The Challenge of Capacity Development: Working Towards Good Practice

The publication reviews 40 years of development experience and concludes that donors and partner countries alike have tended to look at capacity development as mainly a technical process, or as a transfer of knowledge or institutions from North to South. It explains how donors have often failed to recognize the critical importance of country ownership and leadership, and how they underestimated the importance of the broader political context within which capacity development efforts take place.

It also offers invaluable guidance about how to think systematically through the capacity development challenge. The evidence suggests that what is necessary is a fundamental change in development practice, including focusing on capacity as an endogenous process, agreeing at country level on capacity objectives and monitoring outcomes from the perspective of the beneficiaries. Such changes could have a substantial impact on development outcomes.