Capacity building in the agricultural sector in Africa
Rice, Edward B.
Given the rural nature of most African economies and the concentration of the poor in rural areas, there is a pressing need to increase capacity to promote agricultural development. The studies discussed here explore the lessons to be learned in agricultural sector capacity building from the implementation of four agricultural projects with significant capacity-building components. The projects were implemented in Kenya, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and Malawi. Six general issues stand out: 1) The four projects provide further evidence of the difficulty of achieving sustainable capacity development in individual ministries of governments with systematically weak civil services, suggesting that capacity building should be tackled in the context of broader civil service reform. 2) As a corollary, project design should be founded on realistic assessments of the domestic resources available to sustain project activities. 3) The Bank needs to develop country capacity-building strategies with an extended, although clearly bounded, time commitment. 4) The mediocre to poor outcomes in the capcity-building components of these four projects suggest a need to give more explicit attention to the design and implementation stages of such interventions. 5) The Bank's current strategy of reducing use of long-term expatriate assistance is appropriate. 6) After decades of technical assistance that has left so little sustainable capacity, applying tough-minded evaluation criteria is appropriate.
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