This set of guidance notes is designed to support practitioners and evaluators in conducting retrospective evaluations of a capacity development intervention or portfolio to assess and document results. Users will enhance their understanding of the capacity development process, of what works and what does not work in promoting change and to inform future programs. The standard M&E approach for assessing capacity development results has not been sufficient.

This sourcebook contributes to identifying, designing, and implementing the investments, approaches, and complementary interventions that appear most likely to strengthen Agricultural innovation systems (AIS) and to promote agricultural innovation and equitable growth. It emphasizes the lessons learned, benefits and impacts, implementation issues, and prospects for replicating or expanding successful practices. The information in this sourcebook derives from approaches that have been tested at different scales in different contexts.

This World Bank Institute Capacity Development and Results Practice focuses on the areas of institutional capacity and their contributing characteristics which can help development practitioners to assess institutional capacity needs, inform program design and measure progress toward results for a capacity development strategy or intervention. 

This paper aims to set out for policy makers and a range of actors across donor/practitioner/research communities, a series of challenges and opportunities for support to capacity development. It pays particular attention to a systemic approach for understanding and supporting the development of capacity at three interlinked levels: the individual, the organisation and in wider society.

The Capacity Development Results Framework (CDRF or the Framework) is a powerful new approach to the design, implementation, monitoring, management, and evaluation of development programs. Originally conceived to address well-documented problems in the narrow field of capacity development, the Framework can be profitably applied to assess the feasibility and coherence of proposed development projects, to monitor projects during implementation (with a view to taking corrective action), or to assess the results, or even the design, of completed projects. 

Capacity development for too long has endured the stereotypical characterization of “just training and technical assistance” that has undermined its broader legitimacy. We need to shift to a new and bolder vision of capacity development, one that seeks to catalyze domestic collective capacity for change by inspiring, connecting and empowering transformative leaders and coalitions for change.

Many countries are using innovation funds in the agricultural sector to support innovators and their links to public institutions, private entrepreneurs, and other actors, such as groups of rural producers. These funds create platforms for innovative activity by providing incentives for quality and collaboration. This report synthesizes experience with the two main innovation funds that the World Bank has used to fund agricultural innovation—competitive research grants and matching grants—and offers lessons and guidelines for designing and implementing them.

Innovation systems and science and technology (S&T) projects supported by the World Bank have taken on many forms in the past several years. The Bank's involvement in industrial technology projects started in the 1970s, with Israel and Spain numbering among the first countries to receive support in the form of industrial technology development. This paper reviews the lessons learned in S&T projects that have been supported by the Bank, with an emphasis on the examples of the past decade (1989-2003).

Beyond the City evaluates the contribution of rural development and policies to growth, poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation in the rest of the economy, as well as in the rural space. This title brings together new theoretical and empirical treatments of the links between rural and national development. New findings and are combined with existing literature to enhance our understanding of the how rural economic activities contribute to various aspects of national development.

Agricultural water management is a vital practice in ensuring reduction, and environmental protection. After decades of successfully expanding irrigation and improving productivity, farmers and managers face an emerging crisis in the form of poorly performing irrigation schemes, slow modernization, declining investment, constrained water availability, and environmental degradation. More and better investments in agricultural water are needed.