We just rounded up the 7th Annual African Community of Practice meeting and as usual a lot of insights and knowledge was shared on how Africa can achieve results-oriented development whilst promoting African Integration. For the sake of readers not familiar with AfCoP, more on AfCoP here and more on the 7th annual meeting here.
Now the theme of this year’s meeting was centered on Powering Regional Integration for Africa’s Transformation. A well captured theme for which the forum did justice to. Two main issues remained with me after the meeting but to avoid a lengthy blog I will split these into two separate blogs. In this post I concentrate on the issue of capacity building, specifically referring to human capacity building.
The issue of capacity building was dealt with from many angles especially on how important it is in achieving regional integration. How do we build the capacities of national institutions to adjust to regional integration? After all the treaties that have been signed, do African countries have the capacities to implement these treaties? Also, to effectively achieve results-based development, we need to be able to build the capacities of the various stakeholders. However, some cautions on capacity building were also thrown. I would like to dwell on two of these.
First, how do we measure the effectiveness of capacity building? A number of members gave examples of various funding agencies shelving out money for capacity building exercises which have been carried out. However in the monitoring and evaluation context how do we measure just how successful or effective these capacity building exercises have been? There are usually objectives and indicators set for a particular training event. It’s easy for participants at such events to fill out evaluation forms. But after these training sessions, what follow-ups are made to measure the true impact of these capacity building events. It is understandable why human capacity building would be difficult to measure especially since it is a soft skill. In that, it is a skill the trainee now possesses inherently thus not easily quantifiable. We may then want to look at indicators that go beyond the immediate outcomes after the training and beyond the evaluation sheets filled in at the end of the training. For each capacity building training, both mid-term and longer terms outcomes and indicators should be set. For instance, so 6 months down the line after the training what should we expect participants to have been able to achieve? What about in a year’s time? Admittedly this makes the evaluation process more expensive but yet more comprehensive. How else will you know your capacity building exercise worked? It is one thing gathering a group of people into a room to discuss and train them on an issue, be it results-based management or on African integration and it’s another thing what they actually do with this knowledge when they step out.
This brings me to the second caution on capacity building I would like to discuss. What's the purpose of skills development in a context where those skills cannot be used? What's d point of capacity building when the person is constrained by the political economy or the cultural environment in which he finds himself? Yes, you will train a person and reveal to them the benefits of a particular initiative, but then there is ‘the way things are done’. Most public sector workers can relate to this especially one with prior experience in the private sector. Our experiences from other sectors may teach you better, however there is little you can do to overcome the bureaucracy you face in the public sector. Another case in point is with the recent Ebola virus where communities and individuals, well aware of the Dos and Don’ts from awareness creation, would still hide infected corpses or attempt to bury them. Why? Because that is the way things are done. The cultural norm. How then do we ensure that the skills or capacity building will be used? Do we accompany capacity building with an overhaul of the entire system? What tools and policies do we need to put in place to ensure that the newly acquired skills can be implemented and not wasted? How do we ensure that the person does not go back to ‘the way things are done’. Yes we can depend on the hope that individuals are highly motivated and gingered to ‘defeat’ the drag of the system. But then this would likely be an exception to the norm. We need to make these kind of success rather the norm. Reforms, especially that of the public sector are very much needed. I have recently joined the public sector and only 6 months down the line I can already start to feel my once pumped, results-oriented, development fanatic, capacity built self slowly slipping away.
In summary, yes capacity building is crucial but we need to also start talking about 1. How to measure the mid-term and longer term impact of capacity building and 2. How do we make ensure we don’t slip back into our old ways of doing things that how do we sustain this capacity building.
