Capacity Building - History

History

The term "capacity building" has evolved from past terms such as institutional building and organizational development. In the 1950s and 1960s these terms referred to community development that focused on enhancing the technological and self-help capacities of individuals in rural areas. In the 1970s, following a series of reports on international development an emphasis was put on building capacity for technical skills in rural areas, and also in the administrative sectors of developing countries. In the 1980s the concept of institutional development expanded even more. Institutional development was viewed as a long-term process of building up a developing country’s government, public and private sector institutions, and NGOs.

Though precursors to capacity building existed before the 1990s, they were not powerful forces in international development like “capacity building” became during the 1990s.

The emergence of capacity building as a leading developmental concept in the 1990s occurred due to a confluence of factors:

• New philosophies that promoted empowerment and participation, like Paulo Freire’s “Education for Critical Consciousness” (1973), which emphasized that education, could not be handed down from an omniscient teacher to an ignorant student rather it must be achieved through the process of a dialogue among equals.
• Commissioned reports and research during the 1980s, like the Capacity and Vulnerabilities Analysis (CVA) which posited three assumptions:

development is the process by which vulnerabilities are reduced and capacities increased

no one develops anyone else

relief programs are never neutral in their developmental impact

• Changes in International Developmental approaches

During the 1980s many low-income states were subject to “structural adjustment packages”—the neoliberal nature of the packages led to increasing disparities of wealth. In response, a series of “social dimension adjustments were enacted”. The growing wealth gap coupled with “social dimension adjustments” allowed for an increased significance for NGOs in developing states as they actively participated in social service delivery to the poor.

• Then, in the 1990s a new emphasis was placed on the idea of sustainable development.

Reports like the CVA and ideas like those of Freire from earlier decades emphasized that “no one could develop anyone else” and development had to be participatory. These arguments questioned the effectiveness of “service delivery programs” for achieving sustainable development, thus leading the way for a new emphasis on “capacity building".