Strengthening Capacity To Improve Nutrition

A major premise of this paper is that the failure—or limited achievements—of many large-scale nutrition programs is very often a function of insufficient sustainable capacities within communities and organizations responsible for implementing them. Following a brief review of the various rationales for an intensified focus on capacity and capacity development, the paper examines the linkages between nutrition programming and capacity development processes before proposing a new approach to assessing, analyzing, and developing capacity. The ensuing sections then focus in more detail on the ingredients and influences of capacity at the levels of the community, program management, supporting institutions, and the government. Finally, the implications of a more proactive focus on strengthening nutrition capacity for donor modes of operation and support priorities are discussed. A fundamental premise, as enshrined in major international conventions and declarations, is that adequate nutrition is a human right. In order to operationalize a truly human-rights-based approach to nutrition action—whether policy or programs, a fundamental first step is to assess capacity. The rights approach demands an active involvement of “beneficiaries” in processes to improve nutrition. Nutrition-vulnerable individuals, households, and communities are no longer objects of welfare transfers, but rather subjects whose capabilities are ultimately the foundations of sustainable progress. There are several key recommendations for donor policy and practice that emerge. First, donors need to provide more support for capacity assessment and development, operational research, and the building of policy-research-training-program networks. A concrete, rights-based programming process demands a focus on individuals as subjects—not objects—and thus on their inherent capacity. Inclusion of stakeholders in the process of preparing a project or program—right from the initial problem assessment to the design of appropriate actions—is one of the most important capacity development tools. Such a redefinition of the role of "recipients" demands, in turn, a fundamental redefinition on the part of donors of the key concepts of planning, performance, speed, and quality. With regard to planning, the traditional project cycle is predicated on the assumption that solutions to known problems can be fully determined at the outset and that projects can be fully designed and costed in advance and successfully implemented to a fixed timetable. This approach is clearly ill-adapted to a learning-by-doing approach that is the foundation of true capacity development. Performance needs to be considered more with respect to the degree to which the donor is slowly becoming redundant as local capacities develop, while speed should be understood in terms of capacity development, not the processing of donor finance. Quality relates not only to the customary performance standards set by the donor, but crucially to such process factors as the degree of active local ownership of the project. At the level of donor capacity, such a realignment of procedures will necessitate shifts in the incentive environment. The monitoring of staff performance needs to be related more explicitly to contributions to capacity development, not just to disbursing loans and generating traditional project outputs. Finally, donors need to attach greater priority to encouraging and supporting the monitoring and evaluation of both capacity development and program performance, so as to better know what works where and to disseminate success stories more widely.