Peer Review Meeting Outcome

The just completed Peer Review meeting organized by Africa Platform for Development Effectiveness (APDev)  brought together different stakeholders to discuss the preliminary findings of the African case studies. The stakeholders included Government representatives, academia, private sector, civil society and regional research institutions. The case studies demonstrated that African institutions are increasingly involved in capacity development in other countries in the continent.  Most of the case studies/stories have elements of south-south cooperation as well as North-South cooperation. Furthermore, majority of the initiatives were conceived and developed with the South-South aspect of the cooperation.

This sends out the message that African institutions are capable of conceiving and developing viable capacity development projects and indeed development projects in general. It is, however, clear that these institutions still lack the financial resources to implement their initiatives and thus continue to rely on donors for assistance. The development partners should, therefore channel most of their aid resources through competent African institutions, and focus less on deployment of “experts” to the recipient countries. The key lessons that are related to harnessing of local capacities (including African research centres, universities, Think Tanks and policy development institutions) are demonstrated by most of the cases presented to the meeting.

Contributor: Luke M. Wasonga