Sooner or later, anyone commissioning expert work in another country faces the same choice: bring in an international specialist who flies in for the assignment, or hire someone already based in the country. It sounds like a logistics question. It is really a question about where the knowledge the job needs lives, and the answer shapes the cost, the credibility, and the lasting value of the work. Get it wrong and you risk the worst version of fly-in work: a specialist who parachutes in, draws on local knowledge, then parachutes out with the fee and the credit, leaving nothing behind.
Neither option is right in the abstract. The same assignment that calls for a local economist in one country might call for an international modeller in the next. What follows is a way to think the choice through, not a verdict.
The case for local experts
A consultant based in the country brings things a visitor cannot easily acquire. They understand the context, the institutions, the politics, and the unwritten rules, without a steep learning curve, which means they are productive from day one rather than week three. They speak the language and read the room. They often already hold relationships with the people whose cooperation the work depends on, and they carry a credibility with local stakeholders that an outsider has to earn from scratch. They usually cost less, without the flights, hotels, and travel premiums of fly-in support. And the knowledge they build stays in the country after the assignment ends, rather than boarding a plane with the consultant. That last point has become a policy priority, not merely a preference, under the banner of localisation: signatories to the Grand Bargain set out to channel at least 25% of humanitarian funding to local and national responders as directly as possible.
The case for international experts
Fly-in expertise persists for reasons that are real, not merely habit. Some technical niches are thin everywhere, and the handful of people who have done a particular thing many times over may sit on another continent. An outside expert can carry comparative experience, having seen how the same problem was solved in five other countries, and can bring in standards and methods that a single market has not yet adopted. Independence can matter too: on a politically sensitive review, distance from local interests is sometimes a feature rather than a flaw. And for better or worse, some funders are reassured by the familiarity and track record of established international names.
The costs that hide on each side
Each option carries a cost that does not appear in the headline rate. Fly-in support spends real money and time before it produces anything: the flights and hotels are visible, but the days a visitor needs to learn a context the local team already knows are not, and they are billed all the same. At its worst it becomes extractive, the parachute-in, parachute-out pattern this whole debate exists to end. Local engagement has its own blind spots. In a very narrow specialism the in-country bench may be thin, a local expert may be seen as too close to one of the parties, and a small national firm may lack the capacity to staff a very large assignment alone. Naming these honestly is what lets you manage them.
It is rarely either-or
The framing of local versus fly-in is itself part of the problem, because the best answer is usually a blend. A common and effective shape pairs an international lead, who brings comparative depth and answers to the funder, with national experts who carry the context, the language, and the relationships. Done well, the international member transfers method and the national members transfer reality, and the client gets both. Done badly, the visitor extracts local knowledge, takes the credit and the fee, and leaves nothing behind, which is the pattern localisation exists to end.
Questions to ask before deciding
Rather than reaching for a default, work through a few questions for the specific assignment:
- Where does the knowledge live? If success depends on understanding local context, weight local. If it depends on a rare global specialism, weight international.
- Who needs to trust the output? A national government may place more trust in a national expert; a global investor may want an independent outside voice.
- What does the budget really allow? Fly-in support can consume a large share of a budget in travel alone, money that could instead fund more local days on the ground.
- What should remain afterwards? If building lasting capacity is part of the goal, that points toward local engagement, or toward a deliberate pairing that transfers skills.
The shift toward local, and a default that follows
The direction of travel is clear. Under the localisation agenda, donors and large agencies have committed to channel more funding and more decision-making to national and local actors, and to stop treating in-country expertise as junior support to an international lead. For anyone commissioning work, that is no longer only an ethical nudge but an increasingly practical expectation, written into how funders judge a programme. When the choice is genuinely unclear, that points to a simple default: treat local capability as the first option to test, scan the in-country market properly before assuming it is empty, and bring in fly-in support only for what it adds that local expertise cannot, whether a rare skill, a comparative view, or an independent voice. That keeps the money, the credibility, and the lasting benefit in the country by default, and reserves the premium of international support for the cases that truly earn it.