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Capacity building

Capacity building is the process of developing and strengthening the skills, knowledge, abilities, processes, and resources that enable individuals, organizations, and communities to perform functions more effectively, solve problems, and achieve sustainable goals amid changing conditions.^[1]^[2] This approach extends beyond mere training to include institutional reforms, governance enhancements, and resource mobilization, aiming to foster self-reliance rather than perpetual external dependency.^[3]^[4] The concept emerged in international development discourse in the mid-20th century, evolving from post-colonial aid efforts focused on technical assistance to a broader framework emphasizing endogenous growth and adaptability, with formal recognition in the United Nations' Agenda 21 at the 1992 Earth Summit.^[5] By the 2000s, it became a cornerstone of multilateral strategies, integrated into programs by entities like the World Bank and IMF, targeting sectors such as public health, disaster risk management, and economic governance in low-income countries.^[6] Empirical analyses of projects in regions like sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia reveal that effective outcomes hinge on context-specific design, local ownership, and sustained follow-through, with successes including improved policy implementation in targeted institutions but frequent shortfalls in scalability.^[7]^[8] Despite its theoretical appeal grounded in causal mechanisms of skill accumulation and institutional hardening, capacity building initiatives often yield inconsistent results, undermined by top-down methodologies that overlook local power dynamics and by evaluations from donor institutions prone to overstating impacts due to funding imperatives.^[9] Criticisms from practitioner surveys and project reviews highlight systemic barriers like political instability, misaligned incentives, and inadequate measurement of long-term effects, leading to scenarios where initial gains dissipate without embedded accountability structures.^[10]^[11] Recent scholarly assessments underscore the need for rigorous, independent metrics to discern genuine causal impacts from placebo effects in aid-driven efforts, revealing that while some interventions boost operational efficiency—such as in IMF technical assistance—many fail to translate into broader societal resilience.^[12]^[13]

Definitions and Conceptual Framework

Core Principles and Definitions

Capacity building, also termed capacity development, constitutes the systematic process through which individuals, organizations, institutions, and societies enhance their abilities to identify, formulate, and implement strategies for achieving self-defined objectives, particularly in contexts of sustainable development and governance. This process emphasizes the acquisition, strengthening, and maintenance of competencies over time, rather than one-off interventions, to enable independent functioning amid changing environments. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) delineates it as commencing with the tenet that sustainable empowerment arises when development mechanisms are enduring and aligned with local contexts, thereby mitigating dependency on external aid.^[14] Similarly, the United Nations frames it as bolstering skills, processes, and resources to confer competitive edges to entities, underscoring adaptability and resilience as foundational outcomes.^[1] At its core, capacity building adheres to principles of beneficiary ownership and demand-driven approaches, wherein interventions are tailored to endogenous priorities to ensure relevance and uptake, as external impositions often yield ephemeral results due to mismatched incentives and capacities.^[14] Sustainability forms another pillar, prioritizing enduring systemic changes—such as institutional reforms or skill retention mechanisms—over transient inputs like workshops, evidenced by evaluations showing that programs fostering self-reliance persist longer than those reliant on donor funding.^[15] This principle draws from causal observations in development practice, where capacity deficits stem from entrenched structural gaps, necessitating interventions that build adaptive feedback loops rather than isolated fixes. Holistic integration across levels—individual (e.g., technical expertise), organizational (e.g., procedural efficiencies), and systemic (e.g., policy frameworks)—is essential, as siloed efforts fail to address interdependencies, per OECD analyses of fragile states where multi-level synergies amplify impacts.^[16] Further principles include partnership and co-creation, involving stakeholders in design and execution to leverage local knowledge and mitigate information asymmetries that plague top-down models, as documented in UNDP frameworks promoting collaborative diagnostics.^[17] Evidence-based monitoring ensures accountability, employing metrics for both tangible outputs (e.g., trained personnel counts) and intangible gains (e.g., institutional resilience), though challenges persist in quantifying long-term causal effects amid confounding variables like political instability.^[16] These tenets, rooted in empirical reviews of aid effectiveness, counter critiques of capacity building as rhetorical by demanding verifiable, context-specific adaptations over generic templates.^[18]

Distinctions from Training and Empowerment

Capacity building extends beyond training by incorporating systemic, long-term processes that enable entities to adapt and innovate independently, rather than relying solely on discrete skill acquisition. Training focuses on imparting specific technical knowledge or competencies to individuals through structured sessions, such as workshops or courses, yielding short-term improvements that may dissipate without reinforcement.^[19] In capacity building, training serves as a foundational element but is embedded within broader mechanisms, including organizational restructuring, policy alignment, and environmental adaptations, to foster sustained functionality across individual, institutional, and societal levels. The United Nations Development Programme defines capacity development as the process through which these entities obtain, strengthen, and maintain capabilities to set and achieve development goals, emphasizing causal linkages like leadership cultivation and resource integration over isolated interventions.^[14] Empowerment, while overlapping with capacity building in promoting self-reliance, differs in its primary emphasis on redistributing authority and enhancing agency through participatory or motivational means, without always addressing foundational capability deficits. For instance, empowerment initiatives may involve delegating decision-making to marginalized groups to build confidence and ownership, as seen in community-led projects, but they risk inefficacy if recipients lack the underlying skills or systems to operationalize that power effectively.^[20] Capacity building, by contrast, prioritizes empirical strengthening of core functions—such as analytical tools, governance protocols, and adaptive learning—rooted in first-principles assessment of performance bottlenecks, ensuring that empowerment translates into measurable outcomes rather than aspirational autonomy. Development frameworks from organizations like the World Bank underscore this by framing capacity building as a results-oriented strategy that integrates empowerment as a potential byproduct, contingent on verifiable institutional maturation.^[21]^[22]

Historical Development

Origins in Post-Colonial Development Aid

The concepts underlying capacity building emerged in the immediate post-colonial era through technical assistance programs designed to strengthen administrative, economic, and institutional frameworks in newly independent nations, particularly in Africa and Asia during the 1950s and 1960s. As European empires dissolved— with over 30 countries achieving independence between 1955 and 1965—donor nations and international organizations shifted aid from wartime relief to long-term support for state-building, focusing on transferring expertise to address deficits in skilled personnel and organizational structures inherited from colonial rule.^[23] These efforts prioritized human resource development, such as training civil servants and establishing ministries, over pure capital transfers, recognizing that economic progress required functional governance systems.^[24] The United Nations played a pivotal role via the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance (EPTA), approved by the General Assembly in 1949 and operational from 1950, which allocated resources for dispatching experts, offering fellowships for overseas training, and supplying equipment to recipient countries.^[25] By 1957, EPTA supported operations valued at $30,837,533 in multiple currencies, targeting fields like public administration, agriculture, and health in post-colonial states such as those in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.^[26] Complementing this, bilateral programs like the U.S. Point Four initiative, announced in 1949 and enacted through the Technical Cooperation Administration in 1950, extended technical aid to approximately 40 developing countries via university contracts and on-site advisors, emphasizing knowledge transfer for self-reliance.^[27]^[28] The International Monetary Fund also ramped up technical assistance from the mid-1950s onward, responding to independence waves by advising on fiscal systems and central banking in nascent economies.^[29] These programs operated amid Cold War rivalries, with U.S. and Soviet aid competing to influence alignments in decolonizing regions, often prioritizing geopolitical stability over purely developmental outcomes.^[30] For instance, U.S. community development efforts in India from the early 1950s involved trainers embedding in villages to build local administrative skills, while British grants targeted Commonwealth nations like Ghana post-1957 independence.^[30]^[31] Though effective in establishing initial institutions—such as training thousands of officials—outcomes were constrained by brief expert tenures, cultural mismatches, and donor-driven agendas that sometimes undermined local initiative, foreshadowing later critiques of aid dependency.^[24] By the late 1960s, EPTA's merger into the United Nations Development Programme in 1965 marked a consolidation of these approaches, evolving technical assistance into broader capacity-focused strategies.^[32]

Evolution Through International Organizations (1990s–2010s)

During the 1990s, international organizations shifted from donor-driven technical assistance to capacity building as a core strategy for sustainable development, recognizing that external aid often failed without strengthening local institutions and skills. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD/DAC) issued Principles for New Orientations in Technical Cooperation in 1991, advocating for reduced donor control and greater emphasis on recipient-led processes to build long-term capacities.^[33] This was followed in 1994 by OECD/DAC's agreement on new orientations for development assistance, which prioritized endogenous capacity development over short-term transfers, influencing agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and World Bank to integrate ownership and participation into their frameworks.^[33] UNDP, in particular, launched National Technical Cooperation Assessment and Programmes (NaTCAP) with over 30 African governments during the decade, culminating in the 1993 report Rethinking Technical Cooperation, which critiqued traditional aid for undermining local expertise and recommended assessments at individual, organizational, and systemic levels.^[33] The World Bank paralleled this evolution by incorporating capacity building into governance and state-strengthening projects from the 1990s onward, funding over 6,600 operations across 140 countries with more than $360 billion in commitments by the late 1990s, often targeting institutional reforms amid post-Cold War transitions.^[34] Evaluations of these efforts, such as the Independent Evaluation Group's 2008 assessment of decentralization initiatives from 1990 to 2007, highlighted variable success in enhancing public sector performance, attributing gains to improved accountability mechanisms rather than funding alone.^[35] UNDP advanced a human development paradigm, emphasizing transformation through local actors, knowledge diffusion, and leadership, as outlined in its capacity development primer, which framed capacity as addressing core issues like institutional arrangements and accountability across three levels: enabling environment, organizations, and individuals.^[14] Into the 2000s, milestones included Tanzania's 1997 donor-government partnership to foster ownership through 18 monitored steps for capacity enhancement, serving as a model for results-based management adopted by aid agencies.^[33] In 2000, UNDP and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) initiated the Capacity Development Initiative (CDI), a consultative process promoting dialogue on systemic capacities for environmental governance.^[36] By the mid-2000s, UNDP formalized a five-step cycle—engaging stakeholders, assessing capacities, formulating strategies, implementing, and evaluating—to align with Millennium Development Goals, while the World Bank emphasized performance-based grants in projects like Indonesia's Local Governance Reform (2005), aiming to boost revenue collection and fiduciary responsibility despite persistent challenges like political interference.^[14]^[37] These approaches underscored a consensus on prioritizing home-grown solutions, though empirical reviews noted that external incentives alone rarely sustained gains without internal legitimacy and trust.^[37]

Recent Shifts in Focus (2020s Onward)

The COVID-19 pandemic and escalating geopolitical conflicts prompted a pivot in capacity building toward enhancing systemic resilience against multiple shocks, with international organizations emphasizing adaptive institutional frameworks over isolated training initiatives. The World Bank Group's 2020–2025 Strategy for Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) marked a strategic reorientation, aiming to bolster resilience in contexts where up to two-thirds of the global extreme poor are projected to reside by 2030, amid rising conflicts and displacement crises exceeding historical peaks.^[38] This approach integrates capacity strengthening with addressing interconnected drivers like inequality and migration, shifting from prior fragmented efforts to holistic, prevention-focused interventions that prioritize marginalized populations and institutional reforms in fragile states.^[38] Digital integration emerged as a core focus, accelerated by pandemic-induced disruptions that compressed years of technological adoption into months, with capacity building now incorporating hybrid training and online platforms to sustain operations amid instability. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expanded its capacity development in fiscal years post-2020, delivering 521 training courses to 18,563 officials and deploying 2,346 technical assistance visits, including digital tools reaching over 200,000 learners across multilingual online programs tailored for revenue mobilization and debt management in vulnerable economies.^[39] This reflects a broader trend where digital transformation supports evidence-based reforms, such as modernizing central bank governance in countries like Haiti, though implementation varies due to infrastructure gaps in low-income settings.^[39] Climate resilience gained prominence, intertwining capacity building with green transitions to mitigate environmental risks, as seen in initiatives fostering institutional reforms for sustainable development in climate-vulnerable regions. Official development assistance (ODA) trends underscore challenges, with flows to developing countries dropping from $175 billion in 2020 to $160 billion in 2023 amid crisis reallocations—$43 billion to developed hosts and $31 billion for in-donor refugees—straining long-term institutional enhancement in Africa (down 7% to $74 billion) and other regions.^[40] Donor shifts toward geopolitical priorities, including 15–22% ODA cuts announced by NATO-aligned nations like the US and UK by 2025, have reduced health and climate allocations by up to 44%, compelling a reevaluation toward high-return, locally led models to avoid dependency.^[40]^[41]

Core Components and Mechanisms

Human Capital Enhancement

Human capital enhancement constitutes a primary mechanism in capacity building by systematically improving individuals' cognitive abilities, technical skills, physical health, and adaptive capacities to boost productivity and innovation potential.^[1] This approach draws from human capital theory, which posits that investments in people yield measurable economic returns through enhanced output and efficiency.^[42] Empirical analyses confirm that such enhancements drive organizational and national performance, with studies showing positive correlations between skill development initiatives and metrics like revenue growth and operational resilience.^[43] Key strategies include formal education expansion, vocational training programs, and health interventions targeting early childhood development and workforce wellness. For example, each additional year of quality schooling generates private returns of 9-10% in lifetime earnings, based on global datasets spanning decades.^[44] In development contexts, on-the-job training accelerates post-schooling human capital accumulation, particularly where formal systems lag, enabling workers to adapt to technological shifts and local economic demands.^[45] Infrastructure investments supporting education and healthcare further amplify these effects, as seen in projects building schools and clinics to reduce stunting and improve learning outcomes.^[46] The World Bank's Human Capital Index provides a standardized metric for assessing enhancement progress, calculating expected adult productivity as a share of full potential (scale 0-1) via components like survival probability to age 60, functional health, and learning-adjusted years of schooling.^[47] Launched in 2018, the associated Human Capital Project has mobilized commitments exceeding $8.6 billion across 54 countries by 2020 for nutrition, education, and social protection reforms.^[48] Regional empirical evidence, such as European studies, links higher human capital accumulation rates to sustained GDP growth differentials.^[49] Effectiveness hinges on alignment with contextual needs, including labor market demands and institutional support, to avoid skill mismatches.^[50] Longitudinal data from firm-level interventions indicate that integrated approaches—combining training with performance incentives—outperform isolated efforts, yielding up to 11% of GDP in human capital investment impacts when public and private sectors collaborate.^[51]^[52] While international organizations like the World Bank emphasize these tactics in aid programs, critiques note variability in outcomes due to implementation gaps in low-governance environments, underscoring the need for evidence-based monitoring.^[53]

Institutional and Organizational Strengthening

Institutional and organizational strengthening constitutes a core dimension of capacity building, focusing on enhancing the structural, procedural, and governance frameworks of public institutions, nonprofits, and enterprises to enable sustained performance and adaptability. This process typically involves diagnosing organizational weaknesses through frameworks evaluating purpose alignment, stakeholder coordination, accountability mechanisms, and operational efficacy.^[54] Such strengthening aims to foster internal capabilities for policy formulation, resource allocation, and service delivery, often addressing deficiencies in leadership, legal mandates, and inter-agency collaboration.^[55] Key mechanisms include organizational restructuring to streamline hierarchies and decision-making, development of formal coordination protocols among entities, and institutionalization of performance monitoring systems. For instance, World Bank-supported initiatives in national statistical offices have implemented restructuring to improve data governance and cross-ministerial integration, yielding measurable gains in statistical output quality where local ownership was prioritized.^[56] In health sectors, efforts emphasize bolstering central agencies' regulatory and oversight functions, as seen in African capacity building projects that linked institutional reforms to expanded service coverage, though outcomes varied with political stability.^[57] Leadership development programs, targeting executive training and succession planning, further support these reforms by embedding change management skills.^[58] Empirical assessments reveal that effective strengthening requires long-term commitments, with the World Bank estimating 10-20 years for verifiable sustainability in institutional reforms, as shorter interventions often fail due to entrenched bureaucratic inertia or funding discontinuities.^[59] Studies on development aid indicate mixed results, with institutional improvements correlating positively with economic growth only when aid volatility is low and recipient governments demonstrate commitment to reforms, as evidenced in panel data analyses across low-income countries from 1990-2020.^[60] Failures frequently stem from donor-driven designs lacking contextual adaptation or insufficient integration across individual, organizational, and systemic levels, underscoring the causal importance of endogenous demand over exogenous imposition.^[61] Successful cases, such as IMF technical assistance in fiscal institutions, highlight that outcomes improve when capacity building aligns with measurable benchmarks like audit compliance rates rising 15-25% post-intervention in select member states.^[7]

Resource and Systemic Integration

Resource and systemic integration in capacity building entails embedding enhanced individual and organizational capacities into broader enabling environments while aligning necessary resources to support sustained performance. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) delineates capacity development across three levels—individual, organizational, and systemic—with the systemic level addressing policies, laws, and inter-institutional coordination that enable effective capacity utilization.^[62] This integration mitigates risks of capacity erosion by ensuring that newly developed skills and structures interface with existing systemic dynamics, such as regulatory frameworks and resource allocation mechanisms, fostering endogenous sustainability rather than reliance on temporary external inputs.^[63] At the resource dimension, integration focuses on mobilizing and coordinating financial, technological, and informational assets to amplify built capacities, often through partnerships that facilitate resource sharing and co-creation. For example, in public service innovation, value co-creation models emphasize resource integration as a means to enhance organizational imagination and service delivery, drawing on actor resources to generate mutual benefits.^[64] Similarly, in community-based social innovations, strategies involve pooling diverse resources to build resilience, with studies highlighting differential impacts of resource dependence on long-term capacity outcomes.^[65] This process requires diagnostic assessments to identify gaps, followed by targeted interventions like joint funding mechanisms or technology transfers, which empirical frameworks link to improved adaptability in low-resource settings.^[66] Systemic integration extends beyond resource alignment to structural reforms that promote coherence across sectors and governance layers. UNDP's approach underscores the enabling environment's role in providing incentives and accountability structures, as seen in health systems where blurred boundaries between levels enable holistic strengthening.^[67] In conservation efforts, a systems framework advocates aligning capacity components with project stages, emphasizing contextual adaptation and multi-stakeholder coordination to achieve scalable impacts.^[68] Evaluations of such integrations, including World Bank results frameworks, reveal that systemic embedding correlates with higher institutional resilience, though challenges persist in politically volatile contexts where policy inconsistencies undermine resource flows.^[69] Effective implementation often hinges on leadership champions who navigate interdependencies, ensuring that capacity building yields causal chains leading to measurable systemic improvements.^[70]

Applications by Entity Type

Public Sector and Governments

Capacity building in the public sector and governments entails systematic efforts to strengthen administrative, institutional, and human resource capabilities to enable effective policy formulation, implementation, and service delivery.^[71] These initiatives typically involve training programs, organizational restructuring, and technical assistance aimed at reducing dependency on external experts and fostering sustainable governance improvements.^[72] For instance, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs has promoted massive open online courses through national schools of public administration to equip civil servants with skills for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, as outlined in a 2021 policy brief.^[72] Mechanisms for capacity building in governmental contexts include secondments, where personnel are temporarily assigned to higher-capacity environments, yielding causal evidence of enhanced administrative skills in public sectors.^[73] The World Bank's Capacity Development Results Framework provides a structured approach for designing and evaluating such programs, emphasizing measurable outcomes in institutional performance.^[21] In practice, projects like those funded by U.S. State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds post-2020 have allocated resources—totaling billions—for hiring specialists, upgrading IT systems, and streamlining procurement to bolster public sector responsiveness.^[74] Empirical outcomes vary, with some interventions demonstrating improved state functionality, such as reduced budget execution delays in Chad through a World Bank public financial management project approved in fiscal year 2007.^[75] However, rigorous evaluations reveal limitations; a World Bank study in Tanzania found overall state capacity gains but attributed zero value-added to the specific development project, highlighting challenges in isolating intervention effects from broader trends.^[37] A scarcity of high-quality impact assessments persists, as noted in reviews of governance reform training, underscoring the need for causal identification in measuring long-term efficacy.^[76] Critics point to risks of ineffective capacity strengthening leading to persistent reliance on technical assistants and uneven governmental performance, particularly in resource-constrained environments.^[71] International organizations like the OECD advocate for evidence-informed approaches, yet implementation often faces political and economic barriers that undermine sustainability.^[77] Despite these hurdles, targeted efforts in areas like statistical capacity—such as World Bank initiatives in developing countries—have shown potential for data-driven decision-making improvements when aligned with national priorities.^[78]

Civil Society and Local Communities

Capacity building in civil society and local communities focuses on enhancing the organizational, technical, and advocacy skills of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based groups, and grassroots associations to foster self-reliance and effective participation in development processes.^[79] This involves targeted interventions such as leadership training, financial management workshops, and network-building initiatives, often delivered through partnerships with international donors or local governments. For instance, in Cameroon, a 2016 study by the West Africa Civil Society Institute examined sustainability efforts, revealing that capacity development programs improved NGO operational resilience but struggled with long-term funding independence.^[79] Empirical case studies demonstrate varied outcomes in strengthening local associational activities. In a Hungarian local government context analyzed in 2017, civil society organizations' capacity building efforts led to increased community engagement and associational strength, as measured by higher participation rates in local decision-making processes.^[80] Similarly, in Kenya's Turkana County, partnerships documented in a Danish Refugee Council case study enhanced civil society advocacy on land rights, resulting in improved policy influence and community mobilization by 2018, though sustainability depended on ongoing external support.^[81] These examples highlight causal links between skill-building and heightened civic action, yet broader evidence indicates no universal formula for success, with effectiveness tied to contextual factors like political stability.^[80] In South Africa's Mbizana Local Municipality, participatory capacity building initiatives from 2015 to 2020 promoted good governance and peacebuilding, yielding positive peace outcomes through empowered community structures that facilitated conflict resolution and service delivery improvements.^[82] However, assessments underscore persistent challenges, including aid dependency and uneven skill retention post-intervention, as seen in Liberian civil society mappings where capacity gains eroded without sustained local ownership.^[83] Rigorous evaluation remains limited, with studies emphasizing the need for longitudinal data to verify enduring impacts beyond short-term metrics like training attendance.^[84]

Private Sector Enterprises

Capacity building in private sector enterprises encompasses targeted interventions to bolster organizational competencies, workforce skills, technological adoption, and managerial systems, enabling firms to achieve sustainable growth and competitiveness. These efforts often involve internal strategies such as leadership training, process optimization, and resource allocation enhancements, alongside external partnerships for knowledge transfer. Empirical analyses indicate that firms investing in such capacity enhancements experience improved productivity; for example, a 2023 study by the International Finance Corporation highlighted that MSME capacity-building programs, including digital skills training, correlated with a 15-20% increase in revenue for participating enterprises in emerging markets.^[85]^[86] In the context of international development aid, capacity building extends to fortifying private sector ecosystems in low-income countries to drive job creation and economic diversification. Organizations like the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have implemented programs in Africa since the early 2000s, focusing on industrial upgrading, entrepreneurship training, and supply chain integration to address gaps in private sector maturity. A 2009 UNIDO assessment of these initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa found that targeted technical assistance led to a 25% rise in firm-level export capacities among beneficiary enterprises, though outcomes varied by sector due to infrastructural constraints.^[87] Similarly, the World Bank's 2006 Capacity Building Project for Private Sector Promotion in Cape Verde allocated $5.5 million to enhance business development services, regulatory reforms, and financial access, resulting in the formalization of over 1,000 enterprises and a projected 10,000 new jobs by 2012, as evaluated in project completion reports.^[88] Private sector engagement in capacity building also manifests through public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure and climate resilience projects. For instance, USAID's initiatives, such as the 2019 Guatemala economic growth programs, leveraged private investments to build supply chain capacities, yielding a 12% annual growth in agribusiness exports for involved firms.^[89] These collaborations emphasize causal mechanisms like skill-matching and innovation incentives, yet evaluations from sources like the World Bank note persistent challenges, including political risks and uneven incentive alignment between donors and local firms, which can limit scalability.^[90] Peer-reviewed analyses underscore that successful outcomes hinge on aligning capacity interventions with market realities rather than top-down mandates, with private-led models outperforming state-centric approaches in fostering long-term self-reliance.^[91]

Scale and Contextual Factors

Micro to Macro Levels

Capacity building efforts are structured across micro, meso, and macro levels, reflecting interdependent capacities that enhance performance from individuals to broader systems. At the micro level, interventions focus on individual competencies, such as skills training, knowledge acquisition, and personal leadership development, which form the foundational human capital necessary for effective action. For instance, primary health care capacity strengthening commonly targets domains like clinical expertise and research skills through workshops and mentorship, with scoping reviews identifying these as prevalent approaches to improve practitioner performance. Empirical studies indicate that such individual-level enhancements can yield measurable outcomes, such as increased evidence-based decision-making in public health settings, where training correlates with better policy application by personnel.^[92]^[93] The meso level addresses organizational capacities, including internal processes, resource management, and collaborative structures within groups or institutions, bridging individual abilities to collective efficacy. Here, capacity building involves tools like performance assessments and technical assistance to foster adaptive management and inter-unit coordination, as seen in evidence-based public health initiatives that strengthen agency workflows. Research highlights that organizational interventions, such as those integrating staff training with procedural reforms, contribute to sustained improvements, though their success often depends on alignment with individual-level gains to avoid siloed effects. A World Bank analysis emphasizes linking these layers by embedding organizational reforms in sector-specific strategies, such as agricultural cooperatives where group training enhances productivity metrics by 10-20% in targeted pilots.^[93]^[61] At the macro level, capacity building targets systemic and enabling environments, encompassing national policies, legal frameworks, and institutional ecosystems that support scaled implementation. This includes developing governance structures and resource allocation mechanisms to facilitate widespread adoption, as outlined in United Nations frameworks where enabling environments reinforce individual and organizational efforts through interdependent policy supports. For example, statistical capacity development for Sustainable Development Goals involves national-level epistemic infrastructure, enabling data-driven governance that amplifies micro interventions across populations. Evidence from sector reviews shows that macro reforms, like fiscal incidence analysis training programs, have built analytical capacities in over 20 developing countries since 2010, though outcomes vary due to political economy factors influencing enforcement. Effective scaling requires vertical integration, where micro gains inform meso adaptations that, in turn, shape macro policies; failures in this linkage, as noted in development evaluations, often result in fragmented impacts rather than holistic resilience.^[94]^[95]^[96]

Influences of Economic and Political Environments

Economic environments profoundly affect the feasibility and outcomes of capacity building by determining resource availability and incentive structures. In higher-income economies, capacity development initiatives demonstrate a positive correlation with per capita GDP growth, particularly when supported by mechanisms like resident advisors and regional technical centers, as analyzed in a 2021 IMF study of over 100 countries spanning 1990–2018.^[7] Conversely, low-income settings impose fiscal constraints that hinder sustained investment, often shifting reliance to external donors whose priorities may diverge from local needs, thereby risking inefficient allocation and reduced long-term efficacy, according to World Bank evaluations of state capacity projects in developing nations.^[97] Economic instability, such as volatile growth or inadequate financing, further exacerbates these challenges by diverting scarce resources toward immediate crises rather than institutional strengthening, as outlined in UN guidelines on interconnected capacity levels addressing economic factors.^[94] Political environments influence capacity building through governance quality, policy continuity, and institutional incentives, often mediating economic efforts' success. Empirical evidence from 45 sub-Saharan African countries indicates that democratic systems amplify economic growth impacts in low-capacity states by fostering accountability and adaptive reforms, whereas autocratic regimes may prioritize short-term political control over broad developmental gains.^[98] High political turnover disrupts capacity gains, as training and reforms lose momentum without sustained leadership commitment, a pattern observed in governance reform evaluations where elite instability undermines operational embedding.^[76] Moreover, political capacity—encompassing analytical foresight, operational execution, and coalitional support—proves essential for translating capacity inputs into policy effectiveness, with studies across multiple sectors showing that deficiencies in these dimensions lead to implementation failures independent of economic inputs.^[99] In corrupt or fragmented political contexts, resource misappropriation further erodes trust and participation, limiting civil society and private sector engagement in building endeavors.^[100] Interactions between economic and political factors amplify these influences; for instance, economic downturns in unstable polities accelerate aid dependency cycles, while robust political institutions can leverage growth periods for endogenous capacity expansion, as evidenced in comparative analyses of development project impacts.^[37] Prioritizing environments with aligned incentives—such as rule-of-law adherence and merit-based administration—thus emerges as a causal prerequisite for verifiable capacity gains, underscoring the need for context-specific diagnostics over generic interventions.^[101]

Evaluation and Empirical Evidence

Assessment Methodologies

Capacity assessments in capacity building programs typically begin with baseline evaluations to gauge existing abilities at individual, organizational, and enabling environment levels, followed by gap analysis comparing current states to targeted performance standards.^[102] These methodologies emphasize participatory processes involving stakeholders to ensure relevance and ownership, often employing mixed methods such as surveys, interviews, and performance metrics to collect data.^[18] The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) employs a structured Capacity Assessment Methodology that operates across three levels: individual (skills and knowledge), organizational (structures and processes), and enabling environment (policies and incentives).^[102] Key steps include scoping the assessment, selecting indicators aligned with development goals, gathering evidence through tools like the UNDP Supporting Tool (which facilitates data collection via questionnaires and workshops), analyzing gaps, and formulating response strategies. This approach has been applied in contexts like biodiversity conservation and national development planning, prioritizing empirical baselines over anecdotal reports to identify verifiable capacity deficits.^[103] Quantitative tools, such as the Organizational Performance Index (OPI) developed by Pact, measure capacities through scored indicators on technical, operational, and adaptive dimensions, enabling longitudinal tracking of improvements.^[18] The World Bank's Capacity Development Results Framework (CDRF) structures evaluations around a causal chain: inputs (resources allocated), outputs (delivered activities like training), outcomes (behavioral changes in skills or processes), and impacts (contributions to broader development objectives).^[21] This framework supports monitoring via predefined indicators and evaluation of attribution challenges, such as distinguishing capacity gains from external factors, through methods like before-after comparisons and control group analysis.^[21]^[18] For public administration contexts, the OECD's Administrative Capacity Building Self-Assessment Instrument evaluates strengths and weaknesses across four pillars—people (e.g., skills and leadership), organization (e.g., structures and knowledge management), strategic planning (e.g., implementation and performance measurement), and beneficiaries/stakeholders—using a four-level maturity scale applied in self-scoring matrices.^[104] The process involves workshops for validation and action planning, particularly for managing EU cohesion funds in regional development, where it identifies targeted interventions like recruitment reforms or coordination enhancements.^[104] Despite these tools, evaluations often face difficulties in establishing causality between interventions and sustained outcomes, as short-term metrics (e.g., training completion rates) may not predict long-term institutional performance, necessitating complementary qualitative methods like case studies and stakeholder feedback.^[18] Self-reported assessments, common in frameworks like OECD's, risk optimism bias but can be mitigated by triangulating data sources and external validation.^[18]^[104]

Key Studies on Outcomes and Effectiveness

A 2018 systematic review of 14 studies on capacity building interventions relevant to public health practice identified improvements in individual-level outcomes, including knowledge acquisition, skill enhancement, self-efficacy, and practice changes, with two studies specifically reporting consistent positive results in knowledge application from training and workshops. Interventions encompassed internet-based instruction, technical assistance, self-directed learning, and multi-strategy approaches, but evidence was limited to moderate quality due to reliance on self-reported data, absence of control groups, and scant focus on system-level or long-term effects.^[105] The World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluated training initiatives for capacity building in development projects from 2002–2006 across 179 projects and field studies in multiple countries, finding average learning gains of 10.4% and substantial positive workplace changes reported by 55–60% of project-based training participants, compared to 50% for World Bank Institute-led programs. Project-based training proved more effective when integrated with organizational incentives and follow-up support, though overall impacts on broader development outcomes were constrained by inadequate monitoring, short program durations, and difficulties in attributing changes amid confounding factors like resource shortages.^[106] A 2023 World Bank IEG content analysis of 64 project evaluations spanning 2009–2022 revealed that 72% of projects explicitly targeted institutional capacity development, with 66% of moderately satisfactory or higher-rated projects exhibiting high positive sentiment in related reporting; in contrast, only 10% of lower-rated projects showed similar positivity. Effectiveness hinged on strengthening ownership among interest groups, which correlated strongly with improved outcomes across assessment dimensions like commitment and coordination, underscoring the role of adaptive portfolio management tools such as the Institutional Change Assessment Method in elevating project ratings.^[107] In the nonprofit sector, a three-year longitudinal evaluation (2012–2015) of capacity-building support for 167 organizations documented statistically significant average gains of 25% in fundraising, governance, and special events capacities, including a 50% increase in board members introducing donors and a 20% post-consulting revenue rise, with coaching-intensive consultancies yielding the strongest results.^[108] Complementing this, a random assignment evaluation of multi-year capacity-building programs for nonprofits found enhancements in five critical areas—strategic planning, board governance, fundraising, program evaluation, and financial management—leading to measurable organizational capacity improvements and sustained program delivery.^[109] Across these studies, short-term gains in skills and organizational functions predominate, yet causal links to enduring systemic or developmental impacts remain elusive, often due to methodological limitations like low response rates, self-selection bias in participant reporting, and insufficient controls for external variables; donor-influenced evaluations, while providing structured data, may underemphasize failures in incentive misalignment or post-intervention decay.^[106]^[105]

Barriers to Reliable Measurement

One primary barrier to reliable measurement of capacity building is the attribution problem, where it becomes challenging to causally link observed improvements in performance or outcomes directly to the intervention rather than to external factors such as economic shifts, policy changes, or concurrent programs.^[18]^[110] This issue arises because capacity building often operates as an enabling process embedded within broader development efforts, lacking standalone, observable endpoints that can be isolated for evaluation.^[18] Empirical reviews indicate that evaluators frequently resort to proxy indicators like training attendance or short-term skill tests, which fail to capture sustained behavioral or institutional changes, leading to overestimation or underestimation of effects.^[111] Another significant obstacle is the absence of standardized, validated metrics for capacity, resulting in inconsistent and context-dependent assessments across programs. Capacity is multifaceted—encompassing individual skills, organizational processes, and systemic enabling environments—yet definitions vary widely, complicating comparability; for instance, a 2011 UN report highlighted how ambiguity in expected results hinders the quantification of capacity changes over time. Quantitative approaches, such as pre-post surveys, often overlook qualitative dimensions like adaptive leadership or cultural shifts, while qualitative methods introduce subjectivity and reliability concerns.^[112] Studies from nonprofit evaluations underscore that without agreed-upon frameworks, such as those proposed by the OECD's capacity development principles, measurements devolve into ad hoc reporting that prioritizes donor-pleasing narratives over rigorous evidence.^[113]^[101] Data collection and monitoring further exacerbate unreliability, particularly in resource-constrained or politically unstable settings where baseline data is absent or longitudinal tracking is infeasible. In low-income contexts, logistical barriers like poor infrastructure and high staff turnover impede consistent follow-up, with one analysis of community capacity building finding that only 40% of reviewed studies employed robust methodological designs capable of yielding credible inferences.^[114] Self-reported data from participants or organizations introduces response bias, as incentives for positive reporting—tied to funding renewal—can inflate perceived gains; joint evaluations across donors have been recommended to mitigate this, but implementation remains sporadic.^[115] Additionally, the long-term horizon of capacity effects, often spanning years or decades, clashes with short evaluation cycles demanded by funders, truncating assessments before impacts materialize.^[116] These barriers collectively undermine evidence-based policy, as evidenced by meta-analyses showing that fewer than 20% of capacity development initiatives undergo rigorous, independent impact evaluations, perpetuating a cycle of unverified assumptions about effectiveness.^[110] Addressing them requires prioritizing causal inference methods, such as randomized controls where feasible or advanced econometric techniques for observational data, though scalability remains limited in practice.^[117]

Criticisms and Limitations

Creation of Aid Dependency

Foreign aid intended for capacity building often fosters dependency in recipient countries by substituting for domestic resource mobilization and institutional self-sufficiency. In many cases, inflows of aid reduce governments' incentives to collect taxes or develop efficient bureaucracies, as external funding covers recurrent expenditures without demanding accountability to citizens. For instance, a World Bank analysis notes that aid dependency diminishes fiscal effort, with recipient governments relying on donors for up to 50% of budgets in highly aid-dependent African states, leading to weakened state-building processes.^[118] This dynamic undermines the core aim of capacity building, which seeks to enhance endogenous capabilities rather than perpetuate reliance on exogenous support.^[119] Economist Dambisa Moyo argues in her 2009 book Dead Aid that over $1 trillion in aid to Africa since the 1940s has entrenched dependency by crowding out private investment and distorting market signals, as aid-financed projects compete with local enterprises and inflate non-tradable sectors like construction. Empirical studies corroborate this, showing that higher aid levels correlate with slower economic growth and reduced employment in non-agricultural sectors across sub-Saharan Africa from 1970 to 2010, as aid inflows discourage productive investments and foster rent-seeking behaviors. Peter Bauer, in critiques spanning the 1970s to 1990s, similarly contended that aid subsidizes inefficient or corrupt regimes, promoting a culture of handouts that erodes individual initiative and long-term institutional development.^[120]^[121]^[122] In capacity building contexts, such dependency manifests through "aid-institutions paradoxes," where donor-driven training and technical assistance create parallel structures that bypass local systems, resulting in skills gaps upon aid withdrawal. A Center for Global Development review of sub-Saharan Africa highlights how aid dependency ratios exceeding 10% of GDP correlate with institutional stagnation, as governments prioritize donor compliance over domestic reforms. This is evident in cases like Malawi and Zambia, where aid comprised over 20% of GDP in the 2000s, yet capacity in public administration remained low, with persistent reliance on expatriate advisors. Critics emphasize that without tying aid to verifiable reductions in dependency—such as phased exits or performance-based disbursements—capacity building efforts risk perpetuating a cycle where recipients prioritize short-term aid absorption over sustainable self-reliance.^[119]^[123]

Misalignment with Donor and Recipient Incentives

Donor agencies and recipient governments often operate under divergent incentive structures that undermine effective capacity building. In principal-agent frameworks applied to foreign aid, donors act as principals seeking to monitor and direct resource use toward institutional strengthening, while recipients serve as agents with superior local information but incentives prone to moral hazard, such as diverting funds for elite capture or short-term patronage rather than long-term reforms. This asymmetry fosters top-down interventions that prioritize donor accountability—such as quantifiable outputs for domestic reporting—over recipient-led sustainability, leading to projects misaligned with endogenous needs.^[124]^[125] Donors face pressures from political cycles and bureaucratic imperatives, emphasizing visible short-term results like training workshops or infrastructure rollout to justify budgets, even if these erode local ownership or fail to embed skills institutionally. Recipients, conversely, may welcome aid inflows that bolster ruling coalitions without necessitating politically costly changes, such as decentralizing power or enhancing transparency, thereby perpetuating dependency on external support. Empirical evidence from global health capacity efforts highlights how donor dominance in funding decisions creates power imbalances, deterring recipients from challenging misfits between global agendas and local priorities; a multi-country study involving 41 stakeholders from 13 nations identified syndromes like resource diversion to donor metrics, resulting in fragmented and unsustainable health systems.^[126]^[127] These misalignments manifest in low post-aid sustainability, as recipients lack incentives for maintenance amid rent-seeking behaviors, while donors overlook contextual realities due to limited on-ground engagement. In African contexts, such dynamics have suppressed local entrepreneurship by favoring state-centric aid that crowds out private initiative, with principal-agent issues exacerbating elite entrenchment over broad capacity gains. Alignment occurs sporadically when donor conditions match recipient leadership interests, as in cases where aid supports aligned political incentives for reform, but pervasive skews toward donor-controlled technical cooperation—critiqued in the 1993 Berg Report for failing to build lasting skills—underscore systemic barriers to genuine institutional evolution.^[124]^[128]^[127]

Overemphasis on Top-Down Interventions

Critics of capacity building contend that an overreliance on top-down interventions—characterized by centralized planning, expert-driven designs, and donor-imposed frameworks—undermines effectiveness by disregarding local knowledge, incentives, and adaptive capacities. Such approaches often presume that standardized training, institutional reforms, or policy blueprints can universally enhance skills and structures, yet they frequently result in programs misaligned with recipient contexts, fostering resistance and short-term compliance rather than enduring change.^[129]^[130] Empirical analyses highlight the limitations of these methods. A systematic review of urban planning interventions found that top-down strategies for improving access to water, sanitation, and hygiene yielded inconsistent outcomes, with lower community engagement and sustainability compared to participatory alternatives, as evidenced by quantitative data from multiple low-income settings.^[131] Similarly, in Tanzania's agricultural development projects from 2015 to 2020, top-down implementations exhibited significant performance gaps, including delayed execution and reduced impact on productivity, attributable to inadequate local buy-in and oversight mismatches.^[132] Economist William Easterly has argued that top-down planning in development aid, including capacity-building efforts, perpetuates bureaucratic inefficiencies and fails to generate feedback loops essential for adaptation, drawing on historical data from aid programs in Africa where such interventions correlated with stagnant growth rates between 1960 and 2000.^[133]^[134] This emphasis contributes to broader failures, such as resource wastage and eroded self-reliance, as top-down models prioritize donor metrics over verifiable local outcomes. Studies on community governance reveal that top-down scenarios elicit lower acceptance and psychological ownership, with participants reporting diminished motivation for maintenance post-intervention, based on surveys from rural Chinese villages in 2022.^[135] In health sector capacity building, organizational-level top-down reforms rarely translate to frontline skill enhancements, as documented in comparative analyses across four global approaches, where individual and community-driven methods proved more resilient amid resource constraints.^[136] These patterns underscore a causal disconnect: without integrating bottom-up elements, top-down interventions amplify implementation barriers, as transformation processes require aligned agency from affected parties, per a 2025 review of 40 case studies spanning 24 countries.^[137]

Alternatives to Conventional Approaches

Market-Oriented and Entrepreneurial Strategies

Market-oriented and entrepreneurial strategies represent a shift from donor-led capacity building toward leveraging private incentives, competition, and innovation to enhance organizational and individual capabilities in developing contexts. These methods emphasize facilitating access to markets, formalizing property rights, and promoting business skills training to enable self-sustaining growth, positing that profit motives and competitive pressures generate more enduring capacities than top-down aid distributions. Proponents argue this aligns with causal mechanisms where feedback from customers and investors drives efficiency and adaptation, contrasting with aid's potential to distort local incentives.^[138]^[139] Entrepreneurship training initiatives exemplify this approach, delivering targeted instruction in business management, financial literacy, and marketing to micro-entrepreneurs and small firms. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and meta-analyses indicate these programs yield positive, albeit modest, outcomes: a review of 37 studies across developing countries found average increases in business knowledge (effect size 0.20-0.30 standard deviations), adoption of improved practices, and profits (10-20% gains in sales for participants). For example, in Ghana, accelerator-style training boosted firm revenues by 15-25% over 12-24 months by enhancing strategic planning and networking, effects sustained without ongoing subsidies. Similarly, World Bank evaluations of youth entrepreneurship tracks in multiple nations reported higher self-employment rates (5-10 percentage points) and income uplifts among trainees compared to controls, particularly when combined with microfinance access.^[140]^[141]^[142]^[143] Private sector involvement extends these strategies by outsourcing capacity development to market actors, such as through public-private partnerships (PPPs) for service delivery or incubators that prioritize viable ventures. In infrastructure and health sectors, private operators have shown superior outcomes in efficiency and coverage: systematic reviews of PPPs in low-income settings report 20-30% cost reductions and better service quality metrics (e.g., reduced maternal mortality via competitive contracting) versus public monopolies, as firms respond to performance-based payments. Market systems development frameworks, like those applied in agriculture and finance, build systemic capacity by addressing bottlenecks in value chains—e.g., improving input markets—which indirectly strengthens participant skills through real-world application rather than classroom simulations. Evidence from sub-Saharan Africa highlights how such interventions increased farmer incomes by 15-40% via entrepreneurial linkages, outperforming isolated training by embedding skills in profitable ecosystems. However, effectiveness hinges on supportive policies like secure property rights; without them, informal barriers limit scaling, as seen in cases where titling reforms unlocked entrepreneurial investment equivalent to 1-5% annual GDP growth.^[144]^[145]^[139]^[146] ![Training farmers](./assets/Training_farmers_(5856399917) These strategies mitigate aid dependency by tying capacity gains to market viability, fostering institutions resilient to funding fluctuations. Longitudinal data from programs in Latin America and Asia show participant firms surviving at rates 10-15% higher than aid-subsidized counterparts five years post-intervention, attributing durability to internalized profit disciplines. Critics note uneven access for marginalized groups, yet disaggregated RCTs reveal gender-targeted variants closing gaps, with women-led enterprises gaining 20-30% more from tailored entrepreneurial modules. Overall, empirical patterns support market-oriented methods as viable alternatives where conventional approaches falter on sustainability, provided enabling environments reduce regulatory frictions.^[147]^[148]

Bottom-Up Self-Reliance Models

Bottom-up self-reliance models in capacity building focus on empowering local communities to harness endogenous resources, skills, and knowledge for sustainable development, minimizing reliance on external donors and top-down directives. These approaches operate on the premise that communities possess untapped assets—such as social networks, traditional practices, and human capital—that can be mobilized through participatory processes to address local challenges. Unlike aid-dependent frameworks, they emphasize skill-building, local governance, and market-oriented activities to foster long-term autonomy, with causal mechanisms rooted in aligned incentives where beneficiaries directly control outcomes and bear responsibility for failures. Empirical evaluations indicate that such models can enhance resilience when external facilitation is temporary and community ownership is genuine, though success varies with local context and institutional quality.^[149] A core example is microfinance institutions like Grameen Bank, established in 1983 in Bangladesh, which provide collateral-free loans to impoverished individuals, predominantly women, to launch small enterprises. By September 2025, Grameen Bank had disbursed cumulative loans exceeding billions, enabling 21,258 former beggars to achieve self-sufficiency through income-generating activities. The model's high repayment rate, consistently above 90%, demonstrates financial sustainability without subsidies, while studies attribute rural wage increases and poverty reduction to its expansion of credit access, countering traditional banks' exclusion of the asset-poor. Critics note scalability limits in non-homogeneous settings, but replications worldwide underscore its role in promoting entrepreneurial self-reliance over welfare dependency.^[150]^[151]^[152] Community mobilization strategies, as implemented by organizations like The Hunger Project (THP), further illustrate these models by establishing "epicenters" where villagers receive training in leadership, agriculture, and health to drive collective action. THP's approach has led to 86 epicenters declaring self-reliance after multi-year partnerships, impacting over 1.3 million people across Africa and Asia by 2024 through improved food security and local resource management. Independent assessments link these outcomes to enhanced community confidence and skill acquisition, enabling graduates to sustain progress post-intervention. Similarly, India's SRIJAN has supported 501,799 rural families since inception, focusing on land restoration and farmer collectives to boost agricultural productivity and incomes, with nearly 300,000 households achieving dignified self-reliance by 2023 via water management and value-chain integration.^[153]^[154]^[155] While promising, evidence on broader community-driven development (CDD) variants shows mixed results; World Bank reviews find that participation-heavy projects often fail to deliver lasting institutional changes or economic gains without complementary state support, highlighting risks of elite capture or insufficient scale. Nonetheless, self-reliance models succeed where they prioritize measurable exits from aid, as in Grameen and THP cases, by building human and social capital that causally underpins endogenous growth. These approaches challenge donor-centric paradigms, advocating for policies that amplify local agency to avoid perpetuating dependency cycles observed in conventional capacity building.^[156]^[157]

Policy Reforms Reducing External Reliance

Policy reforms reducing external reliance in capacity building prioritize institutional and economic changes that bolster domestic revenue generation, private sector dynamism, and efficient governance to wean recipients off foreign aid. These include tax base expansion, subsidy rationalization, privatization, and regulatory simplification, which align incentives for self-sustaining development rather than perpetual donor support. Empirical evidence indicates such reforms succeed when implemented with political commitment, as they address root causes of dependency like rent-seeking and inefficient public spending.^[158] India's 1991 liberalization reforms exemplify this approach, enacted amid a balance-of-payments crisis with foreign reserves at $1.1 billion—sufficient for only two weeks of imports. Key measures encompassed rupee devaluation by 19%, tariff reductions from over 300% to around 50%, industrial delicensing, and FDI allowance up to 51% in priority sectors. These shifts catalyzed annual GDP growth averaging 6.5% through the 1990s, poverty reduction from 45% to 26% by 2000, and a decline in concessional aid from 2% of GDP in the 1980s to under 0.5% by the 2010s, as domestic revenues and private investment surged.^[159]^[160]^[161] Rwanda's post-1994 reforms further illustrate success, featuring performance-based management via Imihigo contracts, decentralization of service delivery, and judicial reforms to enforce contracts and curb corruption. Aid constituted 45% of the budget in 2000 but fell to 18% by 2022, coinciding with GDP per capita tripling to $966 and private sector credit expanding fivefold from 2010 to 2020. These policies emphasized domestic resource mobilization through broadened tax compliance and public financial management, enabling sustained 7-8% annual growth without proportional aid increases.^[162]^[163] Vietnam's Đổi Mới reforms since 1986 parallel these, transitioning from central planning to market mechanisms with land privatization, enterprise liberalization, and export incentives, slashing aid dependency from 25% of GDP in the 1980s to negligible levels by the 2010s amid 6-7% average growth and poverty halving to 5% by 2016. Despite critiques of inequality exacerbation, data affirm causal links to enhanced self-reliance via productive capacity gains.^[164]^[165]

Illustrative Examples

Documented Successes

Capacity building efforts in agriculture have demonstrated success through targeted training programs that enhance farmers' skills in sustainable practices. The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), operational since 2005, has trained more than 2.9 million smallholder cotton farmers across 25 countries, including major producers like India and Pakistan, in techniques to optimize water use, minimize pesticide application, and improve soil health.^[166] Evaluations indicate that BCI participants achieve lower production costs and higher market prices compared to non-participants, with field-level data showing average reductions in water usage by up to 13% and pesticide application by 5-10% per hectare in monitored regions.^[167] ^[168] These outcomes stem from a combination of on-farm coaching and verification systems that foster self-sustaining adoption of efficient methods, contributing to increased farmer incomes and environmental resilience.^[169] In natural resource management, the USAID Advanced Science and Partnerships for Integrated Resource Development (ASPIRED) project in Armenia's Ararat Valley, initiated in December 2015, built institutional capacity for groundwater governance by collaborating with local agencies to develop hydrogeologic models, monitoring tools, and regulatory frameworks.^[170] The initiative produced 15 water-efficient and environmentally friendly business plans for aquaculture and agriculture, alongside training programs that equipped over 100 stakeholders with data-driven decision-making skills, enabling reductions in unsustainable extraction rates through pilot demonstrations of efficient irrigation and energy-saving technologies.^[171] ^[172] These measurable advancements in technical capacity have supported policy adjustments aimed at long-term aquifer sustainability amid rising demands from farming and fish production.^[173] The Sustainable Agriculture Training Center (SATC) in Myanmar exemplifies success in grassroots agricultural extension, where capacity building since 2009 has trained hundreds of farmers and extension agents in organic farming, integrated pest management, and market linkages, leading to diversified income streams from on-farm products and competitive grant acquisitions exceeding $500,000.^[174] Participants reported yield improvements of 20-30% in staple crops like rice and vegetables, attributed to hands-on demonstrations and farmer-to-farmer knowledge transfer that persisted post-training without ongoing external support.^[175]

Prominent Failures and Setbacks

In Afghanistan, extensive international efforts to build institutional, security, and governance capacity following the 2001 U.S.-led intervention ultimately failed to create sustainable self-reliance, culminating in the rapid collapse of the Afghan government in August 2021. The United States appropriated $145 billion for reconstruction by June 2021, including over $88 billion for training and equipping the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), which involved mentoring programs, infrastructure development, and logistical support aimed at fostering independent operational capacity.^[176] Despite these inputs, the ANDSF disintegrated within weeks of reduced U.S. air support and contractor logistics, due to systemic corruption, ethnic factionalism, inadequate leadership, and dependency on foreign aid that undermined internal cohesion and motivation.^[177] Evaluations highlighted that capacity-building assumptions—such as rapid institutional transfer in a conflict environment—ignored local dynamics, leading to "ghost" troops on payrolls and unmaintained equipment worth billions.^[178] In Haiti, post-2010 earthquake aid initiatives, which pledged approximately $13 billion globally, largely bypassed state institutions in favor of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), exacerbating governmental fragility rather than enhancing it. Donors administered aid directly through NGOs and contractors, citing concerns over corruption and inefficiency, which denied the Haitian government opportunities to develop administrative skills, budgeting, and service-delivery mechanisms.^[179] By 2019, a decade after the disaster, symbolic reconstruction projects like industrial parks remained incomplete or underutilized, with aid flows strengthening parallel NGO structures that substituted for state functions, perpetuating a cycle of dependency and weak sovereignty.^[180] This approach contributed to ongoing instability, as evidenced by persistent governance vacuums that hindered long-term capacity accrual in sectors like health and infrastructure.^[181] World Bank-supported statistical capacity-building projects in fragile states like Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have also demonstrated setbacks, where initiatives failed due to underlying institutional weaknesses and inadequate adaptation to local contexts. A 2019 evaluation found that two such projects collapsed because of insufficient host-country data governance frameworks, resulting in stalled data production and policy integration despite technical training inputs.^[182] These cases underscore broader patterns in multilateral efforts, where top-down technical assistance often overlooks political economy factors, leading to short-term outputs without enduring institutional change.^[183]

Extracted Lessons for Future Applications

Effective capacity building requires prioritizing local ownership to foster sustainable development and mitigate aid dependency. Empirical evidence from donor evaluations indicates that partner-led processes, where recipients drive demand and planning, yield higher long-term impacts than externally imposed initiatives. For instance, successful programs in Tanzania and Cambodia demonstrated reduced transaction costs and improved coordination when governments led joint assistance strategies aligned with national visions.^[59] Similarly, the World Bank's Trust Fund for Statistical Capacity Building found that grants building national demand for data led to continued investments post-funding, emphasizing country ownership as key to enduring systems.^[184] To avoid dependency, capacity efforts must emphasize skills transfer through co-design, blended financing, and phased handovers rather than perpetual hand-holding. Recommendations from utility partnerships highlight gathering evidence via pilots for institutional buy-in, involving local stakeholders in project design to identify champions, and requiring parallel in-kind contributions from recipients to reinforce commitment.^[185] OECD peer reviews underscore tailoring technical assistance to local contexts using demand-driven, locally sourced experts, while avoiding pitfalls like ad-hoc salary supplements that distort incentives, as observed in Georgia where such practices undermined self-sufficiency.^[186]^[59] Incentive alignment demands harmonizing donor practices with recipient priorities, favoring bottom-up models over top-down interventions. Lessons from Mozambique and Sierra Leone reveal that poor coordination in technical assistance fosters reliance, whereas stakeholder-engaged reforms, such as procurement overhauls, enhance ownership and reduce corruption.^[59] Sustainable outcomes necessitate long-term commitments (10-20 years), versatile tools for reusability, and rigorous, independent monitoring focused on impacts rather than outputs, with clear exit strategies for project units to integrate into national structures.^[59]^[184]^[186] Market-oriented strategies and policy reforms reducing external reliance prove superior for self-reliance. Evidence supports engaging non-state actors, private sector partnerships, and context-specific analysis to drive systemic change, as fragmented aid delivery otherwise perpetuates inefficiencies.^[186] Post-project monitoring and peer reviews ensure accountability, while avoiding brain drain in scholarships by prioritizing development-relevant training.^[185]^[186] These principles, derived from decades of evaluations, underscore that capacity building succeeds when it empowers endogenous growth over exogenous inputs.

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[46]
Optimizing Infrastructure Projects through Strategic Human Capital ...
Sep 12, 2024 · Infrastructure investments to create robust healthcare and education systems can be key to developing human capital. More hospitals and medical ...
[47]
Human Capital Index (HCI) (scale 0-1) - World Bank Open Data
Human Capital Index (HCI) (scale 0-1). World Bank staff calculations based on the methodology described in World Bank ( 2018 ). openknowledge.worldbank.org/ ...Missing: building | Show results with:building
[48]
Human Capital Project - World Bank
The Human Capital Data Portal provides global, regional, and economy-level data on key dimensions of human capital, including education, health, social ...Human Capital Index · Frequently Asked Questions · About · Key Reports
[49]
[PDF] Empirical analysis of human capital development and economic ...
The empirical analysis demonstrates that the rate of accumulation of human capital has a clear impact upon economic growth at the regional level, while we find ...
[50]
[PDF] The importance of human capital for economic outcomes - OECD
Feb 16, 2022 · While theoretically human capital is a key determinant of growth, finding an empirically robust relation between human capital and growth at ...
[51]
How much do public and private sectors invest in physical and ...
We find that human capital investment constitutes on average 11.1% of GDP, of which 8.8 pp come from public sector. Physical capital investment constitutes on ...
[52]
Managing human capital: Performance through people | McKinsey
Feb 2, 2023 · A dual focus on developing people and managing them well gives a select group of companies a long-term performance edge.
[53]
The Human Capital Project: Frequently Asked Questions - World Bank
Mar 19, 2019 · Investing in people through nutrition, health care, quality education, jobs and skills helps develop human capital, and this is key to ending ...
[54]
[PDF] Institutional and organizational analysis and capacity strengthening ...
The following case studies aim to illustrate how the conceptual framework – meaning, association, control and action – can be applied to achieve ...
[55]
Institutional Capacity Building → Term
Apr 29, 2025 · Meaning → Enhancing an organization's ability to perform functions effectively through strengthened systems, skills, and resources, ...
[56]
[PDF] An Evaluation of World Bank Support for Data and Statistical Capacity
World Bank–supported institutional strengthening activities included organizational restructuring of NSOs, specifying formal coordination mechanisms between ...
[57]
[PDF] Capacity Building in Africa - | Independent Evaluation Group
such as technical assistance and training, to support the broadened capacity building agenda. In the Africa Region, country assistance strategies are ...Missing: precursor | Show results with:precursor
[58]
[PDF] Elements That Enhance Institutional Capacity Development in World ...
In some examples, developing leadership to support participation of marginalized groups strengthened institutional capacity development efforts, such as the ...
[59]
[PDF] CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT AND AID EFFECTIVENESS
Nov 6, 2024 · The WB estimates that the typical CD cycle that can demonstrate sustainable results is 10-20 years and that shortcutting requires simplified.
[60]
Foreign aid volatility and institutional development - ScienceDirect
The empirical results of the foreign aid effectiveness literature indicate that, at a minimum, aid is not as successful at fostering institutional development ...
[61]
Publication: Linking Individual, Organizational, and Institutional ...
This Capacity Brief discusses and illustrates the importance of integrating capacity-building efforts at all three levels, and addressing differences among ...<|separator|>
[62]
[PDF] The UNDP Approach to Supporting Capacity Development
8. What are the three levels of capacity and how do they relate? The three levels of capacity are the following: • Enabling environment: the broader system ...
[63]
Support Capacity Development: The UNDP Approach
This resource articulates a series of UNDP policy statements and services in support of capacity development efforts at global, regional and country levels.
[64]
Enhancing public service innovation through value co-creation
Sep 29, 2021 · Enhancing public service innovation through value co-creation: Capacity building and the 'innovative imagination' ... resource integration.
[65]
Strategies for capacity building of community-based social ...
Oct 14, 2025 · ... resource integration and capacity building; Studying the differential impact of various types of resource dependence on capacity development ...
[66]
Evaluating the Effects of Capacity Building Initiatives and Primary ...
(a) Capacity building model adapted from Centre for Innovative ... IR2 Partnership Development: PCN Growth through Collaborations and Resource Integration.
[67]
Conceptual framework for systemic capacity strengthening for health ...
Aug 3, 2022 · This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for systemic capacity strengthening for HPSR, uniquely drawing attention to the blurred boundaries and ...
[68]
A systems framework for planning and evaluating capacity ...
Feb 1, 2022 · We propose a conceptual framework that aligns capacity development components with all stages of conservation efforts, fosters attention to context, and ...<|separator|>
[69]
[PDF] The Capacity Development Results Framework
The Capacity Development Results Framework (CDRF or the Framework) is a powerful new approach to the design, implementation, monitoring, management, ...
[70]
How Does Capacity Building Affect Development? → Question
Apr 6, 2025 · The shift towards systemic integration also highlights the role of leadership and champions. Capacity building at this level aims to ...
[71]
Building Sustainable Public Sector Capacity in a Challenging Context
If capacity strengthening is not pursued or is ineffective, government functionality remains patchy and dependency on technical assistants (TA) remains high.
[72]
UN/DESA Policy Brief #117: Building the capacities of public ...
Oct 8, 2021 · An example of capacity-building carried out by national schools of public administration is a massive open online course on taking the SDGs into ...
[73]
[PDF] Building Capacity in the Public Administration Evidence from ...
Jul 21, 2025 · First, we provide causal evidence on the effec- tiveness of secondments for capacity building in the public administration. We exploit ...
[74]
How State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds Are Being Used to ...
May 10, 2023 · Below, we've outlined how recipients may use SLFRF funds to build public sector capacity and provided a few examples from recipients who are ...
[75]
Chapter 3 | Effectiveness of World Bank Group Support
The Public Financial Management Capacity Building Project (approved in FY07) helped reduce delays in budget execution and the number of steps in the expenditure ...
[76]
[PDF] The effectiveness of training in building capacity for governance reform
▷ Capacity building: Timmis (2018: 2) finds “a dearth of rigorous evaluations of capacity building interventions”. ▷ Technical assistance: “The body of evidence ...
[77]
[PDF] Building Capacity for Evidence‐Informed Policy‐Making - OECD
(2001), “'CAPACITY BUILDING' AS A PUBLIC MANAGEMENT GOAL - Myth, magic or the main chance?”, Public Management Review, Vol. 3/2, pp. 209-230, http://dx.doi ...
[78]
Publication: The Next Generation of Statistical Capacity Building
Oct 16, 2023 · This paper proposes an approach to guide statistical capacity building in developing countries using an analysis based on components of the ...Missing: shifts 2020s
[79]
[PDF] Civil-society-sustainability-and-local-capacity-development ...
(2016). Civil Society Sustainability and Local Capacity Development: A Case Study in. Cameroon. West Africa Civil Society Institute, Accra, Ghana.
[80]
(PDF) Civil-Society Organizations' Capacity Building in the Local ...
Aug 7, 2025 · This case study suggests that a Hungarian local government did appear to strengthen associational activities in its community.
[81]
[PDF] Case study: Supporting advocacy efforts of local civil society in land ...
This case study harvested lessons from civil society partnerships primarily in the Turkana County – northern. Kenya, through the “Enabling Peace through ...Missing: studies | Show results with:studies
[82]
The Case Study of Mbizana Local Municipality, South Africa
Feb 23, 2021 · This article illustrates the transformative role participatory processes and good governance played as peacebuilding mechanisms to achieve positive peace.
[83]
Capacity Building and Localization: Insights From Liberia
Jun 24, 2025 · 5.1 Mapping the Capacity-Building Landscape in Liberia. First, this study asks: What is Liberia's civil society capacity-building landscape?
[84]
[PDF] Strengthening civil society: An Evidence Gap Map - 3ie
May 22, 2023 · In some instances, funders provide the support civil society needs in this area. For example, the Danish Embassy provided capacity building to ...
[85]
MSME Capacity Building - Local Advisory Services Program
Through the platform, L&D professionals gain access to capacity-building courses, certifications, publications, and a repository of tools and resources provided ...
[86]
10 Key Capacity Building Strategies to Drive Business Growth
Jul 9, 2025 · Systemic capacity building refers to enhancing the interconnected components within a system by focusing on relationships, policies, and ...
[87]
[PDF] Capacity Building for Private Sector Development in Africa
The PSD Technical Working Papers Series is a series of occasional papers arising from the work of the Private Sector Development Branch of the.
[88]
https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/973481485899625257/cape-verde-capacity-building-project-for-private-sector-promotion
[89]
Engines of Economic Growth: The Role of the Private Sector in ...
Oct 25, 2019 · Number three: The private sector provides the building blocks every country needs for economic growth. In Guatemala, USAID initiated the “ ...
[90]
IEG Insights: The Private Sector in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States
Private sector growth in fragile states is hindered by security risks, lack of infrastructure, political instability, corruption, and limited access to finance ...
[91]
Enhancing USAID's partnerships with the private sector | Brookings
Jan 9, 2023 · The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has launched a package of internal reforms to modernize its engagement with the private sector.
[92]
What do we mean by individual capacity strengthening for primary ...
Jan 6, 2021 · This scoping review sought to identify the most common domains of individual capacity strengthening, as well as their most common forms of ...
[93]
Building capacity for evidence-based public health - PubMed Central
Capacity-building efforts are often aimed at improving the use of scientific evidence in day-to-day public health practice (so called evidence-based public ...
[94]
[PDF] CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
The key steps to be undertaken at this stage include: formulation of UN programmes and projects integrating capacity development objectives/results and their.
[95]
Statistical capacity development and the production of epistemic ...
Jul 14, 2022 · In this article, I argue that the epistemic infrastructuring of statistical capacity into the SDG framework is a privileged case.
[96]
[PDF] CAPACITY BUILDING IN FISCAL INCIDENCE ANALYSIS
The objective of this note is to highlight lessons learned in capacity building and skill transfer for fiscal incidence analysis (FIA), including Commitment ...
[97]
Building State Capacity: What Is the Impact of Development Projects?
Most projects are well advanced, with average disbursement upward of 40 percent. The goal is to take broad, fast action early.
[98]
The Role of State Capacity in Development Studies
Dec 5, 2018 · Empirical evidence from a group of forty-five sub-Saharan countries suggests that democracy has a higher effect on growth in low-capacity ...
[99]
Policy capacities and effective policy design: a review - PMC
Apr 8, 2021 · Further, while most studies in the review have considered political capacity to play a more critical role than operational and analytical ...
[100]
Developing administrative capacity: an agenda for research and ...
Capacity building has become one of the most prevalent concepts in the literature about public policy and development. Different concepts are used somewhat ...
[101]
[PDF] The Challenge of Capacity Development. Working towards Good ...
The recognition that capacity development is a fundamental component of development and aid effectiveness and a key element in achieving the Millennium ...Missing: criticisms | Show results with:criticisms
[102]
UNDP capacity assessment methodology
This document provides UNDP and other development practitioners with an overview of UNDP's approach to Capacity Development and Capacity Assessment.
[103]
[PDF] UNDP CAPACITY ASSESSMENT AND DEVELOPMENT In a ...
From a capacity development perspective, this would identify who is responsible for potential design, management and implementation, coordination, monitoring ...
[104]
[PDF] Administrative Capacity Building Self-assessment Instrument | OECD
This Self- assessment Instrument covers a comprehensive set of perspectives related to administrative capacities, permitting other authorities that implement or ...
[105]
Effectiveness of capacity building interventions relevant to public ...
Jun 1, 2018 · Capacity-building interventions can enhance knowledge, skill, self-efficacy (including confidence), changes in practice or policies, behaviour ...
[106]
[PDF] Using Training to Build Capacity for Development
Jan 14, 2008 · Effective training design for capacity building takes into account not only how best to achieve learning goals, but also how best to ensure.
[107]
[PDF] Elements That Enhance Institutional Capacity Development in World ...
Content analysis of the project evaluation identified 80 percent of the text related to institutional capacity development as positive in sentiment. Further ...<|separator|>
[108]
[PDF] The Impact of Capacity-Building – A Longitudinal Evaluation
The study found that capacity-building led to statistically significant growth in fundraising, governance, and special events, but measuring the change was ...
[109]
[PDF] Building Programs on Nonprofits: A Random Assignment Evaluation
Capacity-building programs increase NPOs' capacity in five critical areas, and can improve their organizational capacity, according to the study.
[110]
Capacity Development Evaluation: The Challenge of the Results ...
This study reviews the evaluation of capacity development, identifying capacity development (CD) modalities and the schools of evaluation currently in place.
[111]
[PDF] Monitoring and Evaluating Capacity Building: Is it really that difficult
If the monitoring and evaluation of capacity building is to be effective it is important to know what the purpose of capacity building is, who the providers and ...
[112]
Measuring capacity building in communities: a review of the literature
The articles included studies of the assessment of capacity building or community development or community participation. Types of study design considered ...
[113]
[PDF] Evaluating Capacity-Building Efforts for Nonprofit Organizations
Evaluating capacity building can be difficult. It is hard to develop measurements for assessing organizational effectiveness and management assistance success.
[114]
Measuring capacity building in communities: a review of the literature
Nov 9, 2011 · For this reason, community capacity has proven difficult to measure [14] and its value often rendered invisible or under-estimated [15].<|control11|><|separator|>
[115]
[PDF] Evaluating Capacity Development: Experiences...
resources, and combine their evaluation reporting. Joint evaluation can help overcome attribution problems in assessing the effectiveness of programs and.
[116]
Learning purposefully in capacity development: why, what and when ...
Monitoring and evaluation of capacity development faces a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, capacity development is a long-term process which occurs ...
[117]
Capacity Development Evaluation: The Challenge of the Results ...
Aug 5, 2025 · This study reviews the evaluation of capacity development, identifying capacity development (CD) modalities and the schools of evaluation ...
[118]
[PDF] Aid Dependence and the Quality of Governance
Foreign aid may short-circuit these processes in developing countries, by reducing government's dependence on its citizenry for tax revenues2 (Moore, 1998 ...
[119]
[PDF] An Aid-Institutions Paradox? A Review Essay on Aid Dependency ...
Some observers have expressed concerns about the capacity of low-income states to absorb large new flows in addition to the flows they already receive, and have ...Missing: criticisms | Show results with:criticisms
[120]
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way ...
In Dead Aid, Moyo comes out with guns blazing against the aid industry—calling it not just ineffective, but “malignant.” Despite more than $1 trillion in ...
[121]
[PDF] Does Foreign Aid Promote Growth? Evidence from Africa
There is evidence that aid has been a disaster for African nations. Foreign aid to African nations has made the poor poorer and the growth slower.
[122]
[PDF] Peter Bauer and the Failure of Foreign Aid - Cato Institute
The loans to developing countries have come to be known as “odious debt” because the proceeds are stolen by the governments and the citizens are taxed to repay.Missing: dependency | Show results with:dependency
[123]
Foreign development aid and employment in Africa - ScienceDirect
The results reveal that official development aid harms employment in Africa. Looking at sectoral employment, we found a positive effect of aid on agricultural ...
[124]
The Principal-Agent Problem in Development Assistance and Its ...
The following article describes the principal-agent problem in international development assistance. It shows how this problem leads to a top-down approach ...
[125]
International donor agencies' incentive structures and foreign aid ...
Jul 11, 2012 · This paper examines in depth one of the potential causes of the low performance of foreign aid; in particular, the role incentive structures ...
[126]
Critical barriers to sustainable capacity strengthening in global health
Aug 24, 2022 · This donor-recipient dichotomy has created power imbalances that favor donors and has led to many well-documented challenges, including a ...
[127]
[PDF] CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT BEYOND AID - ECDPM
More Southern leadership in capacity development – A quarter of a century ago, capacity development was closely tied to the 'aid industry' and often promoted, ...
[128]
[PDF] Her Majesty's Aid: A Principal–Agent Analysis of Development ...
Drawing on principal–agent theory, I ar- gue that foreign aid builds capacity when the interests of the donor and the political leadership of the recipient ...
[129]
Critical Capacity Development: An Action Research Approach in ...
Capacity development is an approach and a methodology that originated in colonization and has yet to be decolonized. It is often premised on the belief that a ...Missing: first | Show results with:first
[130]
'Capacity for what? Capacity for whom?' A decolonial deconstruction ...
A decolonial deconstruction of research capacity development practices in the Global South and a proposal for a value-centred approach.
[131]
[PDF] what is the evidence on top-down and bottom-up - GOV.UK
This systematic review examines the evidence on the effectiveness of different urban-planning approaches in providing access to water, sanitation and ...
[132]
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00220388.2024.2428608
[133]
[PDF] The Problem of Bureaucracy in Foreign Aid - William Easterly
own demands through “capacity building.” No amount of “capacity-building” seems likely to relieve the severe managerial bottlenecks to the foreign aid process.
[134]
The White Man's Burden, William Eastery, The Penguin Press (2006)
” He rejects the traditional top–down approach to development practiced by “planners” and advocates for an alternative approach practiced by “searchers” or ...
[135]
Why is bottom-up more acceptable than top-down? A study on ...
Previous research has shown that bottom-up governance approaches enjoy higher community acceptance than top-down approaches.
[136]
[PDF] Four approaches to capacity building in health: consequences for ...
The four approaches we have identified are: (i) a top-down organizational approach which might begin with changing agency policies or practices; (ii) a bottom- ...
[137]
Top-down vs bottom-up processes: A systematic review clarifying ...
Similarly, top-down actors can try to implement critical actions for transformation, but without a strong bottom-up backing, policies and interventions may fail ...<|separator|>
[138]
[PDF] Facilitating the Market for Capacity Building Services - CGAP
Today, most capacity building markets do not function this way. A market development approach focuses heavily on diagnosing the underlying causes of a problem ...
[139]
Capacity building for market systems development - BEAM Exchange
Our findings suggest to us a set of feasible and impactful initiatives to improve the system of capacity building in market systems development. We prioritised ...
[140]
Reassessing the evidence for “business training doesn't work”
Sep 21, 2020 · A new meta-analysis of business training programs shows a positive average impact, and discusses ways to improve standard training.
[141]
Entrepreneurship Programs In Developing Countries: A Meta ...
This paper provides a review on the effectiveness of various entrepreneurship programs in developing countries.We adopt a meta regression analysis using 37 ...
[142]
Training and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Ghana | PEDL
This project seeks to study the effects of accelerator training programmes in developing countries while also controlling for selection bias.
[143]
Publication: Entrepreneurship Education and Training Programs ...
The analysis finds that the entrepreneurship track was effective in increasing self-employment among applicants, but that the effects are small in absolute ...
[144]
Quality improvement in public–private partnerships in low
Mar 13, 2024 · The prevailing belief is that since the private sector is more efficient and outcome driven, a PPP will be more results-oriented and will ...
[145]
Impact of Private Sector Delivery of Quality Care on Maternal ...
Jun 20, 2025 · This systematic review examines the quality of maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) care delivery by private sector providers.
[146]
Entrepreneurship for the poor in developing countries Updated
Well-designed entrepreneurship programs show promise for improving earnings and livelihoods of poor workers.<|separator|>
[147]
[PDF] Training Entrepreneurs - VoxDev
Evidence on the effectiveness of incubators and accelerators in developing countries is still scarce, and it is unclear how much the training component matters ...
[148]
Entrepreneurial training effectiveness, government ... - NIH
Entrepreneurial training effectiveness is defined here as the degree to which a training program enhance students' knowledge, skills and abilities in such a way ...
[149]
Are Bottom-Up Approaches in Development More Effective than Top ...
Aug 8, 2025 · Although there are some gross failures of past top-down development approaches, then, not all the bottom-up approaches are fully successful.
[150]
Introduction – Grameen Bank
Already 21,258 members have given up begging and become self-sufficient. Up to September 2025, the cumulative amount of loan disbursement by Grameen Bank ...
[151]
[PDF] Is Grameen Bank Sustainable?
On the other hand, Grameen Bank has a loan recovery rate consistently above 90 percent and a positive impact on i ral wages; the benefits from program ...
[152]
[PDF] Grameen Bank: Taking Capitalism to the Poor
Nov 8, 2003 · Building financially self-sufficient institutions. • Ensuring a positive, measurable impact on the lives of clients and their families. In ...
[153]
The Hunger Project's Annual Report 2024
Aug 14, 2025 · Over 1.3 million people are now living in self-reliant communities, with 86 epicenters declaring self-reliance after multi-year partnerships.Missing: outcomes empirical evidence
[154]
Self-Reliant Initiatives through Joint Action – India
SRIJAN has assisted 501799 rural families to become self-reliant and live with dignity. soil & water management Improving water resources and soil-health.Learn more about our work · All Current Projects · Who We Are · Case StudiesMissing: capacity | Show results with:capacity
[155]
How Srijan is promoting self-reliance among rural communities
Mar 3, 2023 · The Delhi-based NGO, founded by Ved Arya, has helped nearly 3 lakh rural families to become self-reliant and live with dignity. · A life-changing ...
[156]
[PDF] Community-Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review
A review of their conceptual foundations and evidence on their effectiveness shows that projects that rely on community participation have not been particularly ...
[157]
[PDF] How Effective is Community Driven Development
While researchers have begun to explore these claims, few studies provide rigorous evidence on the real-world impacts of community driven development projects ( ...
[158]
Foreign Aid and Economic Development | Cato Institute
Foreign aid has thus financed governments, both authoritarian and democratic, whose policies have been the principal cause of their countries' impoverishment.
[159]
Twenty-Five Years of Indian Economic Reform | Cato Institute
Oct 26, 2016 · Before 1991 India was derisively called a bottomless pit for foreign aid. ... economic reforms that have attracted inflows of foreign ...
[160]
New Economic Policy 1991, Objectives, Features, Impacts
Oct 7, 2025 · Improved Foreign Exchange Reserves: India's foreign exchange reserves soared from $5.8 billion in 1991 to a record all-time high of $704.89 ...<|separator|>
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Impact of the 1991 Economic Reforms on India's Growth and ...
Mar 5, 2025 · The 1991 reforms boosted GDP growth, expanded the private sector, increased FDI, and led to poverty reduction and improved living standards.Pre-1991 Economic Scenario... · Key Economic Reforms... · How 1991 Reforms Have Shaped...
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What can Africa learn from Rwanda's self-reliance?
May 23, 2016 · Another example of Rwanda's drive for self-reliance is its investment in information, communications, and technology (ICT). “People thought we ...Missing: reforms building<|control11|><|separator|>
[163]
[PDF] Self-Destruction to Self-Reliance in Rwanda
The government has also supported the development of a range of first-class capacity- building institutions and partnerships with international institutions.
[164]
Making Africa Great Again: Reducing aid dependency | Brookings
Apr 20, 2017 · To reduce aid dependency, Africans must identify priorities, define, and implement them—not be reactionary to the politics of the West, ...
[165]
USAID 2017–2021: The Journey to Self-Reliance
Nov 18, 2021 · Section II: Key Policy Reforms and Programmatic Achievements · Strengthened private-sector engagement. · Strengthened global technical leadership.
[166]
Capacity strengthening to improve livelihoods: training BCI Farmers
Through the BCI Capacity Strengthening Programme, millions of farmers worldwide learn sustainable practices to grow BCI Cotton.
[167]
Compliance and cooperation in global value chains: The effects of ...
The BCI combines a compliance-based verification approach with cooperative capacity building. BCI is associated with improved prices and lower costs for ...
[168]
Impact Reports and Farmer Results - Better Cotton Initiative
This report represents a new way of reporting on field-level data in a way that gives insights into our impact over time within a country.Missing: building | Show results with:building
[169]
2023-24 Annual Report: Impact, Expansion and Farmer Resilience
Sep 24, 2024 · Better Cotton produced 5.47m MT in 2022-23, with 2.13m licensed farmers. 311 new members joined in 2023, and new programs in Spain and Côte d’ ...
[170]
Building Groundwater Management Capacity for the Ararat Valley
The goal of ASPIRED is to reduce the rate of groundwater extraction in the Ararat Valley to more sustainable levels. ASPIRED was launched in December 2015. USGS ...
[171]
Project 4-230 Armenia - National Academies
... (ASPIRED). The following specific results were achieved during implementation of the project: • Fifteen water-efficient and environmentally friendly business ...Missing: outcomes | Show results with:outcomes
[172]
ASPIRED Works with Ministry of Environment to Protect Armenia's ...
Feb 19, 2020 · The methodology is part of broader measures to protect Armenia's water resources and reduce groundwater extraction in Armenia's Ararat Valley to ...Missing: outcomes | Show results with:outcomes
[173]
[PDF] Building Science-Based Groundwater Tools and Capacity in ...
May 9, 2016 · The growth of aquaculture and other uses in the Ararat Basin has been accompanied by increased withdrawals of groundwater, which has resulted in.Missing: success | Show results with:success
[174]
[PDF] the sustainable agriculture training center, myanmar - MEAS
The SATC in Myanmar has been successful in attracting competitive grant funding, developing income streams from products derived on the farm and, in recent.<|separator|>
[175]
Critical success factors emerging from FAO case studies
Progress in capacity development depends on the level of ownership and commitment of country actors - at central and local level- to engage in change processes.
[176]
[PDF] SIGAR 23-05-IP Why the Afghan Government Collapsed
Nov 1, 2022 · WHAT SIGAR REVIEWED. As of June 30, 2021, the United States had appropriated $145.0 billion for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Of that.
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[PDF] What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan ...
As a retrospective, the report draws on SIGAR's 13 years of oversight work, including our 10 prior lessons learned reports and 760 interviews our staff ...
[178]
Afghanistan: A Tragic Lesson of the US Military's Flawed Approach ...
Sep 6, 2021 · Capacity building is extremely challenging in conflict zones where staff turn over rapidly, no single U.S. agency is in the lead, and chronic ...
[179]
[PDF] Why Foreign Aid to Haiti Failed - Columbia International Affairs Online
In Haiti, lack of capacity in and suspicion of Government led donors to administer aid ... of aid programs, denying opportunities for capacity building. Donors ...
[180]
Haiti and the failed promise of US aid - The Guardian
Oct 11, 2019 · After an earthquake struck in 2010, the US pledged to help rebuild the Caribbean country. A decade later, nothing better symbolises the failure of these ...
[181]
Cacophonies of aid, failed state building and NGOs in Haiti - PubMed
This article argues that the fragility of the Haitian state institutions was exacerbated by international strategies that promoted NGOs as substitutes for the ...
[182]
[PDF] The Next Generation of Statistical Capacity Building
The second major IEG evaluation in 2018 found that the World. Bank had been effective at the country level in supporting data production, promoting open data, ...
[183]
[PDF] An Independent Review of World Bank Support to Capacity Building ...
Mar 18, 2005 · Bank-financed project failed to align its goals with national goals primarily because of the absence of an appropriate policy framework ...Missing: prominent | Show results with:prominent
[184]
Decades of learning and experience from the Trust Fund for ...
Sep 22, 2022 · Top three lessons learned during the TFSCB program that can inform other financing endeavors aimed at improving the availability of data: ...
[185]
Capacity building versus hand-holding: how to avoid dependency ...
Feb 3, 2020 · Here are five recommendations that can ensure that capacity building translates to skills transfer, and as a result, makes utilities self-sustaining.Missing: aid | Show results with:aid
[186]
[PDF] Supporting Partners to Develop their Capacity - 12 - OECD
3. enable donors to share experiences, identify good practices and improve co-ordination. Over the period 2006 to 2010 capacity development was treated as ...