International Institute For Local Development

The International Institute for Local Development was founded to enlarge and promote the roles and involvement of local stakeholders in development efforts. We work primarily in Africa with regional offices in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. The organization aims to promote local development through development partnerships and development research, believing that that the determination of development priorities should reflect the interest of local stakeholders. This approach departs from the norm in the employment of innovative approaches to search for and agree the balance between approaches from within and those from without. We promote integrative models that make vertical and horizontal connections between actors and interventions, promoting ownership, management and sustainability by focusing on variations in history, preferences and culture. The local understanding of local issues then becomes the starting block for strategic planning, policy making and the design of development interventions. The central essence of our approach is collaboration, and a key component of its success is to create and nurture that space in which local governments, volunteers, community members, private sector and international communities can work together. The knowledge of the local community is engaged to meet the specialized knowledge of consultants and the authority of government in planning and implementation IILD promotes these through many activities including human capability development, job creation and an array of social action, especially those that affect the most vulnerable populations in societies. Monitoring and evaluation, especially for its learning opportunities, is an important part of the empowering process. IILD also works at the engagement of the private sector, volunteers, governments and donors and generally activates the space in which collaboration takes place, providing the right structure for expertise and funding