For more than a decade, USAID — the world’s largest bilateral aid donor — has been trying to shift more of its funding from U.S.-based implementers to local organizations in the countries where its programs operate. Why is it so hard?
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Also in today’s edition: A forceful call to reject the geopolitics of foreign aid, and an early look at a new institution that aims to stop bad players from turning new technologies into bioweapons.
No silver bullet
It was just over 13 years ago that former USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah fired a shot across the bow of the aid industrial complex, declaring in a 2011 speech at the Center for Global Development: “This agency is no longer satisfied with writing big checks to big contractors and calling it development.”
Well, USAID may not be satisfied, but it’s still writing some pretty big checks.
The agency’s current leader, Samantha Power, has taken up the banner of localization, announcing in 2021 that 25% of USAID’s funding would go to local organizations by 2025. (Longtime Devex readers will remember that Shah’s target under the “USAID Forward” reform agenda was 30%, but pretty quickly got slapped with the “aspirational” label.)
So where do things stand today? As of USAID’s last progress report for 2022 funding, about 10% of the agency’s funding went to local organizations. And that is just the funding USAID has deemed eligible for localization, which includes about half of the agency’s overall budget.
It all begs the question — why is this so hard? My colleague David Ainsworth went looking for answers.
In David’s piece, localization begins to feel like a loose thread. Once you start pulling, you quickly find yourself tangled up in the fabric of a government agency in which fixing one thing seems to require fixing lots of other things too.
It’s not enough to set a localization target if you can’t hire enough contracting officers to pull it off. It’s not enough to tell those contracting officers to make more local awards if doing so puts them in danger of compliance violations — or at odds with congressional earmarks. And it’s not enough just to help local organizations win USAID grants and contracts if the whole point is to fund projects differently.
There are no simple answers or silver bullets here — this is development after all. But for those of you wondering why U.S. aid reform doesn’t happen faster, this is a good place to start.
Read: What's stopping USAID from localizing? (Pro)
Related: USAID asked local leaders what needs to change. This is what they said (Pro)
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The hiring buzz
Addis Ababa is home to the headquarters and regional offices of several international organizations — not to mention my favorite coffee shop.
For those of you on the Addis Ababa job market, my colleague Kristiana Louise Ortega has this breakdown of the top global development employers hiring in Ethiopia’s exquisitely caffeinated capital city.
Read: The top global development employers hiring in Addis Ababa (Career)
+ Start your 15-day free trial of a Devex Career Account today to access the piece as well as all our exclusive globaldev career content and events, including an event later today on organizing an effective job search strategy.
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Inconvenient truths
Global development professionals who forget (or ignore) that aid institutions are instruments of geopolitical power do so at their own peril — and that of the communities they aim to serve, writes Themrise Khan in this forceful opinion piece for Devex.
“The global development community has done itself a serious disservice by pretending to ignore these geopolitical shifts and their impact on their ‘partners’ in the global south,” Khan writes.
According to Khan, when geopolitically motivated government agencies pursue policies like locally led development, you don’t have to look too hard to find some serious unintended consequences.
Opinion: Aid can no longer be dictated by foreign policy or geopolitics
One step ahead
My colleague Jenny Lei Ravelo has an early look at a “first-of-its-kind” organization launched at the Munich Security Conference to protect against potential harm from technologies used in the research and development of medicines and vaccines.
The Geneva-based International Biosecurity and Biosafety Initiative for Science plans to work with governments, international entities and private sector companies involved in using new and emerging technologies, Jenny reports.
The initiative’s executive director is Piers Millett, who spent more than a decade working for the Biological Weapons Convention. Millett tells Jenny that IBBIS’s first project is a free, open-source tool to screen DNA orders and customers to help prevent “bad actors” from getting their hands on these technologies and using them as weapons.
Read: New firm to fight biosecurity threats
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Inside Chinese aid
“On debt relief China is the big player. China is critical.”
— Ayhan Kose, deputy chief economist, World BankDebt distress is the “silent crisis” afflicting lower-income countries, according to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund — and Kose tells Larry Elliott at The Guardian that “China needs to be more active” when it comes to taking responsibility for its role as an emerging creditor in the last two decades.
What is China’s role in the global development system? I’m looking forward to tackling that question with some of the best China aid watchers around at a Devex Pro Live event in just a couple of weeks.
Register to save your spot now and add the date to your calendar — Monday, March 4.
Build the wall
No, the other wall. You’ve probably heard about Africa’s “Great Green Wall,” but maybe like me, you’ve struggled to wrap your head around what exactly its construction entails.
This video from permaculture expert Andrew Millison helps bring this mega-project to life.
In other news
As Brazil takes on the G-20 presidency, the country is calling for a reform of the United Nations, criticizing the global body’s failure to prevent conflicts. [AP News]
Afghanistan would need more than $400 million for its post-earthquake recovery and reconstruction. [ABC News]
Zimbabwe began a polio vaccination campaign Tuesday which aims to inoculate more than 4 million children. [Africanews]
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
