Future of UK Aid and Development Assistance

From: The Movement for Community-Led Development (MCLD)

MCLD is a Majority World-led (Global South) network of over 3,000 grassroots organizations across 40 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and their INGO allies. Our members work through National Associations – self organized, self-directed, and self-governed local network organizations – to support human dignity and the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Alongside service delivery and humanitarian action, our members strengthen communities’ capacity for self-governance and accountable relationships with their governments to build resilience and self-reliance.

We submit this evidence on behalf of 3000+ local organizations, leveraging decades of practical experience with what enables communities to lead their own development sustainably without creating dependency.

How should the Government be prioritising UK Official Development Assistance in the coming years?

The Minister for International Development has outlined four “essential shifts” in how it delivers ODA. Three of these are much needed. The fourth, from “grants to expertise” is a slippery slope and risks exacerbating the same paternalistic patterns that the government seeks to move away from. In this submission we outline what is needed to make every shift possible.

1. From service delivery to system support

Providing basic services is the job of elected governments and the need for them is never going to diminish. In a world of decreasing ODA, ODA needs to focus on building capacities of local governments to deliver services to their people and strengthening the ability of communities to work with and hold their governments accountable. This requires:

1. Strengthening government civil society relationship: Support civil society to strengthen the capacity of local governments to create and execute robust public participation policies and processes. For example, MCLD has a School for Devolution and Community-led Development in partnership with the Government of Makueni County, Kenya to train government officials on public participation, participatory budgeting, feedback mechanisms, etc. The county government acknowledges that the rapid reduction in poverty and improvements in health indicators in the county are a direct result of this.
2. Enabling collective action at the community level: The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that communities are the first responders in any crisis. The pandemic also demonstrated that communities that suffered the least casualties and damage were ones that had a history of collective action. This was also true of countries like Indonesia which have national level community driven programmes. Therefore invest in community-led development. Routledge has just published a new volume on Community-led Development in practice that offers valuable information on how this can be done.
3. Providing overheads costs: Overhead costs keep civil society organizations running. Currently, most local organizations do not have basic funding to maintain full time finance staff or provide essential rights like health insurance to their staff who work in difficult circumstances. While INGO staff members have disaster risk insurance, health insurance, etc., local organization staff, who are the first responders in any crisis – from COVID to earthquakes and war – do not. All grants must have a component that provides overheads (20%) and in the case of local organizations, enables health, life, and disaster risk insurance for all staff on the grant. This is critical to building and sustaining local capacity and can ensure that we are providing basic human rights to people who are working to provide human rights to millions.
4. Investing in local networks: In a world of funding cuts, frequent disasters and shrinking civic space, local networks provide invaluable services – they share information, enable collective action and advocacy, prevent duplication, enable partnerships and peer learning, and serve as responsive intermediaries. They are the support infrastructure needed to strengthen local ecosystems and they exist in every country. Yet little funding is available to them. Often funders create new networks for their programs that collapse when funding ends. During the pandemic, from Benin to Malawi, governments approached MCLD National Associations to fight vaccine hesitancy and curb misinformation. Before the Nigeria elections in 2023, SACDN, a local network reached 19 million people with just 5000 USD to curb election violence. Local networks are the most cost effective and sustainable way for widespread collective action on the SDGs, but require funding for facilitation and coordination.
5. Providing long term grants: Short project cycles, typically one to three years, prevent building sustainable capacity because they incentivize communities to prioritize funder-defined outputs over long-term change. Communities never develop sustained capacity because they are constantly adapting to new funder requirements rather than building on their own strengths. Grants should be a minimum of five years, as many bilateral funders are doing.
6. Measuring what matters: Measure indicators that create sustainable local systems: Can communities mobilize collectively? Do they have relationships with the local government? Can they sustain initiatives beyond external funding? Do marginalized groups participate in decisions? During impact assessment, ensuring community led MEL is part of the process. Make sure local partners and communities are aware of the learnings and findings and can act on it. A very effective and internationally used tool for this is the Participatory CLD Assessment Tool, currently available in 11 languages and being used extensively by funders, local organizations, INGOs and local governments.

2. From international intervention to local provision

In its current form, “locally-led development" often means local organizations implementing funder-designed programs. Communities become service delivery contractors rather than decision-makers. This is not locally-led, it is locally-implemented. The distinction matters profoundly for whether reduced aid budgets can achieve more or simply do less of the same.

Consider an example. A community in Kendu Bay Kenya mobilized alumni to raise $10,000 for school infrastructure. When a politician offered funding in exchange for political support, the organized community declined. Instead, they demanded policy change for government-funded school feeding programs. Five years later, they successfully lobbied for road improvements. This illustrates genuine local leadership: communities discovering their own capacity, rejecting dependency relationships, and holding government accountable. This cannot happen when "local partners" are merely implementers of externally-designed projects. The UK should define "locally-led" as communities and local organizations having genuine authority over problem identification, resource allocation, choice of approaches, and accountability mechanisms. UKAID has an opportunity to learn from what other funders have done before. MCLD assisted USAID and is supporting a group of funders in the EU to do the same. We would be happy to support UKAID. Here are some topline recommendations

1. Access to information: Lack of access to information and language barriers ensure that most local organizations are unable to apply for grants. Every country has existing local networks. Share calls for proposals through them for widespread circulation. Ensure that RFPs for a region or country are available in key local languages like Swahili in East Africa, Ewe and French in West Africa, Spanish and Portuguese for Latin America. Ditto key policies. For instance USAID policy on local capacity strengthening was available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Swahili. Finally, at least for regional and country specific grants, ensure that once a grant is awarded, an introductory session walking all partners (not just the lead UNGO) through compliance and other requirements is held with translation support. This is critical as most oftentimes intermediaries add additional conditions which are blamed on the funders.
2. Work through local networks: Local organizations often need smaller sized grants in a progressive manner which requires infrastructure that most bilateral funders do not have. Local networks and pooled funds that are member led can plug this gap. These local intermediaries are governed by members and therefore responsive to their needs and local contexts. They ensure compliance and accountability, so that local organizations can focus on their work. They also ensure that UKAID does not need to create additional infrastructure for very small grants. An example of this was the Right to Grow grant by the Dutch government to the Movement for Community led Development in Uganda. Members collectively mapped their strengths and divided the work with the network responsible for coordination, learning and reporting. This reduced overhead costs and ensured the optimal use of resources through local partners and some country offices of INGOs.
3. Fund co-creation: Co-creation with community members or local organizations has become a popular way to ensure projects are designed with those most affected by them. However, this co-creation often is unfunded. This means only organizations who have staff and funding to attend these sessions can be part of the co-creation. If local organizations manage to participate, they end up being tapped for ideas but not getting funding. In Sierra Leone, a local farmer’s association participated in 13 rounds of co-creation only to be told that they did not qualify. This not only robbed the local organization of much needed resources and time, it adversely affected the community’s trust in them. Every RFP should have a provision for funded co-creation with communities and local partners after award of the grant.
4. Feedback loops: UKAID needs to strengthen its own capacity to work with local organizations and this begins by ensuring regular consultation and listening/ sharing sessions with local organizations. USAID successfully did this in multiple countries like Uganda, Malawi etc with support from MCLD and the report of these consultations can offer valuable ideas and recommendations.
5. Make intermediaries more responsive to communities: Even if the UK government meets the Grand Bargain and other commitments for 25% direct funding to local organizations, 75% of the funding will still flow through international NGOs or multilateral bodies. It is important to ensure that communities have a voice in how these bodies do their work. Community-led development should be a core criteria for awarding grants and RFPs should ask for intentional plans on how programs will be designed with communities and put them in the driver's seat.
6. Rationalise compliance requirements: Current compliance requirements (like multiple year audited reports, detailed budget forecasting for several years, international bank accounts with multiple signatories) provide high barriers for local and community based organizations, especially when they do not come with funding for core or administrative work. Every grant to a local organization should have an intentional overhead component of 20% that enables them to build core systems. Moreover, every funder has different compliance requirements even though arguably taxpayers need the same accountability across the globe. UKAID should intentionally work with other funders through OECD/DAC to come up with common due diligence and compliance requirements. Finally, if we value building sustainable systems, that should be a part of due diligence. Allow community organizations to demonstrate capacity through a track record of collective action, not just institutional systems.

3. Move from being a donor to investor: This is deeply tied to the question around where is reform needed in multilateral agencies and development banks the UK is a member of, and funds?

Currently most countries in the Majority World (Global South) are unable to provide basic services to their people - and need aid- as all their resources go towards debt servicing and the current tax laws enable corporations to evade any taxes in those countries. To address aid dependency and work towards a post ODA world, the UK must lend its support to the voices of Majority World (Global South) governments demanding reform of the international financial architecture. Governments need to be able to use their own resources to provide services to their own people. This requires not austerity measures but debt forgiveness or moratorium for at least 10 years. The Jubilee commission report has some valuable suggestions and insights. As does the The Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT) which includes Prof. Edmund Valpy Fitzgerald from the UK. Without these reforms, the need for aid will continue to rise.

Finally, remittances can provide a much needed boost to local economies. But the cost of remittances needs to come down. While it has been declining in the UK, it was still at 6.1% in 2024, well short of the UK government’s commitment to reduce it to 5% by 2014 and the SDG commitment to reduce it to 3% by 2030. Immediate action is needed to bring down the cost of remittances.

4. What needs to be considered as the Government plans to leverage UK expertise and move from “grants to expertise”?

The proposed shift from grants to UK expertise raises questions about where power and priorities sit. It risks imposing external, paternalistic solutions which will neither be accepted nor bear results, wasting time and resources. It is true that UK institutions have knowledge that can be a valuable resource to local organizations but this shift could only work if UK expertise serves locally-defined priorities rather than imposing UK solutions. Let local actors request specific expertise they need. Value local expertise equally with UK expertise. The UK could play a valuable role by funding South-South learning.

For example, a Nigerian community's approach to election violence might be far more relevant to Kenya than a UK university model. If the shift to the “investor” model means returns in growth and trade, the UK should explicitly acknowledge that this approach serves UK interests and not just partner country priorities. True partnership requires acknowledging when the UK benefits financially from aid relationships.

How does the UK’s delivery approach for a) development and b) humanitarian assistance need to adapt to the changing funding and values landscape?

Moving from paternalism to partnership requires fundamental shifts:.

●        Instead of the UK defining themes and inviting proposals, pilot a funding window for proven local networks who work with communities to decide what communities need most.

●        Allow reporting in local languages and, accept community-validated evidence.

●        Fund programs for five or more years.

●        Create measuring metrics with local organizations and measuring for changes in the community capacity for collective action and local government responsiveness.

When funding is through UK based organizations ensure that:

●        Intermediaries pass on the same percentage of overhead costs as they take to local partners.

●        When grants are awarded, hold an introductory session where all partners are invited to understand the grant, rules and what they need to do for compliance. Overheads are passed to local orgs as explained above.

●        All partners are present in funder check-ins and in launches or reports (unless it poses a risk to their safety).

●        UK based or international organizations are focussing on coordination, documentation, peer exchanges, not service delivery or implementation action in countries—that should be the work of local partners. This can be done by ensuring at least 50% funds for all service delivery/humanitarian assistance grants given to INGOs go to local partners. And this money should not be counted in the 25% funding that should go directly to local organizations – this is not direct funding.

How should the Government be communicating the results of UK aid, and its importance, to the public?

The public often misinterprets the amount of assistance that goes out and for what ends. It is important to put numbers in perspective—how much is spent on military, how much is spent on education in the UK, how much is spent on supporting refugees within, on student loans etc and how much goes to UK organizations for work outside and finally how much goes to other countries and the impact of this. Map and communicate what UKAID has done for health, education or HIV or jobs and why it matters—both because of the values that UK people care about and because a stable world is good for the UK. For example, making the linkages between climate finance and how it can impact the UK is critical given the change in weather patterns, storms and what climate change is doing to the country. Also INGOs who work in international development, create jobs within the UK—-so it helps people in the UK even as it helps those outside. We need to tell the whole story, not just big numbers without context.

Bottom line: Cutting UKAID at a time when millions of people around the world are already grappling with the implications of dismantling USAID, when climate disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity and when we are once again losing progress on the SDGs, risks undoing decades of investment into progress made by the people of UK. It also directly violates the commitment to increase ODA to 0.7%, a commitment reiterated by the UK government through the Compromise of Seville in June this year. The cuts will cause irreparable harm. Aid in its current form creates dependency - but the dependency it has created means that abrupt cuts directly translate into loss of lives. There is ample evidence to show the loss of lives caused due to the USAID cuts. The government of the UK needs to carefully consider if it too wants to be responsible for loss of innocent lives and for undoing the progress we were collectively making towards the SDGs. If not, reductions in aid budgets have to be made gradually, in a phased manner and with ample notice - 5 years at a minimum - to enable countries and communities to build systems to deal with them.

And in the meantime, UKAID can change the way it works to build towards a world where ODA is not needed. MCLD’s experience across 40 countries demonstrates that communities can lead their own development when they have genuine authority, appropriate resources, and space to organize. The UK’s shift to “locally-led solutions” will succeed only if it transfers decision-making power, not just implementation tasks. The future of UK aid should not be about doing the same things with less money. It should be about enabling communities to lead their own development, which is both more effective and more sustainable.