2. What is capacity?
UNISDR: Capacity is the combination of all the strengths, attributes and
resources available within a community, society or organisation that can be
used to achieve agreed goals.
ECDPM: That emergent combination of individual competencies, collective
capabilities, assets and relationships that enables a human system to create
value.
Ubels et al, Earthscan/SNV: The ability of a human system to perform,
sustain itself and self-renew.
UNDP: The ability of individuals, institutions and societies to perform
functions, solve problems, and set and achieve objectives in a sustainable
manner.
3. 3 levels of capacity
Enabling Environment: Broader system within which individuals
and organisations operate and function
Organisational Level: Policies, procedures and frameworks - allow an
organisation to operate and deliver on its mandate and enable
individual capacities to achieve goals
Individual level: Skills, experience and knowledge
4. Enabling
environment
Organisational
3 levels of capacity
Individual
Levels of capacity are
not stand alone
All need to be taken into
account when determining
'who' needs 'what‘
capacities for 'what
purpose‘
Organisations need to support change
Could impact power structures
Supportive enabling environment critical
Focus on one level
unlikely to succeed!
5. What is capacity development?
• UNDP: The process through which individuals, organisations and
societies obtain, strengthen and maintain the capabilities to set and
achieve their own development objectives over time.
• OECD/DAC: Process whereby people, organisations and society as a
whole unleash, strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over
time.
• UNISDR: The process by which people, organisations and society
systematically stimulate their capacities over time to achieve social and
economic goals, including through improvement of knowledge, skills,
systems and institutions.
6. Capacity development is:
An ongoing process of change that needs to take place over time
An iterative process, neither linear nor sequential, which includes learning
from, changing and developing operations
A process that looks beyond individual skills and a focus on training
One of the most critical issues for donors, development organisations and
countries alike
A complex challenge to provide support of the type that contributes to
capacity development at all three different capacity levels of society
7. From capacity building.....
• Capacity building mainly a technical process, involving the simple transfer of
knowledge or organisational models from North to South
• Focuses only on the initial stages of building or creating capacities
• Assumes that there are no existing capacities to start from
• Implies that capacity is something that is built by outsiders
• Tries to ‘fill the gaps' in organisational and individual capacity
• Results in a lack of ownership of the process
• Undermines the capacity of partners to actively pursue and exercise control over
their own development
Capacity building is relevant in crisis or immediate post-conflict situations
where much of the existing capacity has been lost due to capacity destruction
or capacity flight.
8. ....to capacity development
• Capacity development emphasises that capacity is something that must grow from
the inside
• Benefits from receiving stimulation externally but not developed by outsiders
• Capacity development is one of the most difficult focus areas for international
programmes
• Capacity development is increasingly becoming an explicit objective of national and
poverty reduction strategies
9. Capacity of what and whom?
Two types of capacity:
Functional Capacity (or soft capacity)
• cross cutting in nature
• organisational capacities and adaptive capacities
• management capacities to formulate, implement and
review policies, strategies programmes and projects
Technical Capacity (or hard capacity)
• technical, functional, tangible and visible
• particular areas of need, specific sector requirements
• skills, explicit knowledge and methodologies,
organisational capacity to function, or laws,
policies, systems and strategies
Products
Services
Results
Learning
Adaptation
Relationships
10. Capacity of what and whom?
Successful capacity development programmes are founded on:
• Understanding people’s and organisations’ current capacities
• Must further strengthen and build on those existing capacities
11. Culture and contextualisation
Context: political and
institutional systems, inter
country relationships,
power dynamics,
economic, geographic and
social factors
Capacity defined and
understood within culture
and context
Culture and context offer
potential levers for
change
Culture: Value systems,
beliefs, norms, societal
practices+
12. In summary
• All 3 levels of capacity must be addressed during capacity development
processes
• Capacity development is an ongoing iterative process that takes time
• There are two types of capacity: functional/soft and technical/hard
• Capacity development must start from and build on existing capacities
• Capacity development cannot be imported but must be an endogenous
process, shifting the balance away from supply driven support
• Capacity development is one of the most fundamental and difficult global
challenges
• Capacity development needs to become an explicit objective of national
development and poverty reduction strategies
