By Muse Duale Aden

Have the capacity development efforts in Somalia so far yielded significant results? Somalia is a complex and dynamic environment with tremendous external support geared towards government capacity development. However, the judicious management of these capacity development interventions often remains insufficient and does not always lead to the expected outcomes. This article first discusses the capacity development approaches the Somali government and development partners employ to support both the delivery of reforms and enhancing day-to-day operations of the different entities. It then highlights the opportunities and challenges in implementing capacity development plans against a background of mostly weak institutional mechanisms and severe resource constraints. It concludes that Somalia’s experience suggests that it is possible for a poor, developing country with extensive capacity problems to successfully undertake complex capacity development programs on the basis of strong political commitment and sustained donor support.

The context in Somalia is unique, where the institutional and organizational infrastructures at federal, state and municipal levels had mostly dissipated given the prolonged conflict and only recently have begun to be rebuilt. Being seriously affected by poverty, hunger, disease and conflict, the normative, constitutional, and institutional arrangements and structures that underscore good governance need to be re-established virtually from scratch with a variety of measures put in place to ensure that individuals are deployed within the organizations who can operate the machinery. In any context, reforming government machinery is a difficult task, let alone rebuilding it virtually from scratch. It demands excellent individual leadership skills and competencies that unfortunately, in most cases, still seem wanting.

The Somalia Federal Government through its National Development Plan 2020-2024 recognizes this specific situation and has taken on board the concept of Core Government Functions in its design for building ‘efficient and effective institutions’ in the Public Sector and grouped the functions under three headings: government organization, government operations and enabling requirements. While certainly useful, this is not sufficient. Two more elements need to be added: (a) the link of government (executive) system to the political system and (b) the specific model for service delivery and with that the state – non state actor relations and functional role and responsibility distribution between the state and the non-state actors. This is important as enhancing government capacities requires working in collaboration and partnership – which is not based on isolated individuals but on the collective capacity of departments and institutions working for a shared common objective rather than in silos.

Capacity is often described as the ability of individuals, organizations, and societies to perform their core functions, identify, and solve their problems, set their own objectives, and achieve them on a sustainable basis. Capacity development is therefore the process by which this ability is acquired, adapted, and strengthened to improve performance. In the institutional capacity development field, capacity exists at three interrelated levels, individual, institutional/organizational, and systemic. Individual capacity covers individual knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Institutional capacity covers policies, structures, and legal frameworks. Systemic capacity involves the interplay between the individual, the institutional and the external social, political, and cultural environments.

The common principles underlying capacity development include national ownership and demand-driven by national priorities with political will and commitment, as well as a recognition of Somali regional differences and the uniqueness of each context and that no one size fits all. Conflict sensitivity is critical not only to avoid undermining fragile peace and inflaming conflict, but also to create favorable conditions for peace to flourish. Capacity development in a context of Public Administration Reform recognizes this is both political and technical while also focusing on results more than on individual activities, outputs, and processes and that the ultimate objective is for a reformed public service that delivers effective and efficient service to Somali people. While of course improvements can be made with quick-win type of results, it is important to realize that the key results and impact of capacity development are often only materializing in the long term and not achievable in one-year timeframes.

In Somalia, most capacity development interventions seem to have focused predominantly on either the individual or institutional/ organizational levels with often only very limited collective results being achieved. Often capacity development interventions have not been clear on how to link individual, institutional, and systemic capacities to produce the desired overall goal.  A wide range of capacity development instruments and tools have been deployed, including short and long-term workshops and  trainings covering certificate, degree and post graduate courses and some  specialized study programs through international accredited institutions like ACCA/CAT or CIPFA, technical assistance through international and/or diaspora experts attached to key ministries and institutions to develop policies and strategies and to provide specific needed skills, knowledge transfers, coaching and mentoring; study tours and exchange visits to other countries in the region to learn from other experiences on South-South basis as well as awareness and advocacy workshops in topics like HIV/AIDS, peace building, gender and anti-corruption, youth at risk and community participatory development planning. While all these instruments are useful, they only produce added value if solidly embedded in a common strategic direction – which often does not seem to be the case The observations led many observers to conclude that most capacity development efforts have been ad hoc and unsystematic and lacking a common strategic goal.

Uncoordinated response to the capacity needs of the government carries a significant risk to produce unintended marginalization of the civil service. For instance, due to a combination of large salary disparity between advisors and civil servant and advisors taking over line managerial functions, the civil servants become marginalized, sidelined, and ultimately dis-engaged. The role of advisors in the government often also lead to blurred lines of accountability, unclearinternal responsibility structures as well as questionable representative authority arrangements when non-civil servants occupy decision-making and representative functions in government.

One of the key objectives of capacity development efforts is to contribute to the establishment of a sustainable and solid public sector as a condition for durable peace and stability and ‘push out’ predatory governance arrangements. With current key positions in the executive permanently being occupied by non-civil servants who are either politically or clan affiliated – and hence often move to other positions with a change of ministerial or government-wide leadership – such a stable structure cannot be realized.

While of course the kind of general trends, tendencies and issues described above are valid to different degrees in the various government structures in Somalia, it is important to recognize that the Somali Federal Government is different from the regional governments and different from the municipal governance arrangements. The difference does not necessarily mean that one is better than the other, but just that they are context specific in the nature of development challenges, opportunities and processes, which should be acknowledged, and respected in programming to develop “best-fit” strategies which are adapted to each context.

Some programs and projects apply the same strategies across Somalia with very minor adaptations. Government partners often complain of cut-paste documents moved around the regions which bear no relevance to their situation. Somaliland for instance may require human resource capacity development more than institution building to strengthen the design and implementation of its development policies. Puntland may require more institution building. Southwest state may require a mixture of both. Each government has its own specific requirements.

It is important to recognize that the development context in which we are all operating is changing fundamentally. Next to development being context-specific, this context is becoming more and more systemically complex, characterized by very low levels of predictability of change, where the future developments are not necessarily based on historical trends, where initial small changes may rapidly lead to fundamental systemic change, where different actors in the system can shift coalition quickly, where there are no single actors that can ‘push through’ systemic change, and where systemic processes may undergo rapid evolution. Secondly, it is increasingly recognized that individual development processes are interconnected – poverty links to climate change, poverty links to gender inequality, climate change consequences link to gender inequality, etc. etc. Getting to terms with such a complex and interconnected reality requires new competencies and skills in organizations and the realization that a single organization cannot internalize all competencies and skills and will need to build cooperation arrangements with other agencies. In a sense, this represents a paradigm shift in governance and government management. While of course technical skills and efficiency arrangements remain important – as well as the often underestimated but crucially important role of the government to set boundaries to systemic behavior through legal and administrative arrangements – it is increasingly critical to ensure a solid networked environment to allow early enough identification of change tendencies that require a (pro-active) government response to influence the change direction. No single agency will have all the skills, competencies, finance or other means to continuously analyze the development context to make sense of possible change indications and develop sensible action to influence change in the desired direction – for this partnership development and cooperation arrangements are increasingly a critical government core function.as indicated above, this requires a good understanding of the different relations between state and non-state actors.

These findings above are also recognized by the UN and the European Centre for Development Policy Management lessons learnt and research studies[i], which provide evidence that capacity development is a long-term complex process which generally does not provide quick-fix solutions to institutional capacity deficits. They also indicate that training targeted at individual capacity development alone, certainly if not linked to collective capacity for institutional reform and organizational development, will not yield the desired result. They also indicate that capacity development is more effective when owned, driven, and championed by local institutions instead of external experts. Effective capacity development must be based on comprehensive capacity needs assessment which builds the capacity of a critical mass of key local staff who share the same objectives. 

As a way forward the government and the development partners should agree on a strategic and       systematic approach to managing capacity development efforts, coordinating the implementation of capacity development interventions and the provision of international support to Somalia. Recognizing the need to urgently boost capacity in a manner that does not jeopardize longer term systems, goals and sustainability of such efforts, requires a more consolidated approach towards capacity development. Development partners’ fragmentation enables government entities and individuals in the government system to shop around for the best deal (different salary scales, different recruitment procedures) which may override the search for ‘best quality’ and keeps different agencies in the dark on potential areas of duplication and redundancy. While there may be legitimate concerns regarding speed, flexibility and resistance, the government stands to gain from efforts that strengthen coordination. A more coordinated approach to tracking needs and provided support would enable better government oversight and ownership of the capacity development process and ensure that lines of accountability are ensured.

It is paramount to choose “flexible best fit rather than fixed, non-flexible one-size-fits-all approaches”: Most capacity development interventions are still driven by a” technocratic approach” based on a cause-and-effect linear model to the exclusion of other emerging paradigms in capacity development. There is a need to recognize capacity development as both a technical and political process, and that these processes are context specific – one-size-fits-all solutions are in the end fitting no-one. Secondly, the traditional silos in terms of classic sectors (agriculture, mining, manufacturing, forestry,…) and development themes like climate change, gender, inclusion are increasingly hampering progress as change in one specific sector or development theme is   interconnected to other sectors and themes, and hence cannot be dealt with in isolation Finally, the development process is increasingly complex, which means that it is ever harder to predict the future (e.g. through statistics) and linear development strategies (where a specific action automatically leads to certain result) are not valid anymore and need to be replaced by a structure where real-time analytics of the development context inform agile responses by government and other players in development to tackle development challenges and opportunities.

In this changing context, business as usual is not working. We collectively need to adapt our ways of working and collaborate much more intensively. It is time to secure new vision for the future a new innovative way of working. This amounts to a “paradigm shift” for Capacity Development, we collectively need to be able to understand the development dynamics in real time and be able to respond sensibly to the challenges and opportunities, This cannot be achieved in isolation, and only through cooperation and collaboration the required broad range of skills, competencies, finances and institutional capabilities can be deployed to make it possible. This requires a new set of skills, organizational arrangements as well as institutional structures to ensure staff knows how to collaborate, institutions have the practical arrangements in place to work together and a legal and institutional arrangement is developed on for instance the legality of cooperation as well as the role and responsibility distribution between actors.  Political will and commitment from government and other stakeholders – from the political leadership, community members, traditional and religious leaders, to businesspeople and development partners is crucial to create the type of cooperation arrangements required to successfully support capacity development in Somalia contributing more efficiently to realizing our common development objectives.  

Muse Duale Aden,
Email: musaduale@yahoo.com

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Muse Duale Aden, (MA (Public Administration), MA (Finance & Economics), PG Dip (Dev), BBA), has been working with the UN for more than 20 years and a former civil servant as Director. The opinions voiced in this article don not necessary represent the opinion of UN.

[i] European Centre for Development Policy and Management (ECDPM) Policy Management Research Paper (2008) on Capacity, Change and Performance.