What does localization really mean?

When Samantha Power, the U.S. Agency for International Development administrator since 2021, made localization the flagship policy of her tenure at the development behemoth, it seemed set to transform the sector. The new approach came with measurable indicators, including two major goals: by 2025, the agency would channel 25% of its funding through locally led organizations and, five years later, 50% of USAID projects would have local leadership. But across the global south, localization seemed to promise more than new money and new jobs. From her position in Nairobi, Chilande Kuloba-Warria, managing director of Warande Advisory Centre, said 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 has adopted localization as an overriding goal, it has not always taken the shape that Kuloba-Warria and others were expecting. Under the guise of localization, international NGOs have shifted their headquarters to cities in the global south and filled more jobs with people from the countries in which they work, but they have stopped short of the transformational change that Kuloba-Warria and others were expecting. It often seems to her as though the donors and international nongovernmental organizations still retain control over the ideas and funds, they have just moved closer to the communities with whom they are working. That has prompted concerns that even as the sector rushed into localization, there was never any real consensus about what it actually meant. Instead of a strictly targeted effort, “localization has become a massive buzzword that’s actually a bit of a fig leaf,” said Allison Kelley, a health economist whose resume 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.” That has prompted recent efforts to actually define the term and rethink the metrics that accompany it. At the same time, given the concerns that it has been co-opted to mean something far less transformational than what early supporters expected, there are some calls to replace the word completely. USAID’s definition Localization was already something of a buzzword in global development circles before Power put it at the center of USAID’s work. But given USAID’s significance in the global development infrastructure, the agency had a lot of power to define what it meant, advocates told Devex. What the agency arrived at is that localization “is the set of internal reforms, actions, and behavior changes” that USAID is taking to “ensure our work puts local actors in the lead, strengthens local systems, and is responsive to local communities.” In addition to the two core indicators of funding and local leadership, USAID launched a set of additional metrics, including a set of 14 good practices across four categories that count toward determining whether or not a program is locally led. Not everyone agrees with this definition, or how it’s measured. One question revolves around the meaning of that fundamental building block — “local.” “I think most people understand localization in that [USAID] context as being a transfer of decision-making from within the [Washington, D.C.] beltway to national stakeholders within partner countries,” said Jamie Boex, executive director of the Local Public Sector Alliance, who had been working around localization for more than a decade before Power took office. But for him, localization means going beyond the national level; it’s about “local governments, local civil society partners” who “need to be empowered to play their role effectively in delivering services and being part of inclusive services.” He believes USAID started with a different definition of local — which means the result is unlikely to satisfy his coalition’s vision for localization. Judy Oduma, a co-chair of the LPSA’s regional working group on sub-Saharan Africa, has seen an amorphous response in the push for localization, from the opening of more regional offices to helping community groups develop their capacity. But it has not necessarily translated to “really giving prioritization, decision making, funding, designing of these programs to local people,” which is what localization means to her, she said. And Kelley said that some INGOs have learned “how to speak the language of localization,” without even attempting to do the actual work that many advocates thought was at the heart of the project. Kelley herself sees offering targeted support to local organizations to the point that INGOs are made redundant as central to the idea of localization. Unsurprisingly, many INGO leaders — even those passionately in favor of localization, or at least one vision of it — disagree. And while USAID does have a metric on “advancing local and regional actors’ readiness to work directly with USAID,” it is not a requirement for a project to be considered locally led. All of this has forced Oduma to conclude: “We need to step back and say what localization really means.” Coming to a consensus The leadership at the Global Development Incubator, which launches social impact ventures, had the same thought. “We needed to be clear, internally, on what we meant when we were using some of these terms,” Stuart Symington, a communications expert at GDI, told Devex. That prompted a monthslong process in 2021 of literature reviews and internal conversations in search of a definition that would be accurate and easily understood, while also introducing language that “works both ways,” Symington said — meaning it could just as easily be applied in North America or Europe as in the global south. Ultimately, the organization arrived at a definition of localization as a process of “transforming unbalanced privilege structures to empower actors in the international development and humanitarian aid ecosystem with influence that is proportional to the impact of development and aid activities on their individual lives and communities.” Though that definition still invites questions — such as how to measure something as complex as proportionality — Symington said it has already helped redefine activities within GDI. For example, it prompted discussions within the organization about shifting its own structure and leadership, while also spurring the development of Daraja, a platform to provide specialized support to locally owned nonprofit organizations in an effort to improve their capacity to receive and manage funds. Whether or not people agree with the GDI definition — and Symington said the organization remains open to external feedback — their approach to reaching consensus on what the term means offers a model that Kuloba-Warria finds interesting. “I think we should dedicate the next year to having this conversation,” she said. Once the term is clearly defined, observers say it will be easier to create metrics to indicate whether organizations are moving toward it. “If [localization] were more clearly defined, it’s easier to set metrics, even creative metrics, that capture the intent,” said Allysha C. Maragh-Bass, a scientist at FHI 360, who also holds adjunct faculty positions at institutions including Duke Global Health Institute. Alternative terms In the ongoing debate over what localization means, there is some question over whether the term is even fit for purpose anymore; a worry that it may be sinking into meaninglessness under the weight of so many players trying to layer so many meanings onto it. Maragh-Bass was part of the Transforming INGOs Models for Equity, or TIME, initiative, which included a core concepts group that worked to understand the language in the sector, while emphasizing the need for nuance and care in its usage. They ultimately defined localization as “a USAID specific policy concept that has many similarities to locally led development.” Maragh-Bass’ preferred terminology is the latter — “locally led development” — which TIME defines as “development where the ownership, leadership, and funding is in the hands of local communities.” This overlaps a lot with “localization,” the group acknowledges, but that term has become too closely tied to USAID and its specific interpretation. It’s worth noting that USAID also uses the term locally led development — which it defines as a “process in which local actors… set their own agendas, develop solutions, and bring the capacity, leadership, and resources to make those solutions a reality” — as one pillar of its localization approach. In addition to offering an honest reflection of the current landscape, Maragh-Bass said that the definition of these or any other terms must shift power and meaning away from a funder-driven initiative toward an agenda that is set and led within communities. “We would not need frameworks to … define the importance of local perspective if we understood and valued [that] they were the experts in the first place,” she said. This echoes a point made by Jeroo Billimoria — founder of Childline, one of India’s largest NGOs — who told Devex back in 2022 that “I hate the word localization” because it “emerge[s] from global north supremacy.” “There's a hierarchical structure and mindset,” she explained. “Nobody is really challenging it. … Localization is also putting us at a lower level. So when do we become equals?” “Decoloniality implies localization by default because it means undoing the power structures that necessitate ‘localizing.’” --— Allysha C. Maragh-Bass, scientist, FHI 360 In a similar vein to Maragh-Bass, Kelley favors the term “country-led,” even as she cautions that it doesn’t mean governments exclusively. And Kuloba-Warria likes the word “proximate,” which is also the word that Billimoria chooses. Each is searching for terminology that asserts more clearly than localization who is driving the agenda. And as discussions are happening about whether to replace the word localization, there are calls to consider the broader landscape of terms, including building blocks like “local,” but also terms that offer alternative visions for the future of global development, such as decolonization. Like localization, its meaning has become mutable, though Maragh-Bass said it originated within exploited communities as a necessary “rebellion to the notion that foreigners are allowed to come in and decide ways of knowing and doing.” The TIME team saw decolonization as a process for “interrogating and undoing systems and structures which have propagated inequities in health and other outcomes for centuries.” “Localization cannot be the end game,” Maragh-Bass said. But she cautioned that locally led development — or whatever term is used — cannot be conflated with decolonization. “Decoloniality implies localization by default because it means undoing the power structures that necessitate ‘localizing,’” she said. “The reverse, therefore, would not be true.” The language we choose will help determine the future of the sector, Kuloba-Warria said. “Localization has brought another layer of problems,” she said. “There is so much misunderstanding going on. We’re not doing enough to think about how you communicate, who you communicate with, and what you’re communicating.”