Capacity Development: what, where, how? Per Rudebjer, Head, a.i., Knowledge Management &
Capacity Strengthening, Bioversity International
Agricultural Biodiversity to Manage Risks and Empower the Poor
To strengthen the capacities of
women and men farmers,
including indigenous
communities, and other value
chain actors to manage risks
associated with climate change,
poor nutrition status and
economic disempowerment
I HAVE TAUGHT
BUSTER TO
WHISTLE
I DON’T HEAR
HIM
WHISTLING
I SAID I HAD
TAUGHT HIM, NOT
THAT HE HAD
LEARNT
Issue 2. Teaching vs. learning
What is ‘capacity’?
Capacity is the ability of people, organizations and
society as a whole to manage their affairs successfully
Capacity development is the process whereby
people, organisations and society as a whole unleash,
strengthen, create, adapt and maintain capacity over
time
(OECD, 2006b:12)
• Beyond human resource development
• Individuals’ knowledge and skills depend on quality of
the organizations and the enabling environment in
which they operate.
• Not only about skills and procedures; it is also about
incentives and governance
Dimensions of capacity development
(1)
Genetic
diversity
(2)
Selection &
cultivation
(4)
Value
addition
(5)
Marketing
(6)
Final use
1.1 Rescued diversity
1.2 Map diversity
1.3 IK Documentation
1.4 Conservation
(ex situ / in situ)
2.1 Better varieties
2.2 Best practices
2.3 High Quality Seed
3.1 Improved
technology
4.1 Novel food items
4.2 Food Recipes
4.3 Quality standards
4.4 SHG, Cooperatives
5.1 Efficient value chains
5.2 Commercialization
5.3 Branding
5.4 Multi-stakeholders
5.5 Platforms of Cooper.
6.1 Nutrition awareness
6.2 Enabling Policies
6.3 Promotion, Education
6.4 Agritourism
IMPACT
Improved
nutrition,
incomes
and other
livelihood
benefits
Outcomes Community empowerment: more
resilient to eco-socio-economic
changes and food systems
Outcomes Preservation of
options for
resilient systems
Outcomes Self-reliance of value
chain actors on broader
set of options, resilience
to market changes
SYSTEM
RESILIENCE
(3)
Harvest
Some voices from Day 1
It’s very micro; how to scale up?
Citizen science can reduce costs of
research and increase upscaling
Activities that educate Activities that celebrate Activities that elevate
Behaviour change needs communication
Agricultural Biodiversity to Manage Risks and Empower the Poor
Theory of Change
Socio-economic and
agro-ecological
context
Actors, organizations
and networks that
influence change
Desired
change
Activities at
farm, community,
NARS, national
and international
levels, to trigger
change
Agricultural Biodiversity to Manage Risks and Empower the Poor
Theory of Change
Socio-economic and
agro-ecological
context
Actors, organizations
and networks that
influence change
Poor local &
indigenous
communities
will have
improved
capacities to
manage
weather-
related risks
and improve
their
livelihoods
Activities at
farm, community,
NARS, national
and international
levels, to trigger
change
A complex system of related actions
Skills in cultivation,
value addition and marketing
Participation in income
generating activities
Raising demand for nutritious
products
Development of climate-resilient
and adaptive practices
Availability of high-quality
seeds
National
Landscape
Farm & community
Who’s capacity?
• NARS
• Enabling environment/policy
• Universities National
• Development practitioners
• Private sector Landscape
• Indigenous/local women & men farmers
• Value chain actors
• CBOs
Farm / community
Quinoa (Chenopodium
quinoa)
Cañihua (Chenopodium
pallidicaule) Amaranth (Amaranthus
caudatus)
Andean grains IFAD NUS Project, Latin America 2001-2010
Slides credit: Stefano Padulosi
• Linked aspects that R&D otherwise often handle separately
• Perseverance: Two phases over 10 years
• Regular national and regional meetings and community-based events created necessary linkages and synergies among all stakeholders across the value chain
• 30 students did Thesis research
• Enhanced social processes + technical solutions = success
• Private sector role
IFAD-NUS: Andean grains in Bolivia & Peru
- some capacity-related lessons
• Participatory mapping of actors and their functions
• Joint assessment of constraints and bottlenecks
• Development of upgrading strategies and action plans
• Synergy and trust
• Impact beyond project sites
• Dissemination tools for range of target groups
Multi-stakeholder cooperation platforms for
amaranth, quinoa, canahua value chains
• Bambara groundnut and amaranth (vegatable + grain)
• Benin, Kenya, Zimbabwe (sub-regional hubs)
• National Action Plans for upgrading value chains
• Research capacity
• Higher education curricula
• Policy & awareness
ACP-EU NUS value chain project 2014-2016
• Constraints and solutions identified
• A lot going on, but fragmented efforts
• Demand and consumer awareness key issues
• Many researchable issues, but scientists need to
ground their work on a proper analysis of VC, and better
communicate results
• Bridging gaps:
Agriculture + nutrition;
academia + private sector
Lessons from three national stakeholder
workshops
Institutional Learning & Change Initiative of the CGIAR 19
A system to monitor learning and
change in CGIAR/CRP
• Innovations result from the interactions among different
types of actors conditioned by technology and institutions
• The interactions among researchers and their partners can
be represented as networks and some features can be
measured
• The networks change as the innovation processes evolve
• The networks’ structure, composition and changes are
correlated with the ToC
Institutional Learning & Change Initiative of the CGIAR 20
Features of the monitoring system
under development • Every two years each researcher will be asked to list
his/her active collaborations
• Uses tables, simple statistical tools and Social
Network Analysis methods to analyze the activities of
the 16 CRPs and centers
• Studies changes in the partnerships and research
activities (RTB experience)
• ToC will be compared with the actual collaborations
and organization of research activities
Institutional Learning & Change Initiative of the CGIAR 21
Collaborations between researchers and
non-research actors
Institutional Learning & Change Initiative of the CGIAR 22
RTB induced sub-network (nodes colour-coded by discipline)
• Fine-tune the Theory of Change in each site
• Stakeholder analysis:
– Who are the actors, at different scales?
– What are their roles in a change process?
• Network analysis:
– How do actors interact and connect?
• 3-P: Partners + Process + Products
• Indicators for tracking change in capacity
What a capacity development framework might
entail
• Realistic expectations and ambitions
– Still pilot scale ( 1.5 m EUR in Year 1)
• Learning: How to document and share CapDev
experiences across sites?
To think about