A Ghanaian NGO invited to a project meeting after the donor has approved all the key decisions is expected to recruit participants, run community meetings, collect data, and account for every cedi. Yet, the same NGO has little say in setting priorities, budgets, or measuring success. Donors call this “locally led” development. But local organisations say it isn’t.
That’s the core of an ongoing debate about localisation in Ghana’s development sector. Many Ghanaian NGOs carry the risks of delivering projects but lack real power over what those projects do or how they run. International donors often keep control over problem selection, budgets, indicators, and deadlines. Local organisations end up as implementers, not decision-makers.
The West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) and recent studies argue that meaningful localisation requires shifting decision-making authority to Ghanaian organisations and communities from the start. That means involving them in defining needs, designing projects, allocating resources, managing risks, and assessing results. The donors and international NGOs can still provide financing, technical support, and global advocacy. But they should not hold near-total control.
The gap between localisation promises and practice is clear. The Grand Bargain, a global humanitarian agreement signed in 2016, set a target to direct at least 25 percent of funding to local and national responders. Yet a 2024 USAID Office of Inspector General review found that only 10.2 percent of USAID’s total budget in the 2022 financial year went directly to local partners. The report named employee capacity, partner experience, and unreliable performance data as obstacles. But it also warned that these issues should lead to stronger partnerships, not keeping control with large intermediaries.
A 2026 study based on 36 interviews with local and international NGOs and other informants in Ghana shows local NGOs contribute local knowledge, credibility, and community connections. But restrictive funding rules, difficult accountability demands, and weak recognition of local skills limit their role. The study also warns that localisation can just shift control from international NGOs to large national organisations in Accra, leaving smaller district and regional groups dependent.
Using a Ghanaian logo or employing Ghanaian staff does not make a project locally led, the study says. Power remains external when donors fix the theory of change, budgets, data ownership, and impact definitions without affected communities. WACSI adds that Ghanaian NGOs themselves must challenge unequal donor relationships while avoiding the same inequalities in their dealings with local communities.
Donors remain accountable to taxpayers and boards. NGOs must show sound governance, financial management, and beneficiary protection. Localisation should create mutual accountability. Donors should explain funding decisions, disclose costs retained by intermediaries, and accept independent review. Local organisations should publish accounts, manage conflicts of interest, strengthen safeguarding, and provide communities with accessible ways to question decisions.
Four reforms could turn localisation into real institutional change. First, local organisations and community representatives should share authority from the start. Projects should not get final approval until local actors help define problems, design theories of change, select indicators, and agree on budgets. Project committees should give them voting power, not just invite them to rubber-stamp decisions.
Second, donors should deliver more direct, multi-year, flexible financing. Grants must cover the real costs of governance, staff development, digital systems, monitoring, rent, safeguarding, and audits — not just visible activities. If an international organisation is an intermediary, the entire funding chain should be published, showing amounts and percentages retained at each level.
Third, evaluation must combine accountability to funders with accountability to citizens. Communities should help decide what progress looks like, get information about budgets and targets in understandable formats, and join public reviews. Local partners should keep reasonable access to data they collect and use findings for planning. WACSI’s recent work with grassroots groups supports monitoring and learning systems adapted to community realities.
Fourth, risk must be shared fairly. Local NGOs should not bear operational, reputational, and safeguarding risks while donors keep strategic authority. Partnership agreements should include fair overhead rates, clear procedures for budget changes, joint risk registers, dispute-resolution mechanisms, and real exit plans. Donors must distinguish between organisational weaknesses that need support and misconduct that needs sanctions.
Localisation must also move decision-making beyond Accra. National NGOs can replicate the same inequalities they criticise globally by controlling district partners and consulting communities only after funding decisions. Decision-making should shift not just from the Global North to Ghana, but from national capitals to districts, and from certified organisations to citizens.
Ghana needs a national localisation compact to set clear rules and standards that ensure real power shifts to local actors. Until then, many projects will keep calling themselves locally led while local organisations carry responsibility without control.
According to Joy Online.
