The Rwandan Government’s interpretation of Capacity Development
The GoR considers capacity to be the ability of people, organisations and society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully (OECD, 2006 and EC, 2009) and Capacity Development as processes of capacity creation, utilization and retention at the tree levels described below.
| - | Capacity creation | Capacity utilization | Capacity retention |
| Individual level | Development of adequate skills, knowledge, competencies and attitudes | Application of skills, knowledge, competencies on the workplace | Reduction of staff turnover, facilitation of skills and knowledge transfer within institutions |
| Organisational level | Establishment of efficient structures, processes and procedures | Integration of structures, processes and procedures in the daily workflows | Regular adaptation of structures, processes and procedures |
| Institutional and policy environment level | Establishment of adequate institutions, laws and regulations | Enforcement of laws and regulations for good governance | Regular adaptation of institutions, laws and regulations |
The concepts: Training, Learning, Capacity Development
In the Development Cooperation community, lots of organisations are currently shifting from “training” to “learning” and even from “training” to “capacity development”. However the three concepts are too often confused. When people talk about capacity development, they often talk about training whenever it comes to the concrete implementation of capacity development, though this is only one aspect of the whole picture.
Training is only one of the methods to stimulate learning. Therefore the trend among training centers is to consider themselves now as “learning centres” by training to apply more innovate methods, stimulate dialogue and create interaction for improved learning results.
Therefore we could say that training is a tool for learning and learning is one of the requirements for capacity development. Individual learning as well as organisational learning.
Definitions of Capacity Development
A standard, most commonly used definition in the development aid world is the one created by OECD-DAC:
- Capacity should be understood as “the ability of people, organisations and society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully”
- Capacity development is therefore understood as the process whereby “people, organisations Promotion of capacity development refers to what outside partners – domestic or foreign – can do to support, facilitate or catalyse capacity development and related change processes.
Another definition is the one used by the World Bank Institute:
- Capacity development is a locally driven process of learning by leaders, coalitions and other agents of change that brings about changes in sociopolitical, policy-related, and organizational factors to enhance local ownership for and the effectiveness and efficiency of efforts to achieve a development goal.
Capacity Development and Outcome Mapping
Since the Paris Declaration in 2006, ownership has become a key issue in development cooperation. The Capacity Development approach implies a changed perception in roles of stakeholders. Funds are allocated to local partners to enable them to develop, implement and own their own programmes/projects.
Traditionally the Logical Framework is used as a tool to design, implement, monitor and evaluate projects, but from the experience of people working in development cooperation this classical Logframe is found to be inadequate and often too rigid to guide Capacity Development projects.
Therefore OM offers a valuable alternative to design projects by involving local stakeholders from the very first phase of project design and by focussing on human behaviour more than measurable outputs.
Outcome Mapping helps a program be specific about the actors it targets, the changes it expects to see, and the strategies it employs and, as a result, be more effective in terms of the results it achieves. It is particularly valuable for monitoring and evaluating development programs whose results and achievements cannot be understood with quantitative indicators alone but also require the deeper insights of a qualitative, contextualized story of the development process.
The Outcome Mapping method was developed by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC)
- Read their summary document on Outcome Mapping
- Go to the IDRC website
