Britain is planning to spend £217 million pounds in Africa, with the wave of refugee influx and illegal immigrants from Africa and Middle east escalating.

An additional £100 million will be spent on Syria refugees.

International Development Secretary Justine Greening announced this today, unveiling a programme of spending that shows very myopic understanding of the problems making Africans emigrate to Europe.

In Nigeria for instance, Britain plans to spend £4million pounds on 75,000 IDPs, in Nigeria’s north east, areas ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. But over 99 per cent of Nigerians emigrating illegally to Europe are from the southern part of Nigeria, least troubled by Boko Haram.

The new support for Africa includes £30million in support for over 580,000 South Sudanese refugees – providing emergency assistance to stop them making the journey north to Libya and across the Mediterranean to Italy and Greece.

An extra £18 million will be spent on people fleeing the conflict in Central African Republic, including 170,000 refugees living in Cameroon, helping them to meet their basic needs and build their own livelihoods.

Some £38.7million will be spent to support vulnerable people in Sudan.

An extra £15 million will be sent to Kenya for the 533,000 refugees living in camps – helping to provide food, water and sanitation.

She said the growing migrant crisis in Calais was proof that ‘the world’s problems touch our lives here in Britain’.

She said the alternative to spending international aid was ‘ever-growing migrant flows’ into Europe and Britain.

Ms Greening said the aid programmes targeted on Africa would help 2.5million refugees in the countries that the majority of migrants are travelling though.
This aid will be spent in South Sudan, Kenya, Sudan, Central African Republic and Nigeria.

Ms Greening said Britain needed to spend money in Africa making it more attractive for people to stay – ‘using international development to reduce the numbers seeking a better life in Europe’.

She said: ‘We have to tackle instability and lack of opportunity in the world’s most vulnerable countries, from Sudan to Syria, Nigeria to Lebanon, if we are to get to grips with the problems causing people to flee their homes.