively move past the traditional framing of Africa through a primarily development lens. Africa requires political attention in its own right. A ministerial structure that separates Africa from development responsibilities – supported by a dedicated Africa adviser to the Prime Minister – would strengthen cross-government coordination and signal that the UK views African countries as strategic partners.
Beyond bilateral economic interests, the UK can be an important partner for African countries in international forums, working alongside them to advance their priorities. This includes supporting African ambitions for global governance reform, greater representation in multilateral institutions and a stronger African voice in organizations such as the G20. The UK’s upcoming G20 presidency in 2027 provides a timely opportunity to demonstrate that commitment and advance shared priorities.
Technical cooperation remains another area of comparative advantage. Support for public financial management, taxation, digital governance and project preparation often delivers greater long-term value than headline funding alone because it responds directly to African priorities and strengthens the foundations for sustainable growth.
The UK’s future standing in Africa will depend not only on where it chooses to engage, but on how effectively it harnesses the expertise, networks and capabilities already present across government, academia, think-tanks, business and civil society. Better connecting these assets can help create a more coordinated and strategic offer.
Soft power remains an important part of this equation, but increasingly exercised through practical cooperation rather than traditional influence-building. Education, professional exchanges, research partnerships and institutional cooperation can build trust and sustain relationships over the long-term.
Selective support for conflict prevention and resolution, including mediation efforts in Sudan, needs to remain an essential part of the UK’s approach, alongside sustained humanitarian engagement. A credible partner must continue to support countries and communities facing acute crises, even while making difficult choices elsewhere.
The UK will also need to work more effectively with others. In a more multi-polar geopolitical environment, this means deeper cooperation with European partners, Gulf states, Asian partners and multilateral institutions. It also means recognizing the significant economic role played in Africa by China and the need to engage pragmatically where interests align.
Rather than seeking to compete at scale, the UK’s value will lie in its ability to convene, connect and add value through partnerships that support African priorities. In an era of constrained resources and intensifying geopolitical competition, breadth of engagement alone is an increasingly unreliable marker of success. The true measure of the UK’s relevance in Africa will be the quality, reliability and long-term impact of these partnerships.
Tighisti Amare is Director, Africa Programme, Chatham House, London. Chathamhouse.org first published this article.
