Women shake hands

USAID is committed to shifting funding and decision-making power to the people, organizations, and institutions that are driving change in their own countries and communities. Experience shows that local leadership over development and humanitarian goals and programming is critical for equity, effectiveness, and sustainability. Through localization – a set of internal reforms, actions, and behavior changes to orient the Agency’s work around local actors’ priorities and strengthen local systems – USAID strives to advance locally led development and humanitarian assistance, in which local actors set their own agendas, develop solutions, and mobilize the capacity, leadership, and resources to make those solutions a reality.

In November 2021, Administrator Power announced two targets to guide USAID in its pursuit of locally led development and humanitarian response:

  • By FY 2025, USAID will direct a quarter of its funding directly to local partners.
  • By 2030, at least half of USAID programs will promote space for local actors to exercise leadership over priority setting, activity design, implementation, and defining and measuring results. 

To better understand how USAID tracks its localization work, see more about the Agency’s measurement approach. See USAID’s annual localization progress reports for status updates on USAID’s progress toward these targets: