In 2021, USAID Administrator Samantha Power announced her commitment to allocating 25% of USAID’s budget to local partners by 2025. Shortly afterward, Devex was among the first to assess where exactly the agency stands — and how much it would need to get to that goal.
Since then, the agency has taken some steps to firm up its localization agenda — from defining what local entails to launching a 14-point measure it will use to track its other target — that 50% of USAID’s programs be locally led by 2030. It has also clarified that its target applies only to eligible spending — that which local organizations could reasonably have competed for.
Sources often come up with different estimates of USAID’s local spending, depending on the methodology used.