What the localization conversation is getting wrong

International nongovernmental organizations don’t need to disappear and they don’t need to become locally led, localization experts told an audience of development professionals last week. Instead of trying to localize themselves, INGOs should focus on the unique role they can play as international organizations while handing power and resources to groups that are already operating locally, the experts said during a Devex panel discussion. Ironically, they added, a lot of the conversations around localization are happening without local voices in the room, and INGOs and funders need to take steps to make sure this changes. But they said there is still cause for optimism, because the conversations so far have shown a greater openness to change in the sector than in the past. What is the role of the INGO? Panelists said the future role of the INGO was not to become a locally led organization, but to become an organization that worked effectively in an ecosystem, to transfer power and resources to where it was needed. While the job of the INGO is not to become local, they still have a valuable part to play in supporting development work and bringing expertise to bear, the speakers said. Rose Mbone, founder of The Legend Kenya, an NGO working to combat gender-based violence, talked about the need to shift power gradually, and for local organizations to recognize the needs of INGOs. “We don't want all the power,” she said. “We're saying let us balance the power, continue to shift it slowly. At the grassroots level we are not coming in as a people who know everything or understand everything. We understand the challenges at the community level, we understand some of the solutions that can last longer in our communities, but we need to work together.” Don’t talk about us without us Too much of the localization conversation takes place without local NGOs in the room, said Gunjan Veda, director of collaborative research, policy and practice at The Movement for Community-led Development, which supports communities to take control over their own development. “I find the localization conversation very paradoxical because here we are saying that finally the global minority — what we typically call the global north — has recognized that local organizations, communities, local actors have agency and voice and we need to respect that,” she said. “But what is the way we're going about operationalizing it? We are having these really intense engaged conversations in spaces where [the] majority world — typically called the global south — organizations have no voice. So it's again the same system.” She said that having realized their mistake, the development community had made the same mistake again trying to rectify it. “It's like we are creating another system with the same set of actors,” she said. “It's one set of organizations — funders, INGOS, other influencers — in the minority world, sitting and deciding ‘You're local, you're not local enough.’” It’s not just about funding, it’s about power Panelists also said that while the conversation had focused on transferring funding to global south organizations, the real change would come when local organizations had the power to decide what needs to be done. “Who decides how resources are allocated? But also, who will decide what resources matter?” asked Jenny Hodgson, executive director of the Johannesburg-based Global Fund for Community Foundations, which supports funders in the global south. “I think part of this transformation around localization is just moving our eye simply from the transfer of money from the global north to the global south [to] the transfer of power,” she said. Mbone also talked about the importance of local organizations participating in decision making. “We want to see the importance of engaging local actors from the formulation stage all the way to implementation, because there is a missing gap,” she said. “Conversations begin at the global level, and then once resources are available, trickling this down becomes such a big challenge, because the community is not able to understand this process. They don't feel ownership. It's important to have practitioners at the grassroots level in mind from the formulation stage.” What’s in a name? The speakers also discussed how terms such as “localization,” “decolonization,” and “shifting the power” have come to have similar meanings. But decolonization — the idea that aid needed to acknowledge its roots in a colonial system and take conscious steps to address this — is both a separate and more contentious idea. In response to a question from the audience about whether decolonization had the potential to slow down the process of shifting power and resources to a local level, Hodgson acknowledged this was possible, but still insisted it was worthwhile. “Decolonization was really kind of naming the fact that the entire international aid system was built at a time when many countries in the world weren't independent,” she said, “and it was built on a set of assumptions around what these countries’ purpose was in the world, and the kind of development trajectory that they required. “I can see that decolonization makes for greater discomfort because suddenly people feel personally accountable and responsible,” she added. “But I think naming this as a political agenda, not just a politically neutral one, is critically important because it does speak to the issues of power and equity that we're trying to work towards.” Reasons to be cheerful However, despite the issues, the speakers said they were more optimistic than they have been previously. Deborah Doane, convener of The RINGO Project, which works with NGOs to find ways to break down barriers to transformation, talked about how both bilateral donors and philanthropists are making progress on local funding — citing the growth of approaches such as pooled funds and participatory grantmaking. “I'm seeing a lot more conversation about this at the bilateral level than I've ever seen before,” she said. “The Dutch government, I think, is doing some really interesting things. USAID does certainly have good aspirations but the political realities do constrain them. There are some creative things that philanthropy is doing to try things out.” Doane said she had seen real progress on localization. “I've been having some of these conversations, gosh help me, for 25 years,” said. “But it's much stronger now. I don’t think it’s a two-year project, but maybe it’s a 10-year project.”