A statement from Ven Nyamondo, CEO, Chance for Childhood.
For children with disabilities, inclusion does not happen automatically. It is built through deliberate investment in accessible schools, trained teachers, assistive technology, rehabilitation services and community support. When that investment is withdrawn, children with disabilities are disproportionately affected.
Chance for Childhood works with children living with disabilities across Ghana, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. Every day, we see how disability-inclusive programming enables children to access education, healthcare and opportunities that would otherwise remain out of reach.
Yesterday, Andy Burnham took office as Prime Minister. He inherits decisions that were made before he arrived, but they are now his to act on. Among them is the UK government’s plan to reduce overseas development spending from 0.5% to 0.3% of its Gross National Income. Bilateral aid to Africa is set to fall from £1.6 billion to under £700 million, with nine African countries losing more than 80% of their direct UK bilateral aid. Five of those nine are countries where Chance for Childhood works: Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.
There are an estimated 240 million children with disabilities worldwide, nearly 70 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. They remain among those most likely to be excluded from education and other essential services. They are not automatically reached when general services are funded. They are reached because programmes are deliberately designed to remove the barriers they face.
What these cuts represent in practice are the services that help a child enter school, communicate with their teacher, receive rehabilitation after an assessment or access equipment that makes learning possible.
When aid budgets are reduced, disability-inclusive programmes are especially affected. They are treated as specialist, niche services that can simply be absorbed into broader reductions. They cannot. When that support disappears, many of the children it was designed to reach are left without services that are rarely replaced.
The UK government has acknowledged this risk in its own Equality Impact Assessments. Its 2025/26 assessment explicitly identified adverse impacts on children with disabilities, including in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Chance for Childhood delivers programmes. The most recent assessment, covering the period when the deeper cuts take effect, provides less detail rather than more. The detail provided has become less specific even as the cuts have become more significant.
What makes this particularly difficult to reconcile is that the UK has positioned itself as a global leader on disability inclusion . The FCDO’s Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy, which runs until 2030, commits the UK to embedding disability inclusion across its diplomatic and development work. At the 2025 Global Disability Summit, the UK announced a $60 million assistive technology investment vehicle under the AT2030 program and assumed the co-chair of the Global Action on Disability Network. These commitments were made recently, and with the expectation that they would be honoured. Cutting the bilateral funding that helps turn those commitments into reality, in the countries where that support is needed most, is a contradiction the new government needs to address.
We are calling on Prime Minister Burnham and the new government to take two steps.
First, ensure disability-inclusive programming is explicitly protected from blanket reductions to bilateral aid, recognising disability-specific support as essential rather than optional.
Second, honour the commitments the UK has already made on disability inclusion, particularly through the FCDO’s Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy and the pledges made at the 2025 Global Disability Summit. Those commitments must be backed by the funding and political will needed to deliver them.
Chance for Childhood will continue working alongside children with disabilities regardless of how the aid landscape changes. But government decisions have real consequences. Disability inclusion cannot be a flagship policy in London and an optional extra when budgets tighten.
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Bukky Smith, Communications Manager