Localization

Is USAID excluding too much funding from its definition of 'local'?

USAID has promised to allocate 25% of eligible funding to local organizations. But what counts as eligible funding? A recent report argues that the agency has been a bit generous to itself when setting out its definitions.

By David Ainsworth // 12 January 2024

The U.S. Agency for International Development is being too generous to itself when assessing how much of its funding goes to local organizations.

That's the conclusion drawn by the report “Funding the Localization Agenda” from the U.S. arm of Oxfam, published at the start of the year.

The report builds on a methodology developed last year by Publish What You Fund, a British NGO that scrutinizes aid spending, which last year also questioned whether USAID’s metrics were too generous.

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