Technical assistance programme

Technical assistance programme

The government’s capacity has been damaged as a result of a long and devas- tating conflict, poor governance, and the exodus of qualified and experienced Afghans. To mobilize external resources, Afghanistan has relied on imported capacity, which, to a considerable extent, managed to jump-start crumbling government institutions, stabilize financial systems and initiate civil service reforms. However, what began as an emergency stabilization measure has now taken on a life of its own. That is because an absence of government leadership and a lack of coordination among those responsible for technical assistance, mean that efforts to train and empower Afghans remain insufficient.

This has also slowed down the transfer of technical and management functions to Afghans, and the progressive reduction of reliance on international advisors. In addition, a budgetary and regulatory constraint in recruiting qualified civil servants (while donors continue to pay foreign consultants high salaries) has undermined the government’s capacity to build

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local expertise. In some cases, multiple advisors provided by multiple donors, mostly in the same department, are duplicating efforts due to a lack of coordination, making it difficult for the government to effectively manage them. At the same time, more needs to be done to encourage expatriate Afghans with skills to work in Afghanistan and sufficient incentives still need to be provided to encourage them.

Technical assistance, which is still largely supply driven, is dominated by expatriate companies and firms managing such contracts. The government and its development partners are aware that imported capacity is expensive and, if not coordinated and utilized effectively, can damage the building of sustainable local institutions. Furthermore, in the absence of progress towards building local capacity, Afghanistan is likely to remain substantially dependent on international advisors and resources for a long period. Both the government and donors realize that Afghanistan will not be able to afford imported capacity in the long-run, particularly when the flow of external assistance declines. It is therefore imperative that all technical assistance is efficiently utilized to build domestic capacity as soon as possible.

The uncertain security situation has further complicated the long-term retention of capacity in civil service and the military, that is, it has increased the government’s dependency on external assistance – UN regional offices, international NGOs, Provincial Reconstruction Teams, and military and reconstruction experts. The Afghan government is thus less able to challenge donors in demanding or assuming greater leadership and responsibility for the delivery of services and the implementation of the rule of law.

Furthermore, weak project and programme appraisal mechanisms across the government line ministries have resulted in low quality projects, under- mining the execution and implementation of its budget. In short, a lack of sufficient capacity has limited the government’s ability to achieve its develop- ment goals in an efficient manner. In order to deal with capacity shortage, the donor community has hired international advisers to work in the civil service. Also, the donors have created 20 Project Implementation Units (PIU) within government institutions. PIUs have often been used to fill in the technical skills gap in the administration of donor-driven development assistance program- mes.