As a follow up to the Africa Task Force report on Capacity Development, the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee and the WB Task Force have been working in close collaboration to develop DAC’s paper "The Challenge of Capacity Development: Working towards Good Practice” which was approved by the DAC on February 14, 2006. The paper outlines an ambitious agenda - and some important changes in behavior - for the entire development community. Detailed commitments on capacity development were also made by the World Bank and other development partners in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. Yet international donors have a long way to go in defining how these promises will translate into concrete action on the ground.
WBI and OECD's DAC secretariat organized a series of events to disseminate the main capacity development messages in DAC's Working towards Good Practice paper to field staff in donor offices, and to obtain feedback from key stakeholders in partner countries. First, A Brown Bag Discussion was organized on February 21st, 2006 between the DAC secretariat and senior CD practitioners from the World Bank in Washington D.C and on the field. The purpose of this interactive discussion was to share the key messages of DAC's paper, present international donors practices in the are of capacity development, discuss the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, and focus on the implementation challenges of capacity development. Following this event, two GDLN consultations with African stakeholders in 10 African countries took place in early March, 2006.
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