One of the major challenges facing the international development community is creating a capacity development (CD) architecture built on solid evidence. Here, the authors argue that, although a significant body of evidence on CD is being produced, the knowledge is poorly captured and managed. As a result, CD practice and policies fail to take full advantage of lessons and experiences that could lead to better results.

While working for DFID (Department for International Development) in Bolivia, the author arranged for the UK Government to finance two parallel initiatives for people in marginalized communities to secure identity cards--and thus the right to vote. One initiative financed a consortium of grass-roots organizations; the other financed the State’s electoral commission. Although both initiatives aimed to get identity cards into the hands of more people, they way they went about it based on very different diagnoses of the causes of the problem. Both initiatives were relatively successful.

This paper, based on a review of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency's (SIDA) funding of NGOs in Bangladesh, explores the changing relationships between bilateral donors, Northern NGOs (NNGOs), and Southern NGOs (SNGOs).

The major development agencies have ex cathedra 'Official Views' (with varying degrees of explicitness ) on the complex and controversial questions of development. At the same time, knowledge is now more than ever recognised as key to development—in the idea of a 'knowledge bank' or knowledge-based development assistance. The author argues that these two practices are in direct conflict. When an agency attaches its 'brand name' to certain Official Views, then it becomes very difficult for the agency also to be a learning organisation or to foster genuine learning in its clients.