This book will benefit people and teams involved in planning and decision making. On the basis of their pragmatic value in guiding decisions, needs assessments are used in various professions and settings from emergency rooms to corporate boardrooms to guide decision making. Nonetheless, although needs assessments have many different applications, in this book on needs assessments as they are applied in organizations to accomplish results, as opposed to their use in personal decisions or medical triage.

This brief is part of a series of ‘Legacy Products’ developed under the CGIAR Research Program on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics – www.humidtropics.org ) to help CGIAR Research Programs integrate key ‘capacity development in systems’ concepts into their work. It introduces the rationale of capacity needs assessment, frameworks/steps and requirements. 

The presentation was for the workshop on the lessons and success stories from a pilot project on climate change adaptation interventions in Kabe watershed, south Wollo, Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, 11-12 February 2013.

Self Help Africa was mandated under the project “Expanding Utilization of Roots, Tubers and Bananas and Reducing Their Postharvest Losses” to implement activities tailored at achieving output 4, “Skills in entrepreneurship, agribusiness and collective action developed for selected actors (men, women and youth) in specialized ware potato markets” among 4 target potato associations (PA) in Eastern Uganda.

Farmers Training Center (FTC)-based farmer training is an emerging extension strategy geared towards human capital development through need-based, hands-on practical training in order to facilitate agricultural transformation and rural livelihood improvement. Although FTCs were established and made functional in the Tigray National Regional State and Alamata Woreda no systematic assessment of the relevance and effectiveness of the training were made.

This course aims to guide actors in member countries in effectively enhancing country capacity and to ensure that programmes and projects lead to truly effective and sustainable change. It consolidates existing knowledge, tools and lessons learned from FAO’s work.

This document aims to guide a small team tasked to assess the capacity for agricultural innovation in a multi-stakeholder context. The context might be an actual or potential “innovation platform” such as the three commodity-based platforms selected for the piloting capacity assessment methods, or it might be a project or programme that is more generally focused on strengthening of innovation within a subsector of agriculture within a country, such as livestock or horticulture.

This document is intended to serve as a resource for assessing capacity needs in a project or programme. A capacity needs assessment (CNA) is a process for identifying a project’s perceptions (through staff, partners and stakeholders) on various capacity areas that impact the work they do. The process helps identify challenges and opportunities for enhancing key skills thereby enhancing the project’s ability to achieve its objectives. The overall goal of a CNA is to determine the gap between required and existing capacities.