In its response to a report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, the government agreed that its departments should develop a more systematic and shared understanding of the derivers of conflict and fragility in Somalia and target aid programmes to ensure these do no harm.

Ministers also agreed to do more to promote inclusion and human rights in UK aid projects and to make it clearer how economic development and humanitarian programmes would contribute to peace and stability.

They accepted that it should be clearer whether individual programmes had the status of pilots or were expected to deliver significant results.

Somalia has been riven with internal conflict since the fall of dictator Siad Barre in 1991, with Puntland in the north and Somaliland in the north west having broken away into unrecognised self-declared states.

In the remainder of Somalia an internationally-recognised government has help from an African Union force to fight an insurgency by the Al-Shabaab Islamic fundamentalist militia.