Partnership has become one of those concepts that have gained popular currency in international cooperation over the last decade. Underlying the concept is a significant message to re-balance power relationships between developing countries and external funding agencies, and to progressively transfer responsibility and ownership to the former....

Harmonising the efforts of donor agencies and bringing processes and procedures closer to partner governments is a major policy issue for the development community and aid-receiving countries. The facts are alarming. In Cambodia, for example, 90% of aid bypasses national systems.

The international debate on capacity development has long recognised the importance of soft skills, such as the ability to engage in negotiation or dialogue, to create a feeling of trust, to network and partner, and to facilitate process or change management.

How can Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support development efforts? ICT cuts across sectors and affects all layers of society; it is used by both micro-projects and large institutions. And it runs through non-profit, private and government organisations, which in an ideal situation communicate through a set of commonly agreed p...

As the spread of decentralisation and democratisation gathers speed, local governments in developing countries are taking more and more responsibility for improving their performance and managing the interface between the state and citizens, despite having access to limited resources.

In an effort to reverse the way of doing international development cooperation, the importance of formal and informal institutions for development has attracted the renewed attention by policy makers and practitioners over the recent past. Against this background, a wealth of new methodologies, guidelines and tools have been designed to promot...

What does capacity look like? How can you develop capacity bottom-up? What is the driving force behind successful capacity development? Does better capacity necessarily lead to better performance?

The notion of Information and Communication Technology Enabled Development is gaining more prominence in development cooperation. The notion examines how the potential of ICT can be used to attain national development goals. Capacity development must now be seen as an integral part of this thinking. The impact of ICT has already been felt in s...

In recent years, self-evaluation has been recommended for capacity development efforts in response to a growing awareness that externally led evaluations are often inappropriate or counterproductive. Self-evaluation has been seen as a means of assessing the needs for capacity development, of developing effective strategies and of improving exi...

As poverty spreads and civil strife grows increasingly prevalent in many developing countries, many commentators have begun to call not only for a closer monitoring of the achievements of development cooperation, but also for Southern partners play an active part in assessing the performance of their Northern partners. Such calls are reflected...