Building Civil Service Capacity in Ethiopia: The Case of Tigray Regional State

Abstract

In the contemporary world today, building the capacity of civil service organizations has got a notable recognition from policymakers, reformers and international development agencies. It rests on the principle that investing in human and social capital enables public servants to develop the capacities needed to thrive and to play an autonomous role in developing and renewing their communities. Both concepts and practices have evolved in the development communities, ranging from the institution-building to human resource development and then to capacity development/knowledge networks via reforming government Bureaucracies. It was with this intention that, the Ethiopian government reformed its civil service. It is also believed that, a successful civil service capacity building program is the keystone of government institutions to implement public policies and strategies. This in turn have a direct impact on the development performance of the nation. However, some empirical evidence indicates that, the civil service capacity building program in Ethiopia is inhibited by many administrative procedures. Therefore, the objective of this journal article was to examine the challenges of civil service capacity building programs. For this reason, the relevant data was collected both from primary and secondary data sources. Finally, the factors that impede the implementation of civil service capacity building were identified and the discussion was concluded that regardless of the institutional framework in-place and continual human resource development, the application of relevant training was highly inhibited by lack of skill gap analysis before training was provided for the civil servants of the study area.