Local leaders are ready to lead and our talent systems can't see them.

Kondwani Mtalimanja spent the early months of 2025 closing offices and programs and laying off his team across Africa, Asia and Europe as aid funding collapsed. "When you have fire being lit around you, you notice that the bush is getting closer and closer to you," he said. In February 2025, he was told his own role was no longer needed. His story is the human side of the collapse in aid, and it exposes a problem the sector has yet to name: our talent systems cannot see the local leaders we now need most.

Kondwani worked 20 years in global development, always based in Lilongwe, Malawi. He preferred it that way. "I worked and lived so many places in the world without necessarily living there." Hired by chance as a local IT officer at Save the Children, he was noticed by the global CIO and rose within a year to regional head of IT across Southern and Eastern Africa, a role most multinational corporations would have called him the Regional CIO.

The aid sector's talent model was built for a time of stability, growth and promotion. It was not designed to find or place someone like him: a senior local technology and digital transformation leader ready to build the sovereign, self-sustaining and resilient social impact sector we have promised, and which struggles to emerge in part because of a perceived absence of the talent to lead it. That talent is already here, close to communities and impact. What is missing is the infrastructure to see it, reach it and catalyze it. The funding collapse did not break that model; it exposed it.

Kondwani's experience is the pattern, not the exception. Net official development assistance fell 23.3% in 2025, its largest drop ever. ALNAP's State of the Humanitarian System 2026 finds that 94% of humanitarian staff were nationals of the countries where they worked, and early estimates indicate that around 500 local and national NGOs closed, with their staff losing jobs at roughly twice the rate of the humanitarian workforce overall. The people who absorbed the cuts were overwhelmingly national staff, and many of the organizations meant to inherit the work were the ones closing.

Hiring data points the same way. Roles advertised on Devex's job board fell to around 60,000 in 2025, and the first half of 2026 brought 20,744, only 3,482 of them senior. Mid-career roles dominate, but most are short-term contracts. That looks like good news until you ask about the quality of the job and who will mentor the next generation. And the largest gains went to employers headquartered in Western Europe and North America.

There is a deeper gap in the data itself. We count jobs posted by the employers of the old system: U.N. and European agencies, USAID contractors and international NGOs. We keep reporting on a system we are letting go of, and measure little of the sector we have committed to build. When a leader like Kondwani moves into a local organization, a social enterprise or fractional work, he disappears from the numbers.

The sector promised to make local leaders the architects of development, not the end of a long chain of fund transfers and compliance. A NEAR report drawn from Global South leaders finds that "despite decades of rhetoric around 'localisation,' commitments remain largely unfulfilled, with resources and authority still flowing through Northern institutions." WACSI's Charles Kojo Vandyck names the difference: "Localisation often implies bringing local actors into existing systems. Local leadership requires redesigning systems around local actors from the start." We agree, and talent is where that redesign has barely begun.

A talent system built for the future looks different. It protects the core of local organizations: the people, proximity and relationships that give them legitimacy and impact. It allows for flexing in local, seasoned, senior expertise for as long as strategic input is needed, so the next generation of leaders can stay focused on execution. And it builds geographically and culturally proximate alliances that let organizations share expertise none could afford alone. Kondwani describes what that could mean for him: advising a growth-stage social enterprise, shaping its technology to its context, working with local IT service providers to implement it and building staff capacity to sustain it.

Building that system is practical. Funders can allow grants to fund shared or part-time senior leadership, not only full-time posts. INGOs that are downsizing can keep departing national staff visible to local partners through opt-in alumni networks. And those who track the sector's labor market can start counting the local organizations and flexible roles where much of its senior talent now works.

Since leaving, Kondwani has earned a project management certification, spearheaded the Malawi chapter of the Project Management Institute, where he serves as president, and advises global and local social impact organizations through Fractionals for Impact. When he left his last role, the only thing that stopped was the paycheck. The systems we are trying to change are local, and so are many of the leaders the old architecture shed. Catalyzing them is how we build what comes next.

Sources that shaped this reflection

OECD (2026), “ODA projections for 2026 and the near-term: Implications for vulnerable countries and sectors”, OECD Policy Briefs, No. 59, OECD Publishing, Paris.

https://doi.org/10.1787/d7c74fa2-en

Devex (2026), “Development hiring trends in 2026: The story so far”

https://www.devex.com/news/development-hiring-trends-in-2026-the-story-so-far-113164

Devex (2025), “How the development job market in Africa shifted in 2025”

https://www.devex.com/news/how-the-development-job-market-in-africa-shifted-in-2025-111273
Devex (2026), “UN staffers depart Manhattan's urban canyons for Kenya's leafy capital”

https://www.devex.com/news/un-staffers-depart-manhattan-s-urban-canyons-for-kenya-s-leafy-capital-111194

NEAR (2026), “When the Future Began to Look Like Us: A Global South-Led Vision for Solidarity, Self-Sufficiency, and Sustainability”
https://near.ngo/resources/when-the-future-began-to-look-like-us-a-global-south-led-vision-for-solidarity-self-sufficiency-and-sustainability/

NEAR (2026), “Under pressure: The Grand Bargain 3.0’s final year of implementation and future Statement”
https://near.ngo/resources/under-pressure-the-grand-bargain-3-0s-final-year-of-implementation-and-future-statement/

West African Capacity Building Institute (WACSI), “What Accra Made Us Reflect On: Putting Local Leadership at the Centre”

https://wacsi.org/what-accra-made-us-reflect-on-putting-local-leadership-at-the-centre/

West African Capacity Building Institute (WACSI), Why the INGO System Remains Stuck and How We Shift It
https://wacsi.org/why-the-ingo-system-remains-stuck-and-how-we-shift-it/

© 2025. Fractional Impact Advisors LLC. All rights reserved.

Contact Us for a Free 30-minute Consultation