Capacity building is about overcoming constraints that limit performance and achievement of goals. These constraints may be due to skill limitations, government inefficiencies, market failure, weak institutional structures, limited health and education facilities, broken or inadequate infrastructure etc. These constraints limit growth.
The importance of developing productive capacity for economic growth and poverty reduction has been recognized for some time by countries with high growth records including China, India and Brazil. The importance of productive capacity has also been recognized by leading OECD countries and leading firms, small and large, with an interest in sustainable growth. Capacity building is being shown to enable growth through enhancing growth in productivity while at the same time achieving significant reductions in carbon emission.

Building capacity is often complex because to build capacity it’s important to have knowledge about which constraints are the most limiting and urgent. More often the limiting constraint(s) has linkages with other constraints. Hence the importance of knowledge management (KM). The Knowledge Management Forum defines KM as the collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge.

What can we do for your organization to build capacity and enhance your management of knowledge?
● Transform knowledge into improved capacity and higher performance
● Build outsourcing into an infrastructure asset
● Improve productivity of labour and capital
● Use knowledge to secure a competitive advantage
● Create information sharing system and processes to ensure knowledge is not wasted
● Help organize people, organizations and processes to do things better and reach goals

Our approach to capacity building and knowledge management
● Examine the KM framework and linkages between data, information and KM. How much data and information is just disappearing or not being used (the ‘know-do’ gap)? How are decisions made? Who is accessing your data and information?
● Measure capacity of existing assets and identify constraints. Are existing assets effective and/or being fully utilized?
● Create knowledge management framework and integrate into operations. Can this be a genuine learning organization with a competitive advantage from their knowledge?
● Examine leadership, culture, infrastructure, technology & skills components. Is senior management committed to KM?
● Establish a reliable basis for continuous capacity building and management of knowledge
● Ownership of capacity building and knowledge management: is it accepted by senior management

Capacity building and knowledge management examples
● Evaluated and enhanced capacity of major government organization in East Africa
● Established a continuous improvement, monitoring and control mechanism for capacity building and KM.
● Integrated life cycle assessment and carbon footprint measurement with economic performance.
● Examined scope for ‘big data’ to deliver value adding products and services.
● Identified critical infrastructure assets and role in capacity building in East Africa

Interesting links
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2012/08/20/why-knowledge-management-is-important-to-the-success-of-your-company/
http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/knowledge-management-strategy.html
http://www.who.int/kms/about/strategy/en/
http://www.unep.ch/etb/areas/pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20UNEP-ETB%20CB-Paper%20Starvanger-final%20draft.pdf
http://www.fao.org/ag/ags/agricultural-finance-and-investment/capacity-building/en/