How USAID is hiring to tackle its localization agenda

USAID, the largest bilateral aid agency in the world, has been working hard to transfer more funding and power to a local level. But what has that meant for its recruitment approach? For one thing, it’s thrown into relief a problem that the agency has been wrestling with for ages. It doesn’t have enough staff, overall, to manage the amount of money it gives away. The agency’s own administrator, Samantha Power, came out last year to say that the agency has a “staffing crisis” and that addressing this is one of her top priorities. USAID insiders say the crisis stems from the United States Congress. While Congress has awarded USAID generous increases in its aid budget, increases in the overhead budget have been much smaller, limiting the agency’s ability to hire staff. To address this, USAID has been hiring contractors, rather than employees, to work on specific projects, which are easier to pay for from operational budgets. But this is a workaround, not a fix. Now add localization This existing crisis becomes magnified when localization is added to the mix. USAID has repeatedly said that working in locally led ways requires additional staff time. Taking a local focus involves an additional level of consultation with local players before launching a project. It involves translating documents and providing more information about USAID’s plans and expectations. It involves giving away many grants in smaller tranches to suit the needs of local entities. But a small grant involves almost as much administration as a large one, so the total staff hours required to give away many grants is far larger. And inevitably, taking a local approach involves hiring more local expertise. It involves giving away more money from USAID missions, and less from Washington. So far, localization hasn’t happened at the rates USAID wanted, and Power last week told Congress that it was falling short on “bulk procurement” — the kind of large contract USAID has resorted to because it does not have the staff to fund in the ways it wants. What’s happened so far? USAID has been on a hiring spree to tackle this shortfall, officials told Devex. Since June 2020, the agency has hired 65 new foreign service officers. In the last financial year, the Office of Acquisition and Assistance onboarded 27 new civil service contract specialists and promoted another 10, with plans to fill an additional 22 positions over the next few months. It has also more than doubled the number of foreign service nationals with administrative warrants — which allow freedom to perform a wide range of contracting duties — from 19 to 48. Recently, the agency also held a jobs fair in Washington D.C. with on-the-spot hiring for some individuals, as part of a push to appoint hard-to-fill positions. It looks likely that for the next few months, at least, USAID will focus on hiring more awarding and contracting specialists, particularly in its missions. The agency has been clear that it still needs to do more work to achieve the level of employment it wants. However, whether USAID’s hiring policies continue to shift depends on the next election. Under a second Biden administration, the agency will likely continue in a similar direction. A second Trump administration might want to reverse the agency’s stance and move away from a local focus — at least based on some of the writing from right-wing think tanks. This is by no means guaranteed; during the last Trump term the agency’s political appointees were relatively supportive of local causes, and several of them have since been vocal in saying that the current leaders are not doing enough. But it seems possible that progress could be slower under the Republicans.