The annual Devex Pro Week was chock-full of in-depth articles, discussions, and downloadables. Did you miss any of them? Don’t worry — we’ve got you covered in this special Saturday edition of the Newswire.
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Tied up in knots
In previous generations, a lot of foreign aid was explicitly labeled as “tied”: A country in the global south received resources, but in exchange was expected to do business with organizations linked to the donor. It was essentially a lucrative quid pro quo.
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Those days are gone, but a version of the practice still exists. Today, instead of sending money directly to nongovernmental organizations in the global south, donors often send the funds to their own NGOs in the global north which then disburse the money.
How often does this happen? Quite a bit, apparently. In April, #ShiftThePower published the report “Too Southern To be Funded” that examined the funding behaviors of a dozen mostly large donors from 2009 to 2021. It found that over 90% of official development assistance to civil society organizations went to development groups in the global north.
In some cases, there’s even an outright rule saying that only NGOs headquartered in a country can receive funds. In others, there are prohibitive regulations, such as having to apply in the native language, Devex contributing reporter Burton Bollag writes.
One of the arguments cited in favor of this arrangement is that any changes would unfairly sideline global north NGOs, while their global south counterparts may not be capable of handling a large influx of funds.
But Eshban Kwesiga of the Global Fund for Community Foundations rejects the premise that civil society organizations in the global south lack the “capacity” to manage large grants and comply with strict reporting requirements. Such warnings, he says, are “a loaded and coded term that speaks to problematic assumptions of trust, fraud, etc., all of which are cleverly used by the international aid system to maintain the status quo to exclude Southern CSOs.”
Read: Why do some countries mostly fund their own NGOs? (Pro)
What’s in a word?
The practice of lavishing funds on global north NGOs is anathema to everything the localization movement stands for. But what exactly does it stand for? There’s not even a universally accepted definition of localization, let alone agreement on how to measure and implement it.
So we took a closer look at what’s behind the buzzword.
From her perch in Nairobi, Chilande Kuloba-Warria of the Warande Advisory Centre says localization was seen as an acceleration of the “slowly growing momentum around powershifts on the continent. This was the come-to-Jesus moment for people thinking about unfair practices in development in the past and how to devolve power.”
But even as the sector enthusiastically embraced the term, it has not always shown the same enthusiasm for executing it. Kuloba-Warria points out that under the guise of localization, international NGOs have shifted their headquarters to the global south and filled more jobs with people from the countries in which they work, but they have retained control over the ideas and funds that form the crux of transformational change.
That has prompted concerns that even as the sector rushed to localize, there was never any real consensus about what that actually entailed.
Instead of a strictly targeted effort, “localization has become a massive buzzword that’s actually a bit of a fig leaf,” says Allison Kelley, a health economist whose résumé includes running Results for Development’s African Collaborative for Health Financing Solutions, which is often held up as a successful example of localization. “It means everything and nothing.”
To suss out what exactly localization means, Devex contributor Andrew Green delves into efforts to define the term, rethink the metrics that accompany it, and calls to replace the word entirely.
Read: What does localization really mean? (Pro)
+ Localization is all the rage in development, but who's actually doing it on the ground? We’re compiling a list of local organizations to watch and we'd like your help! Send a note at hayley.mundeva@devex.com if you'd like your organization to be considered or if you know of one that deserves to make it onto the list. Stay tuned next month for the results!
Don’t mess with Malawi
For some, the debate over localization is just an abstract exercise in rhetoric. Rather than trying to define it, they are simply plowing ahead with implementing it on the ground.
Take Malawi, where recent legislative efforts would require international NGOs to partner with and allocate at least 30% of the funding they spend on programs in Malawi to local NGOs. Failure to comply could result in hefty fines or a jail term of two years.
The proposed law could be seen as revolutionary — forcing INGOs to put their money where their mouth is on localization — or draconian — excessively interfering with their work to the detriment of a country.
So which is it? Check out Devex contributor Madalitso Wills Kateta’s comprehensive breakdown to make up your mind.
Read: Malawi is considering a local funding law. Will it help or harm INGOs?
Recasting their role
If localization were a children’s fairytale, INGOs would be the big, bad wolves roaming the forest looking to gobble up Little Red Riding Hood. But is it really so simple to cast them as the bad guys?
My colleague Elissa Miolene tells a more nuanced story about how INGOs are rethinking their role in the aid sector, and debating how, when, and if they should make an appearance. Increasingly, that’s meant leaning into the role of a sidekick and swerving away from the direct service delivery that for decades was the bread-and-butter of the INGO paradigm.
“Today’s Western INGO was built on a model from the 70s and 80s,” says Tim McCully of Corus International, an INGO based in the United States. “The world doesn’t work that way anymore.”
Even so, INGOs across the sector seem to agree: Localization doesn’t necessarily mean they need to erase themselves. Instead, it means rebalancing the equation between INGOs and local groups.
“For me, localization is not a zero-sum, either-or proposition,” McCully says. “There is plenty of space for collaboration based on complementary strengths and assets, and it just has to be reconfigured in a way that is a little bit more equitable, and frankly, a little bit more reflective of the importance of context, local community rootedness, and knowledge.”
Read: What is the future of the INGO? (Pro)
Download the report: The 50 largest US INGOs — and where they get their money (Pro)
WWW smackdown
This story seems like it came straight out of an action thriller: Global superpowers battling for control of the World Wide Web.
The cast of characters includes, of course, China and the U.S., but also a hodgepodge of players — from civil society to a father of the internet to the Group of 77, a bloc of more than 130 countries from the global south.
This real-life showdown is taking place at the United Nations, where governments are currently haggling over a draft U.N. Global Compact, which aims to write the rules of the road for digital technology.
The idea of governments trying to wrangle control of technologies that have redefined our daily lives is bound to raise some alarm bells.
Indeed, earlier this month, a group of more than 30 prominent digital pioneers and engineers fired off a distress signal, warning that the negotiations threatened something of a hostile government takeover of the internet.
The group, which includes Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, and Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, wrote in an open letter saying that: “We are concerned that the document will be largely a creation of governments, disconnected from the Internet and the Web as people all over the world currently experience them.”
The concern, my colleague Colum Lynch writes, is that a top-down, state-centric approach to the internet will stifle innovation and economic opportunities, weaken human rights, and erode digital privacy.
For the time being, though, governments remain deadlocked over the compact, with several of them — including China, Russia, and the U.S. — rejecting the draft, which has set the stage for a new round of talks in the coming weeks.
Read: Who will control the internet? (Pro)
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About the author
Anna Gawel
Anna Gawel is the Managing Editor of Devex. She previously worked as the managing editor of The Washington Diplomat, the flagship publication of D.C.’s diplomatic community. She’s had hundreds of articles published on world affairs, U.S. foreign policy, politics, security, trade, travel and the arts on topics ranging from the impact of State Department budget cuts to Caribbean efforts to fight climate change. She was also a broadcast producer and digital editor at WTOP News and host of the Global 360 podcast. She holds a journalism degree from the University of Maryland in College Park.
