Capacity Building in Africa


Book Description

African countries need to improve the performance of their public sectors if they are going to achieve their goals of growth, poverty reduction, and the provision of better services for their citizens. Between 1995 and 2004, the Bank provided some $9 billion in lending and close to $900 million in grants and administrative budget to support public sector capacity building in Africa. This evaluation assesses Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa over these past 10 years. It is based on six country studies, assessments of country strategies and operations across the Region, and review of the work of the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation.




Urban Governance, Institutional Capacity and Social Milieux


Book Description

This title was first published in 2002: Urban governance has faced numerous challenges as city governments, their partners and their critics struggle to transform themselves in the context of post-industrial economies and societies. This context has generated new relations of economic life and social activity to be accommodated in cities, and has also changed expectations of the roles, relationships and modes of governance. New conceptual tools to analyze these experiences are becoming available, linked to a broad "institutionalist" wave of ideas sweeping right across the social sciences. This text responds to the challenges faced by urban governance and explores a range of efforts to build new institutional capacities. An international team of social scientists and practitioners critically analyzes conceptual challenges, policy developments and practical experiences.










Institutional Capacity for Climate Change Response


Book Description

In a period of rapid climate change and climate governance failures, it is crucial to understand and address how effectively different political institutions can and should react to climate change. The term 'institutional response capacity' can be defined as a measurement for how effective political institutions may respond to threats and challenges such as climate change. This book sets out to provide a venue for the discussion of how to conduct climate politics by offering new perspectives on how social and political institutions are capable of responding to climate change. In doing so, the book explores how democracy, institutional design and polycentric governance influence social and political entities’ capacity to mitigate, adapt, address and transform climate change. The book offers building blocks for a new agenda of climate studies by focusing on institutional response capacity and by offering a new approach to climate governance at a time when many political initiatives have failed. This interdisciplinary volume is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the areas of anthropology, political science, geography and environmental studies.







Evaluation of the project "Strengthening institutions and capacity of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Veterinary Inspection Service for Policy Formulation"


Book Description

The EU-funded project aimed to strengthen institutions and capacities for strategic decision-making, planning, regulation, quality control and management in the food and agriculture sectors, including livestock. The evaluation found that the project was well aligned with the needs and priorities of national stakeholders, with FAO’s strategic objectives and with community beneficiaries. Several strategies, assessments and policy papers were developed, pilot initiatives were started, the Ministry of Agriculture was sensitized to reform processes and its changing role in the context of a market economy. Furthermore, capacities for delivering animal health services have improved considerably and are used. The project managed to navigate across institutional changes, although it suffered from delays that impeded the complete implementation of the pilot initiatives on agrarian reform.Acknowledging FAO’s comparative advantage in assisting the initiation of agrarian reform, the evaluation makes a number of recommendations for a successful policy reform, which include continuing to work closely with all involved ministries and stakeholders at all levels, to guide and steer the process from the start through endorsement; alongside a systematic approach to capacity building and training for involved ministries.




Critical Capacity Development


Book Description

This book contributes to our understanding of a neglected and poorly-understood concept within the development field: ‘capacity development’ in the context of human and organisational sustainable development. Relating ‘capacity development’ to other perspectives in development thinking and practice and giving an account of the concept’s genesis, the book introduces readers to recent empirical research initiatives that help to elucidate the concepts of capacity, capacity development, and capacity management. While capacity development initiatives and programmes have been used by most international and national agencies over the course of the last five decades, the term means different things to different people and especially to different major players in the international community. This weakens its effectiveness. This book therefore strives first of all to set ground rules that can be utilised by international aid providers such as UNDP, OECD, World Bank, and CIDA and practitioners alike.




Capacity Building Plan


Book Description