Questioning local ownership: Insights from donor-funded NGOs in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT Local ownership is one of the popular paradigms of Western development aid. It involves giving more effective control of the design and implementation of development aid to local actors in aid-receiving countries, including governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local communities. This article contrasts the understanding of local ownership as a top-down process triggered by donors, with an alternative, bottom-up ownership, which emerges spontaneously on the ground. By looking at the case of a local NGO in post-Soviet Tajikistan, the article analyses practices which reveal how the NGO actively takes ownership of development aid through everyday work. This includes fundraising, structuring relations with other organizations competing for donor funding, selecting calls for proposals from NGOs and writing grant applications. Each of these activities involves negotiations of the goals and scope of development work, against parameters imposed by donors. By means of example, the article questions the application of the local ownership paradigm in development work.