Capacity Development

Supporting Capacity Development

UN photo/Fred NoyThe world has just seven years left to reach the internationally-agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including the overarching goal of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015. While additional financial resources will be essential to reaching these targets, success will ultimately hinge on how able people, organizations and societies are to transform their lives for the better.

For local authorities in the aftermath of conflict, societies struggling to meet rising food prices or states dependant on highly volatile commodity markets, effective change can be one of the hardest things to get right as the capacity to change is often limited. Without sufficient capacity like effective leadership and succession planning, aid coordination and financial management skills, a functioning civil service, a skilled labour force or an environment conducive to business countries lack the foundations on which to plan, implement and evaluate their development strategies. Capacity development works to strengthen this foundation.

If human development is the 'what' of UNDP's mandate, then capacity development is essentially the 'how'. UNDP works with national governments to identify what capacity exists in terms of skills, knowledge, institutions and relationships. Driven by the priorities of the country in question, it looks as how to retain what is there, what can be improved upon, where the gaps are and how to fill them, so that the countries' human development strategies can move from aspiration to implementation.