What do we need to actually move the localization needle?

For localization to really take root, one thing seems to be clear. Money is essential — but it’s not everything. That was the main takeaway from Thursday morning’s Devex Pro event, one that looked at how the U.S. Agency for International Development was faring on its lofty localization targets. Last year, the agency channeled 9.6% of its eligible funding toward local organizations — a $50 million dip from the year before. “The numbers are super problematic,” said Gunjan Veda, the global secretary for the Movement for Community-led Development. “Direct funding to local organizations is super important. But at the same time, who is local, who's getting that funding, how that funding is coming is also hugely important.” Throughout the event, it was something every speaker highlighted. William von Schrader, the senior director of localization at Save the Children USA, discussed how it can often feel like local players are just being forced to slot into a system that wasn’t created for them. Moses Isooba, the executive director of the Uganda National NGO Forum, spoke about how for decades, USAID has worked with big organizations — and how to really get local partners involved, the agency needed to ramp up to working with small ones. And Sally Paxton, the U.S. representative of Publish What You Fund, urged for a fundamental change in the way we do development work, one that is oriented around the decisions, input, and insight of local groups. “Money is important, but we have to understand what that direct funding is going to do,” said Paxton, speaking at the event. “It can’t just replicate the current model. It has to change the current model and make sure local voices are not just implementing, but setting the objectives and the priorities for what is needed.” None of those arguments are new to USAID, which has tried various iterations of localization for decades. The latest approach includes two targets: the first, to shift 25% of USAID’s eligible funds toward local groups by 2025; and the second, to ensure half of all USAID projects are locally led by 2030. Though the agency’s latest progress report found it was lagging behind its first target last year, a pilot assessment of the second target revealed half of all USAID programs had at least two good practices that indicated they were locally led. But instead of celebrating, USAID recognized that perhaps, the bar to define locally led projects was too low — and didn’t necessarily mean local groups were involved at all stages of the process. “Embracing these lessons, USAID is exploring ways to recategorize the good practices around the project lifecycle and increase the threshold required to fulfill the criteria of being locally led,” USAID acknowledged in its latest progress report. For the panelists, that essential piece of the puzzle could not be ignored. “Neither target one nor target two, by themselves, will enable us to get to localization,” Veda said. “In fact, neither target one nor target two together can help us get to localization until we actually question some of the underlying assumptions that we have about trust, that we have about corruption, that we have about knowledge, that we have about rigor.” For Isooba, those decades-old assumptions have resulted in a trust deficit, both on the side of local organizations and donors like USAID. For years, many bilateral agencies haven’t trusted local organizations to take taxpayer money; for just as long, local organizations have assumed USAID grants were too onerous, complicated, and costly to even apply for. “All of a sudden, there’s a change of heart where they are willing to listen, willing to make systems less complicated. That takes time to develop and to build trust,” said Isooba. “Trust is a process, trust takes time to build, and that’s important.” And that’s not to say all systems have been changed, Isooba and others said. It’s still challenging for local players to work within structures that weren’t created with them in mind — especially when that means programs are being designed in languages local organizations don’t speak, or partners are being convened to talk about localization in countries that grassroots actors have trouble getting to. There’s work being done. Veda, for example, was speaking to the audience from Kampala, where she was helping to connect USAID to local organizations. But still, she said, the sector had a long way to go. “The reality is local actors are not the ones shaping locally led development, or the localization conversation,” said Veda. Another barrier toward localization is related to definitions. What is defined as local? What does shifting power really mean? And are the answers to these questions equal across all missions, and all countries that USAID operates in? “I understand on the one hand, USAID is really trying to defer a great deal of leverage to missions to define what this process means in their context, and of course, that is really critical,” said von Schrader. “But at certain times it can get a little problematic to the point where we’ve seen one mission use wildly different definitions of what a local actor is than another mission. We think that really complicates the picture, and on a macro-level, there needs to be some kind of consistency — especially across core definitional concepts like who we are talking about in the first place.” It’s something Paxton brought into relief, too. Last month, Publish What You Fund dug into the numbers behind USAID’s latest localization report, ultimately finding that the agency’s definition of what is local — and the pot of money it deemed eligible for localizing — painted an inflated picture of USAID’s localization progress. While USAID stated it had shifted 9.6% of its funding toward local groups last year, Publish What You Fund’s numbers revealed the figure could be closer to 5.2%. Nonetheless, while there were concerns about the pace of progress, panelists were positive about the fact that progress could be measured at all. “Resources are vitally important, because power pivots around who has the resources,” said Isooba. “But still, we definitely applaud USAID for taking the risk of setting a deadline of 2025. We accept that localization is a process.”