Memorandum submitted by British Council
on the closure of British Council Country Directorates
As a result of an extensive review of our operations
world-wide the British Council has come to the decision to close
operations in Belarus, Ecuador, Lesotho and Swaziland. The decision
forms part of a five-year strategy to re-align the British Council's
global operations.
BELARUS
The reasons for the closure of the British Council
in Belarus are twofold. First, the Belarusian authorities were
pressing the Council to regularise its status. The range of possibilities
open to the Council to resolve the problem was not great, and
all came with significantly increased cost or with reduced ability
to achieve impact, or both. The second reason is that as part
of the strategy for the next five years the Council considered
the resourcing of the operation in Belarus against two key criteria—the
importance of the country to the UK and the Council's ability
to achieve impact. The relative lack of importance of Belarus
to this country meant that the Council could not sustain an argument
for increasing its funding. The environment created by the regime
severely limited the Council's ability to achieve impact widely.
Given these factors the British Council decided to reallocate
the grant-in-aid funds for Belarus to higher priorities and to
close the operation.
ECUADOR
The decision to close the British Council's
directorate in Ecuador has been taken on the basis that Ecuador's
importance to the UK is rated as low by the FCO and that the impact
that the Council can achieve with limited resources is restricted.
The Teaching Centre has been in deficit for a number of years.
Although there has been considerable improvement in the last 12
months it is unlikely that the Teaching Centre will be financially
viable in the long term, particularly given the fact that the
broader economic situation of the country is so severe and unlikely
to improve dramatically in the foreseeable future. Despite this
decision to close, the Council is currently looking at ways of
continuing to provide modest support to a number of key activities
where our Director in Ecuador and HM Ambassador feel strongly
that complete withdrawal would create considerable negative impact
for the UK.
LESOTHO AND
SWAZILAND
As elsewhere, decisions on the future of the
British Council directorates in Africa were taken following an
assessment of resources against each country's importance to Britain
and the Council's ability to achieve impact. Because of Lesotho
and Swaziland's relatively low political and economic importance
to Britain, the Council could not justify the level of grant investment
required to maintain our current operations. The Council's commitment
to Africa remains undiminished with the grant-in-aid allocation
for the region remaining constant over the next five years. Although
the British Council offices in Lesotho and Swaziland are closing,
the Chevening Scholarship Scheme and the Higher Education Links
Programme will continue to be managed by the British Council through
its directorate in South Africa.
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