South-South cooperation can help avoid the capacity trap

The key challenge for most states emerging from or living through conflict or crisis is the lack of governance capacity in state administrations. The capacity problem has received plenty of attention during the last decades not least disguised as the challenge of state building. Too many countries remain caught in a “capacity trap” in which the absence of basic capacity to carry out governance activities stalls the hard work to develop capacity: capacity development requires some existing capacity.

DIIS has in collaboration with the Training for Peace Program at the Norwegian Institute of Foreign Affairs (NUPI) made important contributions to the debate on south-south organized capacity-development. The aim has been to provide the growing debates on this topic in the international community with research-based analysis and policy recommendations.

To escape their capacity trap, countries increasingly seek to exchange capacity and learn from each other. We thus see a growing number of South-South organized capacity development exchanges between emerging and emerged economies, typically in the form of peer-to-peer coaching and mentoring. Examples include exchanges of civil servants between Angola, Burundi, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra-Leone, South Africa, and South Sudan and the Sudan including the Regional Capacity Building Project with South Africa in Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan; Egypt’s support to South Sudan on water management; the IGAD-RSS initiative in South Sudan, Kenya’s support to South Sudan’s Management Academy; South Africa’s assistance to the Democratic Republic of Congo and other regional partners, Angola’s support to Guinea-Bissau on a range of governance issues; Nigeria's Technical Aid Corps with and the cooperation of South Africa’s Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy with regional actors.

Many of these exchanges have been based explicitly or implicitly on a number of emerging assumptions, which are recognized by participating states and at the highest levels of the UN system:

• Capacity development projects must be anchored within the government to be aligned with national priorities and to achieve genuine local ownership.
• They must be demand-driven and carried out as part of broader institutional, legislative and regulatory reform efforts.
• They require a thorough political economy analysis of the political and socio-cultural dimensions of public institutions, identity groups, the civil service, reform initiatives, state-society relations, and so on.
• Learning and knowledge transfer must be complemented by coaching, mentoring and peer-to peer, on-the-job training with a view to internalize practices and learning in individuals as well as in the organization.
• Working with countries in the region may offer an effective approach to capacity building because of cultural and linguistic similarities, similar value and administrative systems, and knowledge of local and regional conditions.

These points capture well a larger shift in the international community’s approach to capacity development. It is a call for governance reform to focus much more carefully on the human dimension of structures, relationships, institutional spaces, interests and incentives that underpin the creation of formal institutions.

Still, confusion remains about how to move the agenda forward. One reason for this is the lack of a thorough understanding of this relatively new field of international relations. We see a knowledge gap with regard to how South-South organised capacity development works in practice – on the level of international relations and program management as well as with regard to how the “everyday life” of these programs unfolds on the ground. Despite the prevalence of interest and availability of resources, potential recipients, capacity providers and donors thus still struggle with identifying entry points.

To remedy the knowledge gap, the DIIS-NUPI research has contributed with a number of field work based academic articles, policy briefs, consultations, and conferences. Please find below a selection of these publications and activities.

This comment was written in collaboration with John Karlsrud, NUPI