In March 2011, a group of Southern and development partners endorsed the Cairo Consensus on Capacity Development, which states that “capacity development is strategic for the achievement of development results”. Departing from this, the statement below, aims at contributing to the current efforts to enhance results-based management by stressing the link to the underlying capacity that makes results sustainable. This statement has been endorsed by capacity development practitioners, through a consultative process organized by the Learning Network for Capacity Development (www.lencd.org).
Sustainability of results matters: For decades, international cooperation focused on delivering tangible, short-term results – building schools, roads, health clinics etc. In far too many instances these results were not sustainable and did not have lasting impact because attention was not paid to strengthening the underlying broad capacities required to maintain and upscale services.
Sustainable results of aid are premised on country capacity, ownership and partnership: To be effective for sustainable results aid and development cooperation must support country efforts rather than replace them, building on existing capacity and inclusive country ownership. In effective partnerships, all partners contribute to sustainable results, while being responsible for their own performance and jointly for the quality and effectiveness of the partnership.
Results materialize at different levels, within different scopes and time-horizons – and they can be specified accordingly. Developing a policy for maternal health is a result at one level; strengthening the delivery capacity of the health system is a much higher level result, which requires longer-term investments. Results-orientation implies specifying the various levels of results, clarifying the corresponding reasonable expectations and time-scales of change.
Capacity development is a critical part of the chain from short to longer-term sustainable results. Capacity development leads to visible, intermediate results, like stronger leadership for change. In the medium term, stronger capacity leads to enhanced performance in service delivery. Impact on people’s lives takes longer to materialize. Results at all these different levels can be identified and monitored.
Managing for sustainable results requires flexibility and careful adaptation to the context. Results frameworks are most effective when they leave room for emergent capacity development, adaptation and flexibility. Capacity development is about change, and change processes are rarely linear and predictable, particularly in fragile situations.
Results focus is critical for learning: Results-orientation in aid relationships often emphasize control more than feedback and learning. Capturing results from capacity development processes is foremost a means for feedback and learning about what works and in what circumstances, and so to improve understanding, practice – and results.
Country leaders, managers and change agents are key for getting to results: Systems, frameworks and indicators can underpin results-based management, but cannot drive change. Balancing short and long term results realistically; and ensuring that services and capacities grow hand in hand depend, first and foremost, on the incentives, skills and values driving leaders, managers and change agents, in countries and development agencies. More attention is needed to these factors.
Advancing results-focused capacity development is important for aid and development effectiveness. A global, nimble multi-partner facility should be established to provide resources for country level actors to advance results-focused capacity development, action research and peer-based learning.
While the statement is useful, we also need to move towards action. Building on the recent Evaluation of the Paris Declaration might help to chart some paths for future work.
The Evaluation finds that progress in developing capacity has been limited and identifies several underlying causes:
“The destination for the reform is not always clearly or commonly understood…” (page 35). The report suggests that partner countries need to prioritize the areas where they need support in developing capacity – in other words, understand what capacity is required as the end result of the process of capacity development.
The Evaluation sees capacity as an organic process and suggests that engineered solutions, which generally involve definition of results in advance, do not usually work (page xv).
The Evaluation suggests that "donors and agencies have so far demonstrated less commitment than partner countries to making the necessary changes (to improve aid effectiveness) in their own systems." (page xv). There has been a lot of emphasis on helping partner countries to change their approaches but less on how donors and agencies can make changes.
These insights suggest some activities which could push the capacity development agenda forward:
Organising seminars and courses for donors and partner countries to help develop a common understanding of capacity and capacity development and what this implies for programming. This should include an emphasis on iterative approaches that help to find good fits with the context, rather than on finding “one size fits all” solutions.
Rethinking the “results” demanded by results-based management to emphasize the importance of process and of strengthening the organisations responsible for those processes.
Setting up a group that looks at the incentive systems under which donors work, such as national interests and financial and procedural systems. The group would develop strategies for how these incentive systems could be adapted to support new approaches to development, including capacity development. Such a group could build on the thinking begun by Owen Barder of the Centre for Global Development in his paper entitled Beyond Planning: Markets and Networks for Better Aid (2009).
Comments
Joint statement
While the statement is useful, we also need to move towards action. Building on the recent Evaluation of the Paris Declaration might help to chart some paths for future work.
The Evaluation finds that progress in developing capacity has been limited and identifies several underlying causes:
These insights suggest some activities which could push the capacity development agenda forward: