Project reach
Consultations covered 7 sub-regions and over 50 districts, engaging 128 NGOs, 87 CBOs and multiple networks, faith-based and private sector actors.
Executive summary
Voices of Local & National Actors — Summary
CAPAIDS Uganda’s Local Leadership Lab (LLL) project (May 2025) amplifies the voices of local and national actors across seven sub-regions to explore the status of Locally Led Development (LLD) in Uganda. This interactive page summarizes the position paper, includes key findings, regional insights and concrete recommendations aimed at donors, INGOs, intermediaries and local actors.
Three major asks
Quality funding & equitable partnerships; capacity enhancement; and documentation & investment in local philanthropy.
Key messages
Collaboration and genuine power sharing between international and local actors is essential. For locally led development to thrive, support needs to be flexible, long-term, and built on real partnerships where local actors are valued as equal leaders, not just implementers.
Introduction
What is Locally Led Development (LLD)?
LLD centers on empowering local stakeholders — communities, civil society, local governments and private sector — to set priorities, devise solutions and mobilize resources for sustainable outcomes. Donors increasingly acknowledge the need to embed impact in local systems, but practice often falls short of transferring decision-making authority.
LLL Theory of Change
The Local Leadership Lab follows a three-stage process: Discovery (demand articulation & stakeholder mapping); Ideation (co-design, trust-building); and Action (implementation, iteration and learning). The focus is locally-owned, locally-led and context-specific.
Methodology
How data and voices were gathered
The paper used qualitative methods: literature review plus extensive regional consultations. Stakeholders included CSOs, CBOs, national and district NGOs, PWD-led groups, women-led and youth-led organizations, local government officers, religious and cultural institutions and the media.
Policy & legal context
National frameworks supporting LLD
Uganda promotes locally led development through its National Local Economic Development (LED) policy and the Parish Development Model (PDM). LED aims to deepen fiscal decentralisation and enable local public-private-community partnerships for economic growth. Implementation inconsistencies remain a challenge.
Evolution
From top-down to locally-led: the international shift
Since the Aid Effectiveness Agenda and commitments like the Grand Bargain (2016), the sector has pushed for localization — including more direct funding to local and national actors and multi-year, unearmarked resources. However, structural power imbalances and donor practices still slow progress.
Why LLD matters
A case for Locally Led Development
Locally designed solutions are culturally relevant, resilient, and more likely to be sustained after external funding ends. LLD increases local accountability, builds local capacity, and shifts power so communities can shape the futures they want.
Key statistics (from the paper)
(22 - 10%) Women-led & Women-rights organisations (WLO's & WRO's)
“The Status of Locally Led Development in Uganda” (CAPAIDS Uganda).
Women-Focused Organizations (22 Actors)
Categories of Women-Focused Organizations
- NGOs
- CBOs
- Faith-Based Organizations
- Companies
- Media
- Cultural Institutions
Women-Focused Organizations (22 of 219 Local Actors)
- NGOs – 8 (3.7%)
- CBOs – 4 (1.8%)
- Faith-Based Organizations – 5 (2.3%)
- Companies – 2 (0.9%)
- Media – 1 (0.5%)
- Cultural Institutions – 2 (0.9%)
- Total – 22 (10.0% of all local actors)
Funding & operational statistics
Funding mechanisms
Activity-based — 43%
Annual — 30%
Multi-year — 23%
Small %: one-offs/in-kind observed in some regions
Internal Cost Recovery (ICR)
None — 68%
1–15% — 26%
16–30% — 6%
Above 30% — ~1%
Worst performing: Northern & Karamoja show very low internal cost recovery.
Overhead & operational costs
1–10% — 42%
11–20% — 17%
21–30% — 9%
None — 28%
Donor — Local Actor relationships
Partnerships — 74%
Master–servant — 16%
Undisclosed/fear — 10%
Funding quality
What "quality funding" means
According to the paper, quality funding must be: flexible, multi-year, direct, predictable and include overhead & internal cost recovery.
Affordability & accessibility
Funding should be accessible to grassroots actors without onerous compliance gates that exclude smaller local organizations.
Transparency & trust
Build equitable partnerships based on trust and mentorship — donors should treat local actors as co-creators, not subcontractors.
Duration & flexibility
Multi-year (the "vaccine approach") funding provides sustainability — short-term "paracetamol" funding undermines local capacities.
Regional consultations
Highlights from the seven sub-regions
Below are concise region-by-region summaries pulled from the consultations.
Karamoja
Participants: 21 actors (mix of NGOs, CBOs, media, FBOs). Funding: 46% annual, 29% activity-based, 23% multi-year, 1% in-kind. ICR: 73% of projects provided no internal cost recovery; only a few donors provided operational costs up to 50% in some cases.
Primary asks: multi-year funding, capacity building, stronger local-entry for donors and donor working group with local actor representation.
Northern
Context: Post-conflict recovery. 6 of 30 organizations (20%) receive activity-based funding, 1 (3%) receives annual funding; none receive multi-year funding. Many organizations operate on volunteer support.
Asks: direct funding, investment in local resource mobilization and social enterprises, improved overhead percentages, co-creation in design.
Eastern
Funding: 58% activity-based, 27% annual, 15% multi-year. ICR: 54% received none; 33% <15%; 13% <30%. District actors requested better involvement in planning and regulatory compliance support.
Southwest
Mixed donor ranking. 30% multi-year, 35% annual, 60% activity-based (note overlaps due to multiple project types). Overhead: nearly 45% get 1–10% operational costs; ~29% receive none.
Western
Donor approaches vary — many donors lack needs assessment at community level, resulting in mismatched projects. Asks include multiyear funding and pooling funds for trusted local organizations.
West Nile
Refugee-hosting region with rising humanitarian demand. Funding short-term; local organizations need flexible funding and capacity for refugee response.
Central
Mixed observations; some positive donor engagement but still gaps in overhead and ICR for local institutions. Call to increase visibility and strengthen district coordination.
Marginalized groups
Voices from women-led, PWD, refugees & cultural institutions
Marginalized groups reported barriers to funding access, lack of respect and recognition, and culturally insensitive approaches. Donor asks include safe dialogue spaces, co-design and support for social enterprises that build sustainability.
Faith-based & cultural institutions
Often excluded from overhead and ICR considerations; requested better inclusion and tailored compliance processes.
Women-led & refugee women
Report lack of respect and limited funding—call for inclusive funding, flexible requirements and targeted capacity support.
People with Disabilities
Face accessibility and eligibility barriers — donors must remove structural barriers in grant design.
Recommendations
Actionable recommendations from the paper
- Enable quality funding: Clarify what a 'critical mass' of quality funding means; expand core funding, pooled funds and institutional overhead inclusion.
- Address power imbalances: Adopt equitable partnerships, co-creation, simplified proposal processes and treat local organisations as co-creators not subcontractors.
- Increase support for local actors: Invest in capacity building, social enterprises and local fundraising strategies to diversify revenue sources.
- Realize the participation revolution: Expand outreach to sub-national actors, incorporate local knowledge in needs assessments and increase meaningful participation of affected populations.
- Leverage district structures: Strengthen DNMCs and district-level coordination to increase visibility and accountability.
These recommendations were synthesized from regional inputs and aim to increase predictability, flexibility and local ownership across Uganda.
Conclusion
Conclusion & acknowledgements
The position paper highlights structural gaps in funding quality and partnership practices, while also showing positive shifts towards localization by some donors and networks. A collective push — donors, INGOs and local actors — is necessary to make LLD the default operating model. The project thanks CIVICUS and all regional participants for their input.
Lead researcher: Ronald Matanda — CAPAIDS Uganda