Bringing Capacity Development to the Fore at Busan

Donors and partner country leaders welcomed the fact that capacity development was recognised as a central tool for achieving sustainable development at a top level event in Busan, South Korea.

Over 3,000 development professionals attended the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Busan last month, and many were heartened that capacity development’s place as a central means of achieving sustainable development was recognised.

One of them was Christoph Beier, Managing Director of GIZ, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit.

“For me it’s a big success here in Busan: That we’ve finally talked about the key bottleneck for sustainable development, which is... capacity development as a really strategic dimension for bringing forward sustainable development,” said Mr Beier.

Beier also contrasted Busan’s focus on capacity with the discussions at the Third High Level Forum in Accra, which had been much more focused on money - how to transfer funds more efficiently and effectively. Though this is important, said Mr Beier, the value of capacity development is fundamental to long-term success.

It wasn’t just donors who shared this view. The message was repeated in various sessions at Busan, most importantly by African leaders.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame said that with all its natural resources, Africa need not depend on aid. Instead, Africa needs the capacity to harness and manage its resources for development and this is where the international community could be most helpful.

But if the call to donors is to support partner countries’ capacity development agenda, the question is: How to do this?

Busan afforded an opportunity to reflect on effective practices and here GIZ was ready to share some of its experience. Topmost, Mr Beier argues, is the ability of donors to respond flexibly to emerging demands of partners.

“Capacity development cannot be planned at the beginning of a cooperation and then we just implement it, but we have to strengthen our partners in a permanent and flexible way to see what kind of inputs they need in order to strengthen their capacity,” Mr Beier said.

Second, and echoing the views of other external partners including the Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative (see related article), the focus has to be on implementation capacity - the challenge is less on what needs doing but working out how to get things done. What does this mean in practice?

According to Mr Beier, it means better understanding where a country is in its transformation or reform process and knowing where best to engage.

“I think implementation is still weak,” said Mr Beier. “One has to find out what kind of support partners need in order to become even more effective and efficient in their implementation.”

“And there, one key lesson we have learned is that you have to be flexible in your supportive structures,” he added.

Third, it means thinking carefully about the way we understand results and that the results are the partner’s responsibility with donors in a supporting role.

“Capacity building is a pre-condition to achieving results,” said Mr Beier. “Our partners are accountable, they are responsible to achieve results, we are responsible in supporting in the right way.”

Measuring and accounting for capacity results can be a challenge especially when results relate to complex governance and institutional reforms. Furthermore, such results take time to emerge, so donors need to adjust their expectations in terms of what can be achieved in the short-term. 

“This does not mean that we can forget results and only concentrate on the process... So we have jointly with our partners to find out what are the right milestones to define on the way to best governance structures,” said Mr Beier. “It’s not so easy.”