1. INTRODUCTION
2. DEFINITIONS OF CAPACITY AND CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
· Capacity
· Capacity development
3. THE POST-CONFLICT CONTEXT OF SIERRA LEONE AND LIBERIA
· Similarities
· Differences
4. CAPACITY CHALLENGES IN THE TWO POST-CONFLICT STATES
1. Capacity collapse and fragmentation 10
2. The effects of psychosocial trauma 13
3. The effects of informality, ghosts and shadows 15
4. The influence of power and politics
5. The emergence of a wide range of capacity needs
6. Dealing with the evolving stages of capacity development 20
7. The presence of dilemmas, paradoxes and traps
8. Summary 25
5. IMPLICATIONS FOR CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN POST-CONFLICT STATES
1. Capacity development as a form of change 26
2. The crafting of capacity development interventions
3. Sequencing capacity development interventions 41
4. More emphasis on the issue of leadership systems 42
5. Designing and managing technical assistance in a post-conflict state 65
6. The dynamic of country and donor ownerships 48
7. The role of communication and outreach 54
8. The challenge of transitions, schedules, deadlines and timing 55
9. Summary
6. IMPLICATIONS FOR DONOR POLICY AND PRACTICE
1. Understanding the country context
2. Crafting donor strategies and capabilities for CD 56
3. Adapting results-based and performance management 64
4. Strengthening the need for coordination and harmonization 70
5. Dealing with the program management costs of capacity development 71
6. Moving to an expanded set of concepts and analytical frameworks 70
7. Moving to more acknowledgement of risk and failure 77
8. Improving research, reporting, monitoring and evaluation
9. Summary
7. SOME FINAL POINTS
DONOR SUPPORT FOR CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN POST-CONFLICT STATES: REFLECTIONS FROM TWO CASE STUDIES IN WEST AFRICA
By Peter Morgan
World Bank consultant
1. INTRODUCTION
This report is about donor support to capacity development (CD) in the two post-conflict states of Sierra Leone and Liberia. It is one of the written outcomes of two joint missions organized by the World Bank’s Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) in June and July 2009. Other reports coming out of these missions include two country reports and a companion piece on state building prepared by the Team leader, Sue Ingram. All reports can be found at the website ………….The terms of reference of the overall mission are also available at that site.
At first glance, it is hard to imagine what more could be said on this topic given the Amazonian flood of writing and analysis that has appeared over the past few years on the subject of fragile, failing, failed and post-conflict states. Plus the fact that I and my colleagues from the Bank and the UNDP were in each country for about two weeks only, a time period perilously close to Robert Chambers’ definition of development tourism. So the scope of this report is selective. It focuses on capacity topics where something useful could be said based on what we saw and heard. And it stays away from capacity issues where a huge body of experience and opinion already exists, e.g. public sector reform.
Analyses of capacity issues have an inherent tendency to generate confusion and misunderstanding about their purpose given the wide range of definitions and perspectives that readers bring to any report. The ‘we don’t know what we want but this isn’t it” phenomenon is pervasive in the world of capacity analyses. So it may be helpful to clarify the direction of this analysis at the outset in an effort to lessen the confusion.
The process of crafting a capacity development strategy in any country has to address five basic issues – three on the program strategy side and two on the participant capability side.
- The first strategy issue. In what sectors and development activities should external interveners such as the Bank and the UNDP focus their CD interventions? Should it be the usual suspects such as security reform, public financial management and the rule of law or should CD interventions go in a different direction? This is the strategic programming choice to which countries and donors normally devote a lot of attention.[1]
- The second strategy issue. What kinds CD strategies should be tried given the type and direction of the programming decisions mentioned above? Should there be more decentralization or privatization or contracting out? What should be the role of government? How much involvement should there be from country non-state actors? How much emphasis should be put on comprehensive organizational transformation versus ad hoc incremental steps? And so on.
- The third strategy issue. What kinds of ‘processes’ or approaches to capacity development might have the best chance of working given the first two strategic choices? What might be the approach to personal, organizational and/or institutional change? Should they center around supply-driven technical assistance or more facilitation on the demand-side? What are likely to be the respective advantages of awareness raising, more participation, relationship building, coalition building, improved learning, a different pattern of incentives, more formal transfer of knowledge and so on?
- The first capability issue. Given their level of commitment, resources and absorptive capability, can country governments and organizations have a reasonable chance of actually implementing the preferred donor-supported interventions? [2] What has to be done to address the issue of feasibility as opposed to that of need? Lots of things are desirable and necessary. Fewer can actually be implemented.
5. The second capability issue. How can external interveners such as the Bank or the Bank develop the capabilities, resources and the commitment they need to make an effective contribution? How should they and how can they organize themselves to make their CD interventions more effective? Cutely put, are they up for what they’re in for? To what degree are they part of the capacity challenge in post-conflict states?
Most capacity analyses still focus primarily on the three strategic questions which reflect a long standing donor preoccupation with diagnosing development need. This report, in contrast, focuses more on the two capability issues on the assumption that the dilemmas of feasibility and execution need more serious attention than they have received to date. Of course, any serious effort to come up with an effective capacity strategy has to address and integrate all of these aspects. All five intertwine and affect each other. Some interventions, for example, may be highly desirable from a donor perspective but not feasible from a country perspective. And visa versa. So any serious effort at a CD strategy at any level has to involve some serious thinking and strategic management to get the various pieces of the capacity puzzle to fit together over time. Based on the experience in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the challenges of doing this intensify in post-conflict states.
Again for the clarifying the direction of this report, here are some objectives that this report is not trying to achieve.
· This is not a review of the capacity development activities of the Bank or the UNDP. Many of the examples are taken from the four country programs. And some lofty judgments on specific CD interventions appear from time to time. But they are only meant to be illustrative of certain broader capacity issues that can be found in most donor programs. To repeat, this is not a program evaluation or appraisal and was never designed as such.
· Similarly, it is not intended to be a review of the capacity development strategies and activities of the two Governments. That is obviously a crucial topic and one that seems dimly articulated and understood on all sides. It deserves its own attention. But not here.
· The paper does not try to cover the vast range of other issues that bear upon capacity development in post-conflict states such as governance or peace building or state building or emigration or the effects of the global economy. Their influence is, of course, profound. But two weeks is two weeks. Sue Ingram has also written on the state building issue in separate reports on both countries.
· The report does not get into any detailed analysis about some specific strategic programming issues, i.e., focusing on capacity development strategies to improve the national health system of Sierra Leone or establishing the Government of Liberia’s ability to manage its finances. The visits were not designed to analyze these kinds of specific aspects.
· This report does not try to come up with a full range of tightly researched recommendations for decision and action. In many cases, more evidence and analysis is needed to come up with specific proposals. But in some cases, the direction of change and improvement is clear. Summary comments on some ways forward can be found at the end of most major chapters.
Three final qualifications to declare. First, almost all capacity analyses in international development are still written from the donor or external perspective including this report. As such, this analysis is still in the form of one hand clapping. We need many more accounts from the country side that can give us insight into what is likely to be a quite different view of capacity development in general and donor contributions in particular. The issues of legitimacy and ownership, for example, likely look quite different to country participants than they do to aid technicians.
Second, much of this report goes on at length about the usual constraints, gaps and weaknesses in the capacity situation in both countries. This reflects the assumption in the second half of what has been called the ‘Stockdale paradox’, i.e. you must retain faith that you will prevail in the end but you must also confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.[3] But there are reasons for optimism. Important gains in capacity can still be made in post-conflict states such as Sierra Leone and Liberia. People in these countries have skills and tremendous resilience. Strategies that address strengths as well as weaknesses can be helpful.
Finally, the Bank and the UNDP are a bit lumped together in this report. But they are obviously quite different organizations with different mandates. They support quite different programs in the two countries including different approaches to capacity development. The challenge, of course, is to make the most of their respective strengths in support of larger capacity goals.
2. DEFINITIONS OF CAPACITY AND CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
This section sets out the definitions used in this paper. A pervasive constraint in any capacity analyses is the tendency of the participants to use quite different definitions and basic meanings of both terms. A key initial challenge is therefore to put together some sort of shared vocabulary that enables the participants to discuss the issues in some sort of productive way.
Capacity
Annex 1 gives a sample of definitions of the term ‘capacity’. These have both differences and common themes. Some are narrower and focus more on problem solving, carrying out technical functions and performing. Some are broader and are more concerned about country systems being able to survive, grow and create value.
The definition used in this paper comes from a complex systems perspective and goes as follows:
· Capacity is that emergent combination of individual competencies and collective capabilities which enables a human system to create value for others”.
All definitions of capacity have at their core a common idea, that of the idea of abilities or the willingness, power and skill to do something. From a development perspective, capacity thus has to do with the collective ability of people to generate some sort of positive developmental gain over time. Capacity should have a deeper meaning than simple functional skill. Fundamentally, it is about the ability of societies to identify problems and opportunities and to address them effectively.
Some other aspects:
· Such ability can comprise the competencies of individuals or the collective capabilities of groups, networks, organizations, systems and even countries.[4] These latter can include ‘harder’ functional or technical performance skills. Or they can refer to the capability to act, to learn and adapt, to exert moral authority. As such, it can also have a psychological aspect such as confidence or determination.
· Such competencies and capabilities can be located in public sector organizations, in NGOs, in communities or in private firms[5]. They can be in service delivery organizations with tangible outcomes or for example, in advocacy groups with hard-to-measure services. They can also be housed in formal structures that are recognizable or in informal or ‘ghost’ structures that are hard for IDAs to understand. They can also be in networks or even coalitions of country actors.
· The overall systems term ‘capacity’ can be judged in terms of resilience, legitimacy, integrity, coherence, positioning and niche or contribution. The value of the conventional concepts of ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ might merit a discussion.
· Capacity is a potential state. Performance or results relate to delivery, production, implementation and execution. These two states – capacity and performance - need to be assessed in relation to each other.
Capacity development
Capacity development in this paper is defined as the following:
· The processes of change that, both intentionally and indirectly, contribute to the emergence of capacity over time.
Some explanatory points:
· Capacity development can refer to a range of processes apart from an external intervention. These can take place at a variety of levels from the indirect and the global (e.g. national financial crises) to the direct and the immediate (e.g. the influence of the informal networks that actually control the Ministry in question).
· The particular external intervention will be based on some theory of change designed to induce the emergence of capacity. This could include everything from training to relationship building to infrastructure development to ‘unlearning’. The role of ‘supply side’ and ‘demand’ side approaches matters a great deal. The idea of theory of change here could include both the strategy and tactics of capacity development.
· The actual organic process of capacity emergence and formation takes place in ways that we still do not fully understand at present. But it requires some sort of judgment on its effectiveness.