Localization of aid is a debated concept, and the evidence points out that progresses made up to now are far from the global objectives of the humanitarian & international development sector. In this session, we'll discuss how data management plays an important role for localization, whether it helps measure more accurately the challenges & progresses of local actors' actions, open new possibilities to transform relations between local and global actors, or allows to empower (or on the contrary control!) local actors on their agentivity and autonomy. We will also open the debate to the tough questions of power distribution, decolonization and reshaping the governance of our specific sector of data management for international projects. We will also present some examples of success stories. This session will finally be an opportunity to present and discuss the findings ad recommendations of CartONG's recent research about this question, and imagine possible collaborations and coalitions around it.