Building Civil Servant Capacity in South Sudan

'Coaching and mentoring for capacity' has become a popular approach to civil servant capacity building in fragile states. In South Sudan, the 'IGAD Initiative' is currently deploying 200 coaches and mentors to South Sudan from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. The African Union has pledged to deploy up to 1000 additional coaches and mentors drafted from various African countries.

The IGAD Initiative may be seen as a test case for lessons learned from Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Liberia, Iraq and Afghanistan, where coaching and mentoring has been used to build state capacity. It is therefore of high relevance to both the IGAD Initiative in South Sudan and the upcoming African Union led 'capacity surge', as well as the more general question of capacity building in post-conflict states, that the IGAD Initiative receives proper attention. Compared to the cost of running projects this size, collection and dissemination of knowledge would be well worth the investment.

This DIIS Policy Brief recaps on some main tenets of IGAD initiative and presents a number of policy recommendations.