USAID's Locally‐Led Development Agenda: Open Government and Independent Monitoring

USAID’s ambitious localization agenda between 2021–2024—suspended in early 2025—aimed to provide more funding for local organizations, strengthen local systems, and co‐create with local communities. This study uses pre‐2025 open government data to identify continuity and change during USAID’s localization push. While USAID’s localization agenda primarily focused on funding to local prime implementing partners, our research shows that, in the countries studied, more USAID funding went to local subaward recipients than to local prime implementers. We also find that USAID contributed to debates about how to conceptualize and measure locally‐led development. Though the US sharply curtailed foreign assistance and USAID data transparency at the start of the second Trump administration, if a localization agenda were ever to be revived in the future, then prioritizing user‐centered access to project data would enable informed participation integral to locally‐led development.