Local capacity developers and service environments

One of the by-products of the rise in expertise for ‘doing development’ in countries that receive external development support, has been the growth of specialized home-grown organizations and support structures that focus on building capacity. However, this emerging support sector is still weak in most countries. Moreover, there has been little analysis or discussion so far of how this ‘service environment’ for capacity development is evolving, or how it may be strategically supported.
Some possible sub-themes under this emerging topic include:

• The (lack of) factual information on the market / service environment for CD and related research and M&E techniques/issues
• Analysis of the types of service providers / support actors and the prevailing pattern of centralization, patchy outreach to sub-national actors and little ‘demand power’
• The roles, services and products of LCDs and directions to improve relevance and quality
• The demand-supply-financing interface and required changes in these
• Assistance strategies and policy directions, including recent emphasis under the Accra Agenda for Action and upcoming Seoul 2011 summit on South-South exchange

This section aims to stimulate thinking and action in this vital area by providing an overview of available resources. While the list is quite meagre to begin with, will keep adding new material as it becomes available and would encourage interested readers to visit our blog, where we will regularly feature this and other emerging capacity development issues.