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The humanitarian sector knows localisation matters. Why does formal funding still struggle to reach local responders in Sudan?

Author

Mirthe van der Heide

Date Published

The humanitarian sector has spent years talking about localisation. In Sudan, the case for a locally led response cannot be missed. Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) - volunteer-led community networks that coordinate local humanitarian assistance - community kitchens - known as Takayaa - local organisations and diaspora networks have helped keep food, healthcare, protection and other essential services going in places where formal systems have struggled to operate. Yet funding has not shifted towards these locally led responses at the same pace (Campbell et al. 2025, 442). 

Across the sources we reviewed for the Open Knowledge Map1, Propel identified a recurring pattern: international humanitarian systems continue to struggle to adequately fund and support local responders, even where community-led organisations are central to delivering services. Local actors receive only a small share of formal humanitarian funding and often remain heavily dependent on diaspora support and local donors.

The numbers make that gap visible. The SSHAP reports that only 4% of aid allocations in Sudan were going to national NGOs, while ERRs remained largely dependent on local and diaspora funding (Keen 2024, 14). Another analysis found that Sudan’s country-based pooled fund, a UN-managed mechanism worth US$181 million, directed just 1% directly to Sudanese local organisations (Scuzzarello 2026).  
But if the humanitarian sector already knows that locally embedded actors can respond quickly, work through trusted networks and reach communities that larger organisations sometimes cannot, why do funding structures still make it so difficult for those actors to access resources directly?

In an earlier Propel article, we asked why the humanitarian sector can know so much and still struggle to act on what it has learned. Sudan’s funding patterns offer one concrete example of that wider problem. Localisation is not a new lesson. The harder challenge is what happens when applying that lesson requires changing where money, risk and decision-making power sit.

Local responders have become central to the response 

Within days of the conflict breaking out, Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs), which evolved from pre-war neighbourhood resistance committees, began organising local humanitarian assistance. By December 2024, they had reportedly reached more than 11.5 million people (Scuzzarello 2026). They form part of a wider local response ecosystem that includes women-led mutual aid networks, national NGOs, community radio stations and civil society organisations. What connects many of these actors is not a single formal structure, but their closeness to communities, their ability to work through existing relationships and traditions of collective support such as nafeer, a Sudanese tradition of communal solidarity and collective action. 

There were more than 360 ERRs operating across Sudan in 2024, providing services ranging from medical care and medicines to childcare, water and psychosocial support. Takayaa have meanwhile provided food in areas facing acute shortages. In many places, they have become a central part of how humanitarian assistance is organised (Campbell et al. 2025, 442).  

The formal response has struggled most where needs are greatest

This local mobilisation has unfolded alongside major gaps in the wider humanitarian response. The SSHAP points to a mismatch between the geography of need and the geography of aid: assistance remained concentrated in more accessible areas, particularly in eastern Sudan and SAF-controlled territory, while many areas with the highest needs were harder for international agencies to reach (Keen 2024, 9).  

In June 2024, OCHA reported that relief supplies had reached 35% of people identified as needing assistance, while a national Humanitarian Outcomes survey found that food aid had reached just 16% of those in need (Keen 2024, 8). These percentages show that the problem is not only the amount of funding available, but also whether the structures through which it moves can reach the places where needs are greatest.

In addition to struggling with access to adequate funding, local NGOs have faced looting, intimidation, difficulty paying salaries and large-scale redundancies. Some analysts have warned that parts of Sudan’s civil society infrastructure could disappear altogether if these organisations are not supported while they are still carrying out frontline humanitarian work (Keen 2024, 14). 

These funding and access challenges help explain why locally embedded organisations are so important to the response. With many international staff evacuated after the conflict escalated, local civil society organisations and NGOs were often among the actors best placed to continue operating in conflict-affected areas (Keen 2024, 14). 

So how come the money is still not moving where we know it’s most effective?

Humanitarian Outcomes reported that of US$2 million pledged by international actors to ERRs in Greater Khartoum, less than US$200,000 had materialised by late September 2023, reflecting wider delays and barriers in getting international funding to local responders, including reporting requirements, intermediary funding arrangements and communication constraints. At the same time, the Sudan INGO Forum was calling for more ‘flexible and predictable funding’ and for burdensome compliance processes to be removed, as smaller and more informal local actors not always have the administrative systems or staffing needed to meet these requirements (Keen 2024, 14). 

Part of the explanation lies in the architecture of humanitarian financing itself. Funding is generally channelled through large UN agencies and international NGOs before moving further down the system. Registration requirements, audit standards, reporting systems and compliance procedures are built around formal institutions with the administrative capacity to meet them. As explained in the Sussex article, “They systematically exclude the volunteer networks, women’s groups, national civil society organisations, and diaspora actors that have proven most effective” (Scuzzarello 2026).  

This financing structure can also create a circular problem. Donors may hesitate to release additional resources because previously allocated funds have not been spent, while international humanitarian organisations may struggle to spend those funds because their operational capacity has been reduced by staff evacuations, access constraints and weakened delivery systems. One aid worker interviewed for the SSHAP article described this as an “impasse” (Keen 2024, 10). 

When formal funding falls short, the diaspora steps in

One of the clearest responses to these funding gaps has come from the Sudanese diaspora. Diaspora organisations have provided medical equipment and expertise, supported dialysis services, helped displaced people access water and shelter, and supported more than 2,100 Sudanese medical students whose education was disrupted by the war (Alsoukhni et al. 2025, 4). 

The community-kitchen response shows how quickly these networks can move. When US stop-work orders took effect in January 2025, 80% of Sudan’s 1,460 community-run soup kitchens reportedly closed, affecting food access for 1.8 million people. Diaspora donations and Ramadan giving then helped around 37% of those kitchens reopen within weeks (Scuzzarello 2026).  

Diaspora networks can move resources through trusted relationships and respond quickly when formal systems are slow or blocked. Their role shows that funding can reach locally led responses quickly when the mechanisms are flexible enough. 

But their importance should also not be romanticised. A humanitarian response that depends on personal donations, informal transfers and diaspora generosity is asking communities themselves to deal with risks that formal humanitarian financing was created to address. Diaspora support can fill urgent gaps, but it should not become a substitute for predictable institutional funding. 

If diaspora networks can move resources quickly through trusted local relationships, the question is why formal humanitarian funding still struggles to reach the same actors directly.

The problem is not recognising local response. It is funding it. 

The humanitarian sector has spent years recognising the importance of locally led response. The 2016 Grand Bargain committed signatories to channel 25% of humanitarian funding to local and national actors “as directly as possible” (Keen 2024, 14). In Sudan, the evidence again shows why this matters: local organisations and community networks are already central to reaching people that formal systems struggle to access.

Yet recognition has not translated into funding structures that consistently allow money to reach those actors directly. The bottleneck is not simply a lack of evidence about the value of local response. It is also institutional: who can receive funding, what requirements they must meet, how much risk donors are willing to transfer, and how much control international organisations are willing to give up.

This is where the wider learning problem becomes relevant. In an earlier Propel article, we asked why the humanitarian sector can know so much and still struggle to act on what it has learned. The SSHAP brief raises a similar concern, warning that “learning lessons” can become ritualistic when the same recommendations are repeated while the system itself changes very little.

Sudan makes that tension particularly visible. Local responders are already doing the work, and diaspora networks show that resources can move through local systems quickly. The question is therefore not whether locally led response works or whether money can reach it. The evidence from Sudan suggests that the formal humanitarian system is simply not built to move funding quickly and directly towards the actors it already knows are central to the response. 

Sources 

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1 The Open Knowledge Maps are a project by Propel to bring together evidence, lessons and insights around current humanitarian and development issues in a synthesized way across sources. More information can be found here: https://www.propelapp.org/open-knowledge-space

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