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Strategic approach to capacity development
2005-11-09 08:30:12
By Mireny John
The desire to develop is commonplace to entire human race. History is full of accounts of human struggles against nature in pursuit of development in the form of uplifting material and spiritual standards.
At any stage of development, say from hunting in the wild to organized animal husbandry, ’capacity development’ has remained as a critical reality in achieving any broad or specific ambition for development.
The broad consensus among development partners to-date points to lack of capacity as the missing link in Africa’s achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
What is referred to as capacity includes the skills, incentives, resources, organizational systems and structures – and the broader facilitative environment that allows individuals and institutions plan and monitor their own development.
Capacity development could sound a bit naïve unless it is guided by pursuit of specific objectives, for instance, such as delivery of social services to the poor, improvement of the investment climate for the private sector to prove its role, empowering local communities to take part in public decision-making and the like.
What has gone wrong since the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s? Tanzania in particular, but more broadly several other Sub-Saharan African countries, have tangibly improved economic, structural and social policies, while political and economic governance has equally been enhanced.
External financing has also substantially increased over the years, but the momentum towards meeting the stipulated MDGs targets is not very encouraging.
Probably, our states are yet to be effective enough at delivering quality public goods and services that would meet the needs of deserving populations.
This weakness in capacity is compounded by the fact that societies are not fully engaged, they cannot demand change and hold their governments accountable for such delivery.
We rarely see an engaged society as an end in itself, an important element of a domestic accountability system.
Parliaments and their committees, advocacy, interest and consumer groups, professional associations, local governments and communities are all participatory institutions entitled to hold the state accountable whenever necessary.
The rare move in Tanzania is the resolve to approach capacity development strategically as a core area of country strategy for development and poverty reduction.
We are right now boasting of the National Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (NGPRS), best known in Kiswahili as Mkukuta.
As a home-grown strategy it is much more likely to address the right issues, much so at the implementation levels.
To a great extent, Mkukuta is a participatory poverty reduction strategy (PRS), but it badly needs a robust monitoring and evaluation system as an integral component of its longer-term plans.
External partners must also engage existing capacity with timely, flexible and predictable technical and financial assistance.
Concerns abound that technical expenditures are not building local capacity, but being used to pay handsome salaries to expatriates.
Donor capacity building financial arrangements are also patchy, at times unknowingly replicating similar programmes.
Effective donor engagement could be obtained by pooling a basket fund that would finance prioritized capacity development activities filling country-identified short-term needs for achieving results with the country directing the investments.
The same donors should take a longer-term, more patient and predictable approach to capacity development, probably extending over 15-20 years.
There is no time to heap-up excuses about unfulfilled agendas because to achieve sustainable growth, we must utilize all development resources— including trade, foreign and domestic investment, domestic savings, private donations, and remittances—— as well as official assistance.
The best measure of capacity development strategy is obviously the tangible outcomes as set out in both the UN’s MDGs, and our Mkukuta.
We need to improve dialogue and reflect more sharply on building sustainable capacity for achieving the goals.
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