Paper short abstract:

Capacity development fosters systematic, integrated, developing country ownership, focused on sustainable results. The dominant role of donor-led projects is examined. It is argued that role of Human Resource Development (HRD) gains unprecedented importance for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Paper long abstract:

There has been an Increase in capacity development in development assistance over the past decades. These have negative impact on developing countries achieving their development objectives on sustainable bases. Capacity development draws on previous concepts, fostering approaches which are more systematic, integrated, based on developing country ownership and focused more clearly on sustainable results.

Donor projects and programmes have aimed to increase capacity through a variety of interventions, ranging from the resource transfers, to training, to organisational strengthening. Debates continue regarding the effectiveness of capacity development interventions to contribute to achieving sustainable development results. This paper draws on the role of Human Resource Development (HRD) in the implementation of capacity development intervention in achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Here, HRD is differentiated from capacity development. The former is concerned with systematic training and development, career development, and organisational development to improve processes and enhance the learning and organisational performance, whilst capacity development is the process of creating and building capacities and their use, management and retention. The latter process is about change and it is driven from the inside and starts from existing national capacity assets. Thus, in institutional context it is reasonable to expect the HRD function to play critical role in capacity development.