Africa, Latin America, and Asia are littered with project signs bearing the logos of international NGOs and for-profit contractors. These often-faded signs are the refuse of a global development system that gives people on the receiving end of aid little say over projects in their communities and countries.

Donors have repeatedly pledged to shift power to organizations in the Global South. But it remains unclear whether these promises will marginally increase the money managed by local NGOs and companies, or result in a more fundamental change in how development is carried out, so those meant to benefit drive change.

On paper, donors and critics agree the current top-down approach is not working. As Gayle Smith, a former USAID Administrator has said, ‘Development isn’t something you do to people, it’s something people do to themselves.’ Projects designed for, rather than by, people often miss their intended goals and rely on fluff metrics, such as workshop attendance. At best, externally driven projects are oblivious to power dynamics that shape a community or country’s development path. At worst, foreign NGOs and for-profits crowd out local organizations, hiring away talented staff and overshadowing local initiatives.

USAID, the world’s largest development funder, has promised 25 percent of its spending to local partners by 2025. Yet USAID’s just-released progress report shows a decline in local funding from 10.2 percent in 2022 to 9.6 percent in 2023. To even reach this number, the agency shrunk the pool against which the goal is applied and included domestic affiliates of international firms. And most local funds run through Cooperative Agreements, which give USAID significant management control over projects. Only one percent of USAID’s FY2022 Grants, which give recipients more leeway, were local.

USAID has also promised that half its programming will place local communities in the lead to co-design, set priorities, drive implementation, and evaluate its programs. However, USAID chose to have its own staff assess themselves on whether they engaged in two of 14 good practices, such as ‘conducting listening tours’ or ‘advancing the readiness of local actors to work with USAID.’ This results in well-meaning projects designed with little or no input labeled locally-led. If donors are serious about shifting agency, they need to give people a say over whether they had a say.

Bottom-up development is more than where a contractor is located. Shifting contract management from the U.S. or Europe to the Global South has value, but does not make projects locally-led. Nor is it helpful to treat civic organizations as vendors that implement projects conceived by aid agencies. As Florcie Tyrell, from the People’s Ecumenical Organization for the Development of Haiti (OPODH), told Samantha Power, her grassroots organization ‘is not bringing people together to receive projects.’ People meant to benefit need to be in the driver’s seat.

As a long-time community organizer, I’ve seen people in many contexts organize to drive development. The best way for a community to develop itself is for people to build organizations they can use to hold their government accountable. Building, strengthening, and connecting civic organizations is fundamental to development, but far from the common donor focus on increasing the capacity of organizations to manage international funds.

In Ghana, Muslim and Christians are joining together through FAITH in Ghana Alliance to press the government to invest in health, education, and infrastructure projects in their marginalized communities. Residents listen to their neighbors and hold ‘durbar’ assemblies before setting priorities. In Haiti, small-scale farmers from OPODH are organizing to change USAID’s approach to agriculture from large-scale export to local production.

In El Salvador, families defrauded of their land rights are campaigning as part of Communities of Faith Organizing for Action (COFOA) to win land titles for 350,000 families. COFOA brings lawyers to meeting with El Salvador’s National Housing Minister, but people fighting for their own land lead the negotiations. In each country, the organization is a tool for people to negotiate change.

In Politics and the English Language, George Orwell complains about words so misused they come to simply mean something we like or don’t like. If local, or localization, mean anything vaguely related to geography outside the U.S. or Europe, these words lose utility.

To achieve development accurately described as locally-led, I suggest three metrics: (1) Did people meant to benefit decide what development would take place?  (2) How much domestic public or private investment was leveraged? (3) Are there organizational structures and processes that enable people to connect local development efforts to national policy change?

Locally-led Development Rubric

Donors can play complementary roles in shifting how development is carried out. Foundations can fund organizing to increase demand for locally-led development. Aid agencies more focused on civil society, can support community power building that connects organizations to advance policy change.  Reforming large agencies like USAID feels utopian, but worth trying given their potential to reinforce or undermine local leadership and shape the debate about development.

Gordon Whitman is the Managing Director of Faith in Action International