|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Capacity Development for Impact: Where Is the Evidence?
| Panel |
74. The Creativity of Practitioners for Development
|
| Paper ID | 311 |
| Author(s) |
Yocarini, Lara
|
| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
|
| Abstract | In the late 1990s, capacity development was welcomed as the sine qua non for successful development. Before long, however, it risked being pursued as an end in itself, rather than a means to improved livelihoods and sustainable development. The focus was on the do’s and don’ts of capacity development, rather than on ‘capacity development for what’. With the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, and their renewed endorsement in 2005, this trend is slowly being reversed, and the question of impact is once again gaining prominence. At the same time it is widely being recognized that capacity is a very fluid concept, and that ‘impact’ is difficult to capture
In contrast to old-fashioned projects, which are time-bound, and have clear expected outputs, capacity development is a long-term process, whose outcomes are difficult to predict from the outset, and often hard to ‘quantify’. Still, for various reasons, development agencies have embarked on the difficult task of compiling ‘evidence’ on the impact of their work, often through case stories and in some cases, research papers.
This paper will provide a comparative analysis of more than 40 case stories and papers on ‘evidence’ from three leading organizations in the field of capacity development: INTRAC, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and ECDPM. Starting from the assumption that capacity development indeed leads to development impact, it seeks to assess 1) whether there are documented examples of this; and 2) how convincing these examples are. It makes the case for long-term engagement and regular (participatory) monitoring & evaluation over an extended period of time.
|
|