Capacity Development for Water

Explainers and briefs|Dec 19, 2023

Capacity development can be understood as processes through which institutions and individuals obtain, strengthen, and sustain learning and capabilities to set and achieve development objectives over time. To achieve progress and improvements in water governance, it is essential to strengthen capacity-building processes that include all key stakeholders and consider all institutional and organizational performance determinants.

This concept note presents SIWI’s approach to capacity development in the water sector. It illustrates a framework of determinants of organizational performance that accounts for the complexity of the water environment where organizations operate. Four interconnected levels are described: from individual employees to the organizations, how these relate to other organizations within the water sector, how the water sector sits within the wider institutional framework, and the context of the country where it operates (structural context).

The framework will enable practitioners and policymakers to acknowledge the complexity and develop more systematic work on capacity development in water through various types of capacity development plans and the organizational mechanisms that can support them.