For the last decade or more, the leaders of the U.S. Agency for International Development have been talking about spending more money at a local level. More recently, USAID Administrator Samantha Power made it a keystone pledge that local organizations should receive 25% of eligible funding by 2025.
But progress has been relatively slow. When USAID released its progress report for 2022, it showed an increase in local spending on the previous year, but only to just over 10% of eligible funding — way below the target.
Power herself is not overly optimistic. She has told Congress the targets will be hard to hit.