Capacity Development

Our Approach

The UNDP Strategic Plan 2008-2011 positions capacity development as the organisation’s core contribution to development. Working in 166 countries, UNDP is responding to the growing demand for capacity development support by helping governments, civil society and other partners to build the skills, knowledge and experience they need to improve peoples’ lives.

The approach takes the existing base of capacities in every situation as its starting point and supports national efforts to extend and retain them, building on nationally determined priorities, policies and desired results.

The approach is also integrated firmly into UNDP’s thematic work on democratic governance, poverty reduction and achievement of the MDGs, crisis prevention and recovery, and environment and sustainable development. Capacity development support is provided to national governments, sub-national governments, sector agencies, single ministries or line departments, independent commissions etc. that are involved in these thematic areas. Most of this support is provided in situ under the lead of the UNDP country office in question and increasingly, through the UN Country Team.

The Approach to Capacity Development

The approach is centred on the idea that capacity development is a process that comprises a set of ongoing interventions. UNDP and the UN Development Group recognise the five steps captured in the diagram as the core approach to capacity development. For every context, the process begins by jointly establishing the need for a rigorous approach to capacity development, conducting assessments to establish the capacity baseline, suggesting responses based on the assessment outcomes, providing implementation support to the responses and helping with measuring change in capacity are the fundamental steps to be followed. This approach is then adapted and tailored to the specific situation.