Institutional dynamics in national strategy development: a case study of the capacity development strategy of Uganda's water and environment sector

Abstract

Developing countries often face challenges when attempting to improve poor performances in the delivery of water, sanitation and hygiene services. Policymakers have focused their attention on national capacity development strategies as instruments to promote state-owned and -driven policy to improve capacity development (CD). The results of this empirically-based research on Uganda's Water and Environment Capacity Development Strategy illustrate that the formulation and implementation of the strategy was enhanced by the support of the sector's knowledgeable actors involved in the strategy-making process who helped to identify the core CD challenges of the sector. Secondly, the study highlights the importance of adopting a sector CD annual plan to guarantee a common approach to CD among sector actors, to strengthen the sector's readiness to change from existing CD practices, to learn new CD practices collectively, and, above all, to encourage common output and performance orientation toward the strategy. Finally, our study shows that, inevitably, inherent politico-economic power relations appear to be a substantial force within such strategy-making processes.