A Reckoning for Foreign Aid: Why Atlas Network Supporters Were Right All Along

The late Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, whose stories shed light on everyday injustices in post-colonial Africa, was once asked whether he thought his work would resonate with European audiences. He said that he hoped that it would, but that this was not his primary concern.

He then delivered the now famous line, “Why be a sunflower and turn towards the sun? I am the sun.”

His quip reveals something deeper than just the ego of an artist. It’s the human desire for primacy in determining one’s own value. It’s the desire for self-determination.

Foreign aid, in its quest to make the world a better place, has long failed to account for the role of self-determination in human affairs. Criticisms of foreign aid run far deeper than just its violation of self-determination, though many of the unintended consequences can be traced to this original sin.

Foreign aid for development wastes a lot of money while leaving many worse off. It invites corruption, disincentivizes progress, undermines recipient country leaders’ accountability to citizens, contorts development aims around unrelated foreign policy interests, and ultimately fosters resentment and opposition towards donor countries’ liberal ideals.

In response to those injustices, for many years now, a movement of diverse voices has rallied around a call to “decolonize aid.” The implication of this protest language is clear. Good intentions, and buckets of money, will never be fair compensation for violating a people’s right to shape their own futures.

The remedy has been a push for what is called localization, a concept that promises a major shift in leadership from foreign experts to local voices in honor of self-determination.

For former USAID administrator Samantha Power, localization meant setting, and then never coming close to reaching, funding targets designed to get more USAID dollars to local organizations. But even success on this score would have been inadequate. Funding local organizations is only a first step. Finding the right organizations to fund and then balancing their autonomy with real accountability are critical, too. I remain skeptical that any taxpayer-funded agency, subject to political influence as it must be, is well suited to achieve true localization.

USAID, which was the largest foreign aid agency in the world in absolute dollars spent, has now been shuttered. The large majority of its programs and personnel have been cut, and what remains will be absorbed by the U.S. State Department.

Is this cause for alarm or for celebration? In my view, neither response is quite right. Instead, I see a drop in foreign aid as an important opportunity for local voices to take a more prominent, independent role in determining their own futures and for private philanthropy to step up its game to support them.

Of course, private philanthropy’s natural advantages over government-funded aid can be squandered if a robust localization model is not adopted. Localization is not just about who gets funding. It’s about who leads the change processes for the results we all seek. Getting localization right means understanding the difference between hiring a contractor and investing in an entrepreneur. In the former case, grantmakers outsource the implementation of plans they control; in the latter case, grantmakers empower the visions of leaders with local knowledge to fuel their own plans.

Atlas Network’s model is true localization. We are ready to meet this moment thanks to the generosity of our donors, the scalability of our grantmaking processes, and the impressive capacity that our local partners continue to build.

In Borom Sarret (1963, translated as The Wagoner), Sembène’s camera follows his protagonist as he leaves his wife and child in the morning, taking his horse-drawn cart around Dakar as a taxi for hire. Throughout the day, he suffers a range of abuses at the hands of fraudsters and police, returning home to his hungry family worse off than he started. The short film ends with the wife setting off ominously into the night to earn the family its only meal of the day.

Atlas Network’s local partners are tackling, and solving, the institutional problems Sembène featured indirectly in his films. Do we need USAID’s $50 billion budget to meet this moment? No. Our local partners achieve verified results for pennies on the dollar compared to foreign aid largesse. We vet 800 projects a year and select roughly one-third for funding with a typical grant size that is between $30,000 and $50,000.

For that kind of money, you wouldn’t think our local partners could successfully:

· Secure property rights for women in South Sudan

· Ease business licensing in Burundi

· Increase freedom to work in Brazil

But they do. That’s the power of localization done right. When our grantees report their success, we do not celebrate ourselves as foreign experts who solved a problem. We, along with our grantees, celebrate the power of freedom to unleash human potential. We marvel at the ingenuity of free people who prove fully capable of ending poverty for themselves.

When you support Atlas Network, you’re investing in today’s very best projects for freedom around the globe. You’re also investing in tomorrow as we work alongside a growing network to build its capacity to achieve future results. Transitioning away from foreign aid will be disruptive, but it will be worth it. There is a better way. Atlas Network’s supporters have been right about that all along.

Matt Warner is president of Atlas Network and co-author of Development with Dignity: Self-determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty (Routledge, 2022). Get your free paperback copy when you donate $25 or more at AtlasNetwork.org.