The UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) was officially established by the UNESCO General Conference in October, 1999. Its establishment was part of UNESCO’s drive to decentralize its functions. In particular IICBA expressed UNESCO’s commitment to capacity building in Africa.IICBA is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and presently has two nodes, one situated within the UNESCO Regional Office in Dakar, and the second one within Pretoria University, South Africa. Through these three centres IICBA provides services to some 20 countries.

About Capacity Building

At a superficial level, “capacity building” can be equated to training. However, it is well known that training may benefit individuals without strengthening the capacities of institutions and countries. Individuals who benefit from high level training may not be able to put their newly acquired skills to good use where their home institutions are unappreciative or even hostile to such skills application. Thus, unless capacity building is targeted at both individuals and institutions, its benefits may be uneven and unreliable. Capacity building therefore, must be defined first and foremost as building institutional capacities. “Institutions” include not only educational establishments such as teachers’ colleges and universities, but also the important principles, values, knowledge and processes which form the foundation of education.

At the same time, more personnel need training than previously thought. One reason for this is the high mobility of staff in many institutions and countries – as high as 20% a year in many cases. Another reason is that the increased professionalization of teachers and educational administrators, through, for example curriculum skills development, improves the critical interaction among researchers and developers, as well as school and classroom practitioners. The danger of planners and managers who are increasingly out of touch with the grassroots, and a grassroots which finds its supervisors remote and unreal, is thus minimized. Hence, it is clear that capacity building must be done at a number of levels: national, provincial, district and local. It is when such knowledge and skills become common currency at local level, particularly at school level that capacity building makes a difference.

Much research and development has been done on education in Africa by universities, research institutes, donor funded consultancies, etc. However most of this work may not be utilized in implementation programmes. One of the main tasks of this Institute is to bring research and development closer to practical implementation programmes.

Another task of the Insitute is to form a network of such programmes and institutions, allowing the sharing of training facilities and experience.

The Institute's responsiblities include:

• addressing the educational, technical and professional needs of members states;
• providing a forum for the sharing of both positive and negative experiences so as to enable institutions and educational systems to benefit from work done by sister bodies;
• bringing the latest research and development in Africa and globally to institutions in Africa;
• enhancing the capacities of regional, national and local level institutions;
• providing the opportunity for technological improvements, such as the utilization of electronic media for networking and for educational purposes.