diff --git a/indicoio/__init__.py b/indicoio/__init__.py
index 699ac87..6527b6e 100644
--- a/indicoio/__init__.py
+++ b/indicoio/__init__.py
@@ -16,10 +16,11 @@ from indicoio.images.features import image_features
 apis = ['political', 'posneg', 'sentiment', 'language', 'fer', 
         'facial_features', 'image_features', 'text_tags']
 apis = dict((api, globals().get(api)) for api in apis)
-local = {}
+class Namespace(object): pass
+local = Namespace()
 
 for api in apis:
 	globals()[api] = partial(apis[api], config.api_root)
 	globals()['batch_' + api] = partial(apis[api], config.api_root, batch=True)
-	local[api] = partial(apis[api], config.local_api_root)
-	local[api] = partial(apis[api], config.local_api_root, batch=True)
+	setattr(local, api, partial(apis[api], config.local_api_root))
+	setattr(local, 'batch_' + api, partial(apis[api], config.local_api_root, batch=True))
diff --git a/tests/local/test_local.py b/tests/local/test_local.py
index 48cc0f5..2f66ce6 100644
--- a/tests/local/test_local.py
+++ b/tests/local/test_local.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import unittest
+import os
 
 import numpy as np