Locally led development as a global practice

It sounds remarkable: While participation and agency have long been at the centre of international cooperation, a recent OECD Report states that only 1.2% of global Official Development Assistance (ODA) funds are channelled directly to local NGOs.¹ Does this mean that the topics of participation and aid effectiveness have not been taken seriously? Not necessarily. Direct finance flows are not the full story, although the debate on locally led development often focuses on these. Enabling locally led development requires more than direct finances: It needs a dynamic interplay of complementary actors who together provide intermediation, technology transfer, and capacity sharing to achieve lasting progress at scale towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This remains the primary goal of international cooperation, to which locally led development serves. 

As part of various international agreements and statements,² the largest donors and organisations have committed to shift and share power with local actors and to channel funding as directly as possible to them. While designing and implementing projects together with local actors is common practice since decades, the localisation debate raises some uncomfortable questions: Who really decides on development needs and priorities – beyond window dressing? What is the future role of an organisation like Swisscontact in the dynamic interplay of different development actors?

Equally uncomfortable, however, are some tension points that inevitably come with locally led practices and that need to be managed: Who is local? Where is the boundary of a local context? What if local actors do not share the same values with us? What if these are not compatible with sustainable development? What if tax payers do not have a say anymore on how their money is spent in the Global South?  

Partnership at eye-level

Swisscontact implements development projects but effectively provides services and assistance on demand to local stakeholders. As a project leader recently explained: “We only provide assistance and support the implementation of interventions if local stakeholders proactively ask for it.” Based on our general working approach, we co-create innovations with local and national actors through participatory interactions, co-invest with local stakeholders to share and manage risk, and provide technical assistance to local actors. We do so by giving lead to local actors in strategic decision-making and steering, as well as by building on local initiatives and incentives.

To give just a few concrete examples: In the Sustainable Landscape project in Indonesia, Swisscontact helped to create multi-stakeholder forums, which have been initiated by the local government. Swisscontact provided input for the establishment of these forums and facilitated the design and adoption of a digital monitoring tool that will be used by the members to track progress towards their own economic and ecological targets. Another example is the project in Nepal on the Vocational Qualification System, which is part of a bilateral initiative of the Government of Nepal and the Government of Switzerland. Swisscontact provides technical assistance and facilitation to support the government in implementing the project, helping to bridge the gap between government and private sector perceptions by bringing them into a dialogue. Still in another project – the Feed the Future Guatemala from USAID – Swisscontact is a subcontractor to a local producers’ cooperative (Fedecovera), who approves the annual plans and manages the budgets.

These examples show that partnerships at eye level are part of our daily work. Swisscontact is committed to improving this partnership quality by defining partnership principles, revising contractual models to be more equitable, and increasing transparent cost sharing modalities. Equally so, we will improve our practices so that they become more profoundly locally led: Although participatory methodology are a standard in all projects, these methodologies need to further be enhanced. And the lead for development solutions and steering will be given to local actors whenever possible.  

Locally led development is not straightforward

Though locally led practices are part of our work, we also encounter serious challenges when effectively implementing them: We need to be mindful in critically scrutinizing the representativity of local groups to ensure that they are inclusive, and that no further disruptions along ethnic or other lines are created by giving some of them the lead. Local actors are not a coherent group; they are highly diverse, and some may have conflicts of interests. Further, as requirements on compliance, accounting, and reporting for implementing organisations tend to remain high to reduce the risk of fraud, international donors most probably will focus on those local organisations (e.g. Civil Society Organisations) most capable of complying with these requirements, which potentially can hinder the promotion of a diversity of local voices and interests. Finally, focusing exclusively on solutions developed in the local context can fail to address the root causes of problems that may originate outside that context, e.g. in an export industry, and lead to creating costly new local solutions instead of adapting tested solutions from elsewhere.

Different partners, different approaches

Swisscontact’s aim is ultimately to contribute to sustainable and inclusive impact at scale. Different types of partners from different sectors (private, public, civil society) in different countries – with different levels of fragility, resources, and implementing projects of different scales – require each a different approach. Within its approach, Swisscontact’s role has various facets and changes according to local needs and priorities: Among others, we are facilitators, knowledge-brokers, stimulators, co-learners, and advisors.

Locally led development is a debate that emerged in recent years with renewed relevance. For Swisscontact, this topic is engrained in the very way we are working. We are convinced that the greatest impact in international cooperation will be achieved when each stakeholder assumes the role for which they are best suited for in accordance with the development objectives. As an international organisation, our role complements that of local actors. Within this role, there is more to do. Our recent position paper summarises our reflections regarding our commitment to improve our practices to be more locally led.

¹ See OECD “Pathways Towards Effective Locally Led Development Co-operation: Learning by Example”, 2024, pp. 35, Figure 3.2. The figure further specifies that 16.9% have been channeled directly to recipient governments, 1.7% to the private sector, and another 3.7% are Programme-Based Approaches (PBA) not included in the channel codes, and which are implemented under the leadership of the host countries.  

² E.g. the Grand Bargain from 2016 and 2021, and the Donor Statement on Locally Led Development from 2023.