For us, locally led development is not just another buzzword. Our commitment to working locally extends beyond project cycles, annual deadlines, and specific deliverables. It is embedded in our ethos as a company. For nearly 50 years, Chemonics has been dedicated to helping people live healthier, more productive, and more independent lives.
As an employee-owned sustainable development firm, Chemonics sets the highest possible standards. Our culture and approach to doing business reinforce our mission, allowing us to be effective, equitable, and ethical in promoting meaningful change around the world.
The 2023-2024 report on Chemonics’ Contributions to Locally Led Development highlights some of the key successes and lessons learned from our work over the past year and builds upon the foundations set in our 2020-2023 report.
our approach to locally led development
- Our people – We employ 6,000 local specialists worldwide who deliver and enable sustainable development results in the communities in which they live and work.
- Our partners – We support local governments, businesses, universities, associations, civil society groups, and community leaders who lead change in their communities in response to locally prioritized needs.
- Our processes – Our people and partners co-create solutions that harness local expertise, resources, and innovation.
At Chemonics, people come first. With a global workforce of 6,000 development professionals in 98 countries, we have a strong, interconnected network of local experts who share innovations from one country to adapt them to another. We are constantly cultivating this network by supporting our teams with the tools and resources to succeed and fostering connections across our programs, countries, and global operations. These connections are also sustainable: After a project closes, a strong network of Chemonics local alumni continue to advance their country’s development goals while working in new roles within the public and private sectors.
CULTIVATING LOCALLY LED TEAMS
Chemonics continues to prioritize local leadership at the highest levels across our projects. This commitment is reflected in the 19% increase in local project leadership from 2022 to 2023.
Meet William. After 14 years working in finance, William Nyakatura joined Chemonics as chief of party on the USAID/Uganda Strategic Investments Activity. He is able to pull from his extensive knowledge of the region’s investment landscape to accelerate private investment in Uganda’s agriculture, health, and energy sectors.
“I come from an investment background, where we are always looking at raising capital, and I was very interested in finding a place where there would be a convergence of investments meeting the development world, where we’re looking at the impact...Chemonics gave me that opportunity...it is one of the joys of being an investment banker by design, but then also a development player by engineering.”
Investing in professional development
Chemonics is committed to supporting staff so they may succeed in their roles, as well as equipping them with the skills to grow as development professionals and become tomorrow’s leaders. We provide financial support to all our employees to pursue language training, certification, university coursework, and other development opportunities that align with their professional goals and interests. We have partnered with academic institutions to develop custom programs for our workforce in high-demand specialties, including data analytics, global supply chain, and leadership and management.
Meet Farzona. Farzona Bahronova is a monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) specialist with the USAID-funded Learn Together Activity, which partners with the government of Tajikistan to improve primary students’ reading and math skills. Rather than going abroad to put her skills into practice, Farzona is able to leverage her skills to support Tajikistan’s future generations.
“Now that I have an opportunity to work at an organization that is dedicated to promoting quality education and improving the learning skills of children, I sincerely feel the responsibility both to the project and to my country, that I have to work hard, use my knowledge and skills, and contribute to the project to achieve its goals.”
Training tomorrow’s leaders
In March 2024, 29 high-performing, up-and-coming project leaders representing 21 countries completed Chemonics’ innovative project leadership program. This rigorous six-week course provided mentorship, coaching, and training on skills – including adaptive leadership, strategic planning, and financial management – required to be an effective chief of party. This was the second iteration of the training and built upon the success of the pilot program completed in December 2022.
Meet Maksat. Maksat Iskakov completed the project leadership program in December 2022, and in June 2023, assumed the chief of party position on the USAID Kyrgyz Republic Agro Trade Activity, where he is promoting inclusive jobs and economic opportunities. Maksat credits the project leadership program with providing both the hard and soft skills training required to assume this increased responsibility:
“The most valuable lesson I learned as a graduate from the project leadership program is that the most important thing you need to do your job well is trust. You have to build trust within your team, with the client, and with the community. If you don’t have trust, you will fail.”
Our Partners: Engaging Local Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Impact
In this section: Convening Local Stakeholders | Advancing the Pathway to Direct Awards | Transitioning to Direct Donor Assistance | Leveraging Reciprocal Partnerships
On all of our projects, Chemonics partners with local organizations to achieve long-term impact. From small businesses, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and academic institutions to the private sector, local and national government entities, and civil society groups, we use our convening power to forge lasting, mutual partnerships that sustainably strengthen local systems.
Convening local stakeholders
In October 2023, over 40 local partners representing more than 20 countries convened in Washington, D.C. to discuss best practices for promoting locally led approaches to conflict-aware development and peacebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected states.
Attendees included Mosul Space, a trusted partner of the USAID Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities/Tahfeez activity. This innovation and technology hub has provided more than 10,000 Iraqi youth with hackathons, business incubators, and other training opportunities to tackle their country’s toughest challenges.
These partners drew upon their experience working with various donors and implementing partners to support peacebuilding, education, anticorruption, environmental protection, and health outcomes in their own communities to offer donors and implementing partners actionable recommendations, such as multidirectional training and capacity strengthening, addressing pay inconsistencies between local and expat staff, and designing MEL indicators with flexibility and adaptability in mind.
Learn more: How Local Partners are “Meeting the Moment.”
Advancing the Pathway to Direct Awards
Our deep roots in Ukraine – strengthened across 19 years of in-country programming – have enabled Chemonics to continue essential agriculture, economic growth, and democratic strengthening programming even in the midst of ongoing conflict. After attacks on granaries, warehouses, and port infrastructure disrupted global supply chains, the USAID Ukraine Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (AGRO) activity partnered with Agricultural Cooperative Zernovyi (Zernovyi) to provide 19,000 farmers with seeds, fertilizer, and other materials to ensure high-quality harvests, particularly in front-line, war-affected regions. This mutually beneficial partnership linked Zernovyi’s exceptional connections with fertilizer suppliers and micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises with Chemonics’ strong compliance and project management skills. At $22 million, this is the largest sub-award in Chemonics’ 49-year history, and provides Zernovyi an opportunity to showcase their ability to manage future donor-funded opportunities.
Transitioning to Direct Donor Assistance
Chemonics supported the Syrian Civil Defence (SCD) – more commonly known as the White Helmets – for more than 10 years to provide emergency assistance to Syrians in response to the ongoing civil war. In that time, the organization has grown to over 3,000 volunteers who have saved an estimated 127,000 lives.
Strong monitoring and feedback mechanisms established by the White Helmets Assistance Program (WHAP), a joint partnership between USAID, Global Affairs Canada, the German Federal Foreign Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in the United Kingdom, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Denmark, enhanced SCD’s knowledge and capacity to compliantly implement donor assistance while incorporating flexibility to incorporate the organization’s direct input on the activities. WHAP worked closely with SCD and donors to adapt highly complicated regulations to the local context, including adjusting the types of grants that could be used to ensure speed and flexibility.
Over time, SCD absorbed more direct management of procurement, financial management, communications, advocacy, and donor relations. WHAP also prioritized hiring staff from Syria and Turkey, which not only built trust with communities and donors, but also created a pipeline of local professionals that could support the White Helmets in the long term. In 2023, USAID transitioned to funding the SCD directly.
“We were constantly responding to what was needed on the ground, and what was needed on the ground always became more complex. And as a result, we needed to work with the SCD to build more complex systems to feed into that so that they could properly operate.”
– Saeed Uri, former project director, White Helmets Assistance Program
Leveraging Reciprocal Partnerships
Conservation trust funds, which are designed to be independent from government control and financing, offer a solution to the often-tense disputes around ownership and accountability of cross-border river basins. In the face of increasing water scarcity on the Cubango-Okavango River Basin (CORB), the Resilient Waters Program convened public and private sector stakeholders from Angola, Botswana, and Namibia to establish the CORB Fund as a way to strengthen multi-party coordination. The Fund adopted a blended finance model with donor, private sector, and philanthropic investments supporting local priorities, including small-scale water, food, and energy security, improved community-based natural resource management, and environmental education and awareness. According to the World Resources Institute, over the next 25 years, the demand for water in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to skyrocket by 163%. In the face of climate change, these conservation funds represent an opportunity for land managers and communities to adapt to changing circumstances while sustainably managing natural resources.
Chemonics’ way of working reflects our commitment to our people and partners. Through our processes, we aim to shift power to local actors and engage diverse partners as leaders of development throughout the project life cycle and beyond. We do this by organizing open innovation competitions to discover and support local solutions to scale, and by co-creating solutions with diverse local partners. We directly fund these solutions by awarding grants and subcontracts to local partners to implement their ideas.
Photo credit: GHSC-PSM/Xpozed Network
Strengthening professional pipelines
The USAID Global Health Supply Chain – Procurement and Supply Management (GHSC-PSM) project uses innovative technologies and industry best practices to strengthen local supply chains to ensure that health commodities reach even the most vulnerable communities. Recognizing an opportunity to build the technical skills of biomedical, pharmacy, and nursing students to better operate, manage, innovate, and develop the supply chain sector, the University of Zambia, Nursing and Midwifery Council of Zambia, and other higher learning institutions partnered with GHSC-PSM to train teaching staff and develop learning modules focused on current challenges and future opportunities. More than 4,000 students have received vocational and undergraduate training, with additional post-graduate and masters programs launched in January 2024 to provide additional educational opportunities for Zambian professionals. This not only reduces the amount of on-the-job training required, but strengthens the pipeline of future health supply chain experts in Zambia.
Photo credit: GHSC-PSM/Xpozed Network
Funding local solutions
Since 2022, Sri Lanka has struggled with high levels of unemployment, foreign currency shortages, and import restrictions on essential goods like food and fuel. While electric vehicles offered a potential remedy, they are cost-prohibitive for most drivers – including many women – to purchase. Recognizing the tremendous private sector engagement opportunities at hand, Sri Lanka Energy Program partners SLING Mobility, Jetwing Hotels, and Cargills Ceylon invested over $250,000 to create more than 20 electric battery vehicle swapping stations around Colombo. These stations, strategically located in places with renewable power sources, dramatically reduced gig drivers’ initial costs of using electric vehicles by approximately 60% as they were able to exchange charged batteries rather than purchasing their own. This initiative has caught the attention of additional private sector partners, including potential investors, and was recognized with a Society for International Development – United States innovation award.
Impact measurement
Nearly 3 million Venezuelans have migrated to Colombia, an influx which, coupled with the sizable number of returnees and internally displaced persons, has strained both public and private services. The expertise and perspectives of national and local governments, civil society organizations, the private sector, and migrants, returnees, and receptor communities is fundamental to the way the USAID/Colombia Venezuela Response and Integration Migration Management Activity, or Integra, is addressing the complexities of mass migration. Integra conducted a comprehensive systems-mapping process to determine mutual priorities with municipal government representatives, then jointly implemented co-designed tailored interventions to strengthen coordinated governance and service delivery. These were followed by co-created pause-and-reflect sessions and after-action-reviews to adapt activity results and ensure continuous alignment between municipal goals and project objectives. As a result of this holistic approach, local system actors own the Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting process, and have strengthened their support to migrants, returnees, and receptor communities.
Using competitions
Following a competitive application process, Chemonics’ inaugural Evidence and Learning for Scale Research Awards provided funding to Iraqi firm Thinkbank and the University of Mosul, trusted partners of the Iraq Durable Communities and Economic Opportunities Activity (DCEO), to investigate social behavior change. Research into the community dialogue processes used by DCEO found that participants, particularly women, reported significantly strengthened sense of community, effective listening, and the ability to work across diverse groups. Demonstrating the impact of community dialogue on improved collaboration and collective action provides evidenced-based backing for universities, NGOs, and other civil society partners who can, in turn, tailor these approaches to meet their community’s specific needs and scale interventions to foster positive social dynamics worldwide.
Supporting local innovations to scale
Fagura, a Moldovan-founded community bank which first went to market with the support of a USAID startup grant in 2019, works alongside the USAID/Moldova Future Technologies Activity (FTA) to help entrepreneurs access the financing necessary to transform their ideas into business opportunities. FTA provided Fagura with technical support to ensure the platform met international standards while also leveraging a user-centered design process to incorporate feedback from both startups and potential investors. Fagura’s peer-to-peer digital lending platform, the first of its kind in Moldova, revolutionized how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) access financing by connecting entrepreneurs directly with investors. USAID recognized the Fagura and FTA’s progress towards accelerating access to credit for SMEs through a Digital Development Award.
“The partnership between FTA and Fagura is both close and mutually beneficial, playing a pivotal role in enhancing the business and financial landscape in Moldova... In under a year the maximum loan amount has doubled from $10,000 to $20,000, and the number of individual investors has grown to over 1,400, showcasing the impactful synergy between the two organizations.”
– Doina Nistor, chief of party, Moldova FTA