By Jon Harle
How to do capacity development well in the research and knowledge for development sector? And since the pandemic pushed everyone online, how can capacity development be done well digitally too? In particular how to avoid making the same mistakes, with disappointing results and frustrated partnerships?
As an international development organisation, INASP has been doing this work for the last thirty years and while it isn’t easy, we think it is possible to do it well. There are also very simple starting points: we have to listen carefully, start with what already exists, and see ourselves as enablers and partners, who are also learning in the process, not experts with all the answers.
We recognise capacity building is an imperfect term too – and a contested concept, with origins in colonial and in post-war technical projects to accelerate development and ‘catch-up’ the South.
The INASP approach is summarised in our learning and capacity development framework shown in the figure below.