It’s disappointing that Theresa May appeared to miss a major opportunity this week, when boosting trade with Nigeria (Report, 30 August). The UK should also be encouraging increased investment of Nigerian government revenue towards cutting-cases and deaths from easily preventable diseases like malaria, and boosting health systems. Nigeria has the highest malaria death burden in the world, with more than 100,000 people losing their lives last year. Children under five and pregnant women are at particularly high risk. It is impossible to separate the issue of trade from the issue of healthier nations, when malaria traps people in poverty, prevents children from attending school and costs Africa more than £8bn and as much as 1.3% of GDP every year in the worst affected countries.

The Commonwealth heads of government meeting earlier this year made an important pledge to halve malaria in the Commonwealth by 2023 and put the world on a path toward ending this deadly disease. UK aid and leadership has a vital role to play. As the UK continues as Commonwealth chair-in-office for the next 18 months, the government has important opportunities to push for bolder action to tackle malaria with Commonwealth counterparts. It must use them.

Catherine West MP

Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green; vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on malaria

• The PM’s visit to Africa was well timed. Africa continues to be the poorest continent in the world with 47% of people living on $1.90 or less a day. Poverty is actually rising in the three countries May has been visiting this week – and these are some of the richer ones in Africa.

Yes, economic growth is an integral part of international development. But for the PM to deliver her promises on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and economic growth for all, she must genuinely commit to lifting the barriers that prevent people from escaping poverty, allowing them to seize economic opportunities. This means not binding British aid to our post-Brexit economic needs, and ensuring it is wholeheartedly aimed at those most in need – without the expectation of receiving anything in return.

The PM is right. Foreign aid works. But aid that prioritises economic development at whatever cost to the environment or the world’s poorest people doesn’t work, and time and time again research and evidence have proven this point. Moves towards using the aid budget more favourably for businesses rather than the poorest and most marginalised risk exacerbating poverty and inequality.

For aid to help boost economic growth we need transparent and principled investment, where companies embrace their wider responsibilities to the societies in which they operate. This must include ensuring women’s economic empowerment and inclusion of those with disabilities in the workforce, as well as green and decent jobs.

Claire Godfrey

Head of policy and campaigns, Bond (which represents 450 of the UK’s international development NGOs)

• Theresa May is right to say the UK should be immensely proud of its record on aid and development cooperation. And, in particular, proud to be the only G7 country to achieve and maintain the longstanding 0.7% GNI target for aid. The PM is also correct in saying that aid works and that using our development spending to combat extreme poverty and other global challenges is furthering the UK’s vital national interests.

As our development programme is reoriented to deliver even better on the pledge of a global economy that works for everyone, the UK should build on its record on transparency and commitment to accountability. It should lead a new effort to encourage every government, every business and every NGO to measure exactly how it is delivering for the poorest 20%.

The PM points to growing inequality in and between countries and to citizens’ fears that they will be left behind. As she recommits the UK to delivering on the SDGs, it is worth emphasising that SDG 10 on reducing inequality requires faster-than-average growth for the poorest. This is vital if we are to help close the still-growing gap between rich and poor.

Some will argue that an aid programme that works for the UK is incompatible with aid that helps the poorest. But the Department for International Development’s record, plus the external scrutiny of the OECD development assistance committee and the UK International Development Act, provide additional safeguards on the poverty focus of UK aid. But these backstops would be greatly enhanced if DfID insisted that every department and every organisation spending UK aid gathers disaggregated data on exactly how benefits are distributed across the population (are the poorest 20% getting a fair share?).

It is time to get beyond simple assertions of commitment to inclusive growth – and actually measure how rights, services, goods, and opportunities are being delivered to every citizen.

Judith Randel and Tony German

Evercreech, Somerset

• I can’t help feeling there is something bitterly ironic about Theresa May’s trip to Africa. After centuries of British colonial exploitation and imperialistic policy she is now going cap in hand to those same people in the hope that they will help us out of a gigantic mess of our own making – a mess that arguably has significant roots in post-colonial attitudes. Who could blame any of them if they politely but firmly told her to go away.

Ken Abbott

Portishead, Somerset

• Does Theresa May think that all Africans will simply forget that she appointed a blatantly racist foreign secretary (Boris Johnson)? Does May think that her embarrassing shuffling will cause black Africans to forget that while she was home secretary she was responsible for the racist miasma that led to the Windrush scandal ruining the lives of the descendants of African slaves who came to Britain in the 50s and 60s?

Amanda Baker

Edinburgh

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