An Analysis of capacity building and the long-road to services delivery in South Sudan
Peace is near than services delivery in South Sudan, analysing capacity building and long road to services delivery
Garang Atem Ayiik
- Introduction.
In around 2012, IGAD countries initiated a program of providing professionals to be attached to various government agencies with an aim to provide capacity to these agencies. Between 2005 – 2012, donors through Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) initiated various projects with capacity building components.
Commonly referred to as ‘young nation,’ the above named programs and other capacity building opportunities accorded to government officers were aim at accelerating government officers’ capacities, and hence by extension expedite peace dividends in term of services that were much needed in South Sudan after independence in July 2011 and interim from 2005.
This article aims to explore why early identified gap of capacity building has not been bridged about 10 years later after Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and secondly, after exploring the capacity building challenges, I will suggest some policy options for consideration.
- Why road to service is long
In the recent past, programs had been formulated to capacity build government officers. It is critical to note that the government is task with providing capable employees while the donor community does supply, by providing training experts and financial resources to facilitate the programs.
The cadres who are currently occupying government positions at national and decentralized levels are not trainable. In the states, though data is not available, number of graduates are negligible. And in the county, maybe only the commissioner had seen the gate of a university in some cases.
Unless the right matching between job description and qualification is made, South Sudan will continue to swim in the river of no capacity; not even capacity building will clean the mess. When designing public policy, expectation is that both supply and demand side must move to an equilibrium.
It is this basic principle that explains why most capacity building programs that target government employees will never achieve desired objectives. Donors supply the right training experts while the trainees are sleepy, aged academic shrubs. What this kind of training does is like asking Harvard professor to teach form four student Harvard graduate’s syllabus. How good the professor, the gap is wide between form four student-Harvard’s graduate syllabus.
In an ideal capacity building set up, it works the same way a teacher and student relationship work. The teacher teaches her/his student and thereafter, the student does the exercise. However, in the case of the cadres within the government, some do not even understand the exercise given by the teacher in our case herein, training professionals.
Quite often, you must heard them when they came from a training oversee, ‘the country that I have seen, we will never reach its status even after 100,000 years. Maybe, they should be told about United Arab Emirates, and Asian tigers recent progress or they should be ask to read Lee Kuan Yew’ book ‘ From Third to First World,’ this will give them hope.
Critical is the trend that young graduates are not getting opportunities or are not willing to work for the government. I consider it irresponsible or ignorance to talk of lack of capacity when the government do not know what capacity exists in South Sudan labour market. Did anyone did any research? I mean let talk evidence based issues that can be substantiate.
In an article I wrote in 2012, I illustrated that out of 33 graduates from Moi University between 2005 – 2011, only 3 were working for the government. This illustrates the low absorption capacity of the government. It is either it has not made itself attractive or entry is denied for these young freshers.
The Moi University sample with its limitation, reflects the low entry by young graduates into career bureaucrats. It seems the government employment policies deliberately close government employment doors while those in government’s roll-call continue to sing lack of capacity loudly.
- What is Missing
It is known that human capital is the agent that exploit available resources, Norway has illustrated this. Human capital is a tool that create productive sector from nothing Singapore has shown this. There are debates now if the newest nation on earth learnt from mistakes of Africa countries. In this regards, I suggest the following:
- South Sudan needs to increase incentives to attract capable South Sudanese in the Diaspora and those in Juba – the government must get its incentive right, motivating staffing through stealing is not fair, get the cash in payslips;
- There is need to create transparent, fair and competitive recruitment process. Current building tribal loyalties can be explained by recognition that nepotism, tribalism and corruption are key individual growth pillars;
- Enough resources must be put into higher education, it is a policy contradiction for government to sing lack of capacity; and import training skills without investing in local universities. If capacity building is important, can resources be made available to where capacities are built
- Parliament can allocate budget for compulsory retirement of old and incompetent civil servants to Pension Scheme. Vetting can be done to sieve out non-productive and get them paid from a pension scheme – I know Pension Scheme is not yet operational. South Sudan needs to be creative and get priorities right.
- Conclusion
Service delivery is a function of resources and human capital is central. My greatest fear is the deform public service, it doesn’t matter who heads the government. A deformed public service is like a body with a dysfunctional heart. Whoever want to deliver services, must get his tools right, the public service.
Till such time right matching between jobs and qualifications are made; youth is place central to public service agenda; incentives that will attract competent people to government are rolled out, South Sudanese will wait a little longer for what they want yesterday, the peace dividends. It will be easy to get peace in South Sudan than to get services in the current public service set up. Service delivery will wait a little longer.
Garang Atem Ayiik is an independent South Sudan economic policy commentator. He can be reached at garangatemayiik@gmail.com
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