Credo Advisory’s Perspective on USAID’s Localisation Initiative

Credo Advisory’s Founder/CEO, Awele Okigbo, and Catalina Escobar, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at MAKAIA, were featured on the Aid Market Podcast to discuss the importance of localisation in global development and their views on USAID’s localisation agenda.

At its core, localisation requires working closely with local partners, driving community-led development, and including local partners in all project planning and implementation stages. This involves recognising and integrating local knowledge, expertise, resources and systems into development projects. One of the key takeaways from the discussion was the need to support and build local partner capacity and ensure their inclusion in delivering development programs.

Central to the discourse was the importance of localisation in supporting and empowering local actors. This necessitates building their capacity and utilising their social structures to equip them with the resources and skills necessary to become leaders. The podcast episode also emphasised a need to measure the impact of development initiatives by tracking project delivery and improvements to the local economy and talent pool over time.

Awele Okigbo stressed the urgency and significance of empowering local communities through the localisation initiative. In her words, “Localisation is nothing for us without us. The most influential person in a project is not the person in Washington D.C but the imam or youth leader. Localisation should be about shifting from a local partnership model to local leadership.”

Credo Advisory is a local actor in Nigeria and prioritizes local leadership to foster inclusive, effective, and sustainable project delivery.

Listen more here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3kMmwF84EjL5p5p1f22FEO