As articulated in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), country capacity is at the core of sustainable development. The concepts of capacity and capacity development (CD) are so all-encompassing, however, that practitioners have often found it difficult to make operational sense of them. Practitioners should focus on the specific capacities needed to reach well-defined goals, while keeping in mind several basic principles: (a) capacity development is a long-term process and requires a long-term view, (b) it must be country led, (c) donors should coordinate their CD support activities, (d) good diagnostics should inform the program design, and (e) learning activities must be comprehensive. This brief looks at how three ongoing World Bank projects in the transport sector worked to put these ideas into practice. Within very different country contexts, all incorporate three or more of these core principles. All are country led and based on good diagnostics
all are being carried out in a five-year period with ample time and budget for capacity development
all focus on developing capacity simultaneously at the individual, organizational, and institutional levels
and all use local expertise, including private sector expertise, wherever possible.