In depth conversation: Two global development experts critically examine the movement toward decolonizing aid

The humanitarian aid and global development sectors are facing a reckoning. 

For years, these sectors have operated largely from the global north — often working with global south organizations and community members, but ultimate control over what programs are funded, who sets the agenda, and how programs are carried out has stayed in the hands of people who’ve never experienced the problems they’re working to solve first-hand.

Enter: localization. In short, proponents of localizing aid and development argue that the sector should shift power to civil society organizations in global south communities themselves. That means transferring funding without asking questions. It means programs are designed by the people closest to the problem. It means empowering community groups to set the agenda and priorities.

Future of Good publisher and CEO Vinod Rajasekaran sat down with two world-renowned experts in decolonizing aid and development — Degan Ali, executive director of the African development organization Adeso, and Cynthia Eyakuze, vice president of global programs for the Canadian-based Equality Fund — to discuss localization, decolonization, power and accountability in aid and development. 

This conversation was edited for length and clarity. 

Content warning: This story mentions rape. 

Vinod Rajasekaran: I want to kick off with the obvious question, perhaps: How would you characterize localization?

Degan: Well, first, let me just say what I always say, which is that localization is not a term that was chosen by us in the global south. It was a term that was imposed on us by global north actors, primarily European and other donors in the UN. I like to call this the decolonization of aid, because it has so many layers and elements beyond what localization has become. Now, I can’t define localization, but what I think it has become is a just conversation about moving money and percentages, based on the Grand Bargain agreement, which was a target that we actually set, as Adeso. It was one of our advocacy messages, because at that time, in 2014-2015, only 0.2 percent of humanitarian funding was going directly to local organizations. And in the development space, it was anywhere between 3 to 4, maximum 5 percent. It hasn’t improved significantly, and philanthropy is not doing much better than these numbers. So we said, let’s be ambitious and courageous and set a target — 20 percent by 2020. Now, we’ve passed 2020 — we’re now in 2022 — and they’ve never met it. I think it’s been a failure. I’m not really sure if there’s genuine commitment to make it happen. 

Cynthia: It’s interesting, when you shared with us the elements of this conversation and you said localization, I thought, Oh heavens, what is this? Another term that people will define very differently depending on where they’re at. What strikes me as most important is the question of power, the idea of shifting power, which really sits at the heart of the decolonization agenda, decolonizing the field: the challenges of giving up power. Despite all the lovely statements about decolonization, there is a very, very real commitment to maintaining the status quo.

Vinod: With decision-making happening thousands of kilometers away from communities, how have you both seen this impact communities and lives?

Cynthia: Perhaps I would challenge the idea that decisions are being made thousands of kilometres away. Actually, decisions are being made in our communities. Decisions are being made locally. Again, the question comes to what is being resourced. Whether those decisions are heard and whether those decisions are recognized and amplified is another question. 

Degan: That’s a really good point. Oftentimes we talk about this centring the global north actors, the international actors, and they do make up the bulk of the humanitarian aid decisions, but the average person sitting in Tanzania or Somalia, where I come from, is making decisions about their livelihoods, about the education of their children, about their health, about COVID, they’re making these decisions independently every single day. The problem is the arrogance the system has, where it thinks everything should be centred around it. And the global north actors write their proposals, and get funding from their own donors, centring themselves — saying, I can change the lives of these women in these villages, I’m the one who’s going to have an impact on these children. I, I, I. It’s all very arrogant and has huge amounts of hubris. It feeds this perception of us being just passive recipients, just sitting there waiting for them to come and save us. It’s not only a money problem. It’s also a narrative problem. It’s also a perception problem. It’s also a language problem. 

Vinod: Who’s accountable for this? 

Degan: Nobody’s accountable. That’s the whole problem with the system. There’s no accountability. Where’s the accountability for the children who died from cholera as a result of UN peacekeepers and what happened in Haiti? Where’s the accountability of all the UN employees who have raped young women and used food as a tool for getting these favours? I don’t see these UN people being held responsible. I don’t see them going to court. I don’t see these agencies being closed down. I don’t see any of that. This is, for me, why it’s really important that we start thinking, as the global south and particularly in Africa, about how we start working in solidarity with our government. Because the only people who will hold them accountable are the national governments. We need to get the national governments to start seeing us as civil society as allies, and not a threat. What has happened is they have conflated us with all international aid. The international actors do everything possible to marginalize the sovereignty of national governments. So they say, all aid actors, we don’t want you here, when we should really be allies of our governments. 

Vinod: Why is this conflation happening? 

Cynthia: Coming from a feminist place and thinking about the framework of power, a lot of what you’re talking about, Degan, is about power within and building and acting on power within. The reality is, certainly on the African continent, our governments, for whatever reason, do tend to feel threatened when citizens activate their power within, and the reality is that this can be exacerbated by outside forces. Who do our governments listen to? How easy is it for external actors to get audiences with our governments, from local all the way up to the president? It is so easy for them to open those doors and almost impossible for the citizens of those countries to get audiences with their own governments. There is a very active civil society on our continent that has been saying so many things that Degan is saying, that is trying to mobilize their own governments on these issues, and we really have to ask ourselves why it is that our governments, for the most part, remain more open to listening to external governments. 

Degan: That’s the problem that we have in this sector — we haven’t invested in that civil society. That civil society has been turned into subcontractors. They go from project to project of INGOs and UN agencies instead of a genuine civil society that really agitates. That’s one of the things I always tell my sisters and brothers: we need to stop implementing projects and start thinking of ourselves as agitators and a source of accountability to our governments and the private sector. But to do that, these organizations need multi-year, unrestricted funding and they don’t get that. 

Cynthia: I could not emphasize enough the importance of shifting to flexible funding. Who is resourcing social movements who are on the frontlines of the kinds of agendas Degan is talking about? They’re likely to be the least resourced because they’re the ones shaking the tables. They’re also very much shaking the tables about how resources flow, who they’re flowing to, who is sitting at these tables where decisions about very large resources are being made? Who is defining what the priorities are about where investments should go — what communities really, really care about? 

To unlock the insights in the full video conversation — including more on accountability in aid and development work, the importance of flexible funding for local movements and development work, steps to shifting power, and the lack of transparency in multilateral aid funding — become a Future of Good member today.