1st Edition

Monetizing and Localizing Foreign Aid Evolving Paths and the Professionals Treading Them

By Molly Sundberg Copyright 2026
198 Pages
by Routledge

This book investigates the uneasy coexistence of two current policy pathways within international development: to monetize aid and simultaneously to localize it. It explores these paths through the experiences of the development experts who are treading them, notably those who hail from aid recipient countries, and those who engage with for-profit instruments and institutions. In focus are... Read more

1. Introduction

2. The ‘Local Aid Worker 2.0’: Monetizing Aid as in Diversifying Aid’s Experts and Expertise?

3. Lesser Pay as in Less to Say? Aid Localization Revisited

4. Working in the Peripheries: On Access, Brokerage and Trust

5. Who’s the ‘Self’ in Selfish? Profit-Making Developers’ Institutional Interests and the Individuals Pursuing Them

6. Reciprocity in Aid Revisited: Profits and Risks in Development Finance Morality

7. The Sociality of Competition: Consultancy Contracting

8. Reorienting Scholarly Focus in ‘Aidland’ and its Implications

9. International Development Work’s Agents and Beneficiaries

Biography

Molly Sundberg is an associate professor and senior lecturer in social anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University (SU), Sweden. She is also the director of studies for a multidisciplinary bachelor’s program in global development at SU. During 2007–2010, she worked for the Swedish state aid agency, Sida, in Stockholm and Kigali, Rwanda.