The Local Systems Framework as a tool for locally driven development

Making foreign aid more locally driven is an increasingly pursued priority for international development organizations – governmental agencies and non-governmental actors alike. But, there is no agreement on how to actually accomplish this in practice. Different development actors have adopted different approaches over time – with different results. This workshop will introduce students to one of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s primary tools to pursue locally driven programming: the Local Systems Framework. This framework encourages development projects to centralize pre-existing local actors and systems as the critical foundation for future development efforts, and “contributes to the ongoing transformation of the way that the Agency [USAID] does business by defining clear and practical steps toward realizing a vision of development that is locally owned, locally led and locally sustained,” (USAID-1).

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