For those who may not be aware, Africa has a very good continental capacity building strategy developed by NEPAD in 2009 over a period of 3 years. The AU /NEPAD capacity development framework is a worthy deliverable and congratulations to all who participated for all the good work done.
Our beautiful and naturally endowed continent of Africa has great untapped potential and many latent institutional and individual capacities I dare say. After studying the AU/NEPAD framework and being a practical capacity building consultant , i believe much remains to be done beyond the framework. In admittance, I shuddered to note that developing the strategy took 3 years.
Like in the picture, we need hard results for soft capacity building work done after the strategy. I note that I sourced the framework from the OECD website. This should be worrying to someone in Africa or is it an indication of a specific capacity need in Africa? Let me draw closer home in Kenya in my next thought line. Do we have a national capacity building plan for our good country? Beyond this, have our African governments committed to annual allocation of funds for capacity building? I presume this would been a natural progression in demonstrating ownership of the framework. Is the support that different governments in Africa get from international partners synchronous with the framework? Is the framework the key entry point to prioritize and contextualize capacity issues at REC and country level? Is it not time to have a consensus on continental capacity building standards? Has any government ever quantified the funding spent on capacity building and tried to align the same with results? Who is monitoring, measuring and reporting on capacity building in Africa?
The first critical action is the need to build the capacity of national capacity building coordinating authorities. This will enable the capacity building entities to be able to lead in the use of the frame at national level. I believe that Africa needs to appreciate capacity building as a holistic development measure that goes beyond training. There are some lessons that the public sector in Africa can learn from the private sector and civil society along this lines. May may questions be practically answered for the good of the African continent.
Our beautiful and naturally endowed continent of Africa has great untapped potential and many latent institutional and individual capacities I dare say. After studying the AU/NEPAD framework and being a practical capacity building consultant , i believe much remains to be done beyond the framework. In admittance, I shuddered to note that developing the strategy took 3 years.
The first critical action is the need to build the capacity of national capacity building coordinating authorities. This will enable the capacity building entities to be able to lead in the use of the frame at national level. I believe that Africa needs to appreciate capacity building as a holistic development measure that goes beyond training. There are some lessons that the public sector in Africa can learn from the private sector and civil society along this lines. May may questions be practically answered for the good of the African continent.
