• World’s finance and development ministers gather in Washington D.C. to discuss pressing international development issues at Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and IMF.
• UK Development Minister to announce funding to boost women’s economic and social empowerment in speech on priorities for gender equality.
• UK to send two female governors to the World Bank Group and IMF Annual Meetings for the first time.

The UK’s Development Minister Anneliese Dodds will arrive at the World Bank Group and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington D.C. today [23 October] for a series of engagements focused on advancing gender equality.

It will mark the Minister’s first time attending in her capacity as the UK’s Governor to the World Bank Group. Her visit coincides with Chancellor Reeves attending the IMF Annual Meetings, marking the first time for the UK to send two female governors to the Meetings.

In a speech at the conference tomorrow [24 October], the Minister will outline her priorities for gender equality and announce a £7.5 million investment over the next two years, and continued support beyond that, in the World Bank’s Umbrella Facility for Gender Equality (UFGE). The facility supports the generation of high-quality data and evidence to address gender inequality and boost women’s economic and social empowerment.

The UFGE, which has received funding from the UK since 2012, has, for example, benefitted half a million women in Rwanda who were found to be losing rights over land due to not having marriage certificates. In Nigeria, the programme funded research on the benefits of cash transfers, which the government used to inform the expansion of its national livelihoods programme, covering more than 4 million vulnerable households.

The new funding will enable the UK’s support to the UFGE to expand beyond Africa into Asia and the Pacific and support the development of new methods to collect and use gender data, including through the adoption of AI technology.

The UK’s Development Minister Anneliese Dodds said: 

My mission is to help create a world free from poverty, on a livable planet, for all. Women and girls are at the heart of this.

Britain is back with a voice on the world stage. We are playing a leading role with the World Bank to improve the lives of women and girls around the world.

The funding announced today will deliver projects that will have an enormous impact on the lives and economic situations of women and girls across the globe and drive economic growth.

This year’s Meetings come as the World Bank Group and IMF celebrate their 80th founding anniversary and will bring together finance and development ministers from all over the world to agree joint approaches to addressing pressing international development issues.

Minister Dodds’ attendance follows a keynote speech at Chatham House, in which she outlined her vision for a modern approach to international development.

Over the course of the Annual Meetings, the Minister will also host an event on conflict prevention, bringing together ministers from the Global South, international financial institutions, humanitarian actors, and academics, to discuss how the World Bank Group and IMF can work better in an increasingly fragile world.