People deserve the change to decide how UK aid is spent in a changing world

A. Just over a year ago, the Labor government announced it would cut UK aid, despite its manifesto pledge to rebuild Britain’s already damaged reputation for international development. This decision, along with cuts by the United States, France, Germany, Sweden and others, is creating real challenges for the world’s most marginalized communities: health centers are closing, family support systems are being scaled back, and education programs for girls are being rapidly scaled back.

As the brutal effects of these cuts come to the fore and debate grows about what the future of international development will look like, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not retreating into nostalgia. We channel that frustration into something different. We are looking forward.

I was recently at an event where one of the speakers, development leader and practitioner Keith Kibirango, said: “If [aid] money is coming back, it must come back on a level playing field.” This pivotal moment is an opportunity for us to reshape how development has been done for decades: the top-down conditions imposed by donor governments, the bureaucratic hoops local organizations have to jump through, and the damaging assumptions baked into international development itself.

Minister for International Development, Baroness Chapman, recently stated that one of the UK government’s key priorities is “a move away from international intervention towards local services where local partners drive their own solutions”. We welcome this direction wholeheartedly. But let me be clear: This is not a new area that international NGOs are asked to navigate.

The international development sector has been continuously reckoning with this issue for over a decade, applying new approaches and generating new knowledge to be more locally driven, and working closely with global majority partners to transfer power to local leaders and communities. We have already begun this journey and are keen to share what we have learned with the UK government and other partners to agree a way forward together.

International NGOs, local organizations, global majority civil society and governments across the sector have been asking these questions for years: Who is driving the solutions? Whose information is important? What does true partnership look like? With these questions in mind, international NGOs are actively considering what their role should be in the future.

While there is still a long way to go, initiatives such as Grand Bargain, Pledge for Change, CREED and Charter for Change signal international NGOs’ commitment to transforming themselves, shifting decision-making to local people and organizations operating at the heart of communities. Some NGOs focus on participatory grantmaking as an inclusive way to ensure that funding decision-making authority is in the hands of the groups they aim to support.

Organizations like ADD International And Transform Commerce both follow this approach. ADD International Disability Justice Fund for Women By submitting grant decisions to a panel of women with disabilities, it reached more than 1,000 applicants, including informal and unregistered groups that had never accessed funding before. Grant arrived in Uganda Juliet’s organization BUDWAan organization that trains disabled women in everything from tailoring to welding and runs a community savings group so women don’t have to go out on the streets to beg for food. As Juliet says: “Teach me how, but don’t do it for me.” Transform Trade found that by financing local farmers who collectively decided to purchase better quality seeds, the farming productivity of many of these farmers increased by an average of 225 percent.

Others decentralize decision-making, e.g. HelpAge International Delegating decision-making back to the national organizations they work with, rather than concentrating it in the UK head office. While some organizations continue to move forward with the locally driven agenda, there are still many inequities and much more to be done in this area. Governments, such as the UK, and charities that have historically funded international development also have a role to play.

It is pleasing and encouraging that the government is prioritizing strengthening local services. Approaching Global Partnerships Conference May offers the chance to put words into action. There is a real opportunity here to move forward and reimagine how development is done, ensuring that progress is based on justice, equity and sustainability. Civil society has many concrete ideas and recommendations developed in collaboration with partners around the world. We look forward to working with the UK government and other conference participants to make these a reality.

Romilly Greenhill is CEO of Bond, a UK network of organizations working in international development and humanitarian aid.

This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project