Between 2021 and 2024, USAID launched a "localization agenda" — an ambitious plan to shift more power and funding to local organizations and work more closely with communities. That effort, however, was put on hold in early 2025. A new study by SIS Professor Jonathan Fox and SIS PhD Student Jeffrey Hallock, who are also both researchers at the Accountability Research Center, looks at publicly available government data from before 2025 to track what changed—and what stayed the same—during that push for localization.

Although USAID's plan focused on sending more money directly to local organizations in charge of projects, their research showed that, in the countries studied, more funding actually went to local groups working as subawardees under larger international organizations rather than the local implementers. USAID also played a role in shaping the conversation around how to define and track locally-led development.

With the U.S. cutting back foreign aid and limiting access to USAID data at the start of the second Trump administration, it’s unclear what the future holds. But if the localization agenda is ever brought back, making project data easier to access and understand would be a key step toward real, locally-driven development.

Read the article here.